Six Films That Ask You to Feel Bad for Overprivileged Rich People

By Matt Prigge
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Apr. 21, 2009

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The Informers

Gone With the Wind (1939): During the Great Depression, audiences flocked to movies featuring the wealthy, but there was usually an element of social climbing. By 1939 virtually the entire country basked in this epic sudster, which asked one not just to feel bad for a wealthy family, but a wealthy Southern family during the Civil War. Don’t worry—their slaves seemed happy.

L’Avventura (1960): European cinema of the early ’60s often concerned the idle rich—the bored socialites of La Dolce Vita, the zombies of Last Year at Marienbad. Generaly speaking, you wouldn’t peg Michaelangelo Antonioni for sympathizing with the jet set. And yet L’Avventura comes mighty close, thanks in no small part to Monica Vitti, who retains her character’s humanity both here and in Antonioni’s The Eclipse.

Arthur (1981): A screwball throwback, this Dudley Moore vehicle turned the formula inside out: The rich guy was the protagonist, not the working-class type struggling to scale society’s mountain. And what a lovable, alkie scamp he was.

Batman (1989): Like Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne is a rich kid with dead parents who milked his grief—and tapped his own money bin—to become a crime-fighting, above-the-law vigilante. Hooray for rich people!

Vanilla Sky (2001): In the original Open Your Eyes, the lead was a callous trust fund kid who mostly deserved the surreal mindfuck he received. He’s still a dick in the Cameron Crowe remake, but he’s also played by Tom Cruise, and Crowe can’t help but depict him as a crying-on-the-inside softie with great taste in music.

The Informers (2009): Brett Easton Ellis’ usual bevy of transgressive, well-off monsters finally get their own pity party. Waaaaah! It’s so taxing being wealthy!

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The Informers
By Matt Prigge

The film’s timing is awful—what’s offensive isn’t so much that it asks for sympathy for unhappy rich and privileged assholes, but that they barely qualify as even caricatures, let alone characters.

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Posted Apr. 21, 2009 | Comments: 0