Thursday Movie Picks: Married Couples Movies

The Dellies - 2012 Best Documentary Feature

I'll be honest right off the bat. This is the category I am probably least qualified to present an award, not that I'm actually qualified to give any, but you get my drift. For much of my life I only watched one or two docs per year and kept telling myself I should watch more. Recently, I have. However, that still only amounts to a handful each of the last few years (not quite that many this year). Sadly, my handful doesn't fully match the Academy's nominees. Still, I'll give it a go. Click on the titles of my nominees to read my full reviews.

2012 Best Documentary - Feature

The Real Nominees: 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi), The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarski, and Estelle Fialon), How to Survive a Plague (David France and Howard Gertler), The Invisible War (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering), Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn)

My Nominees:

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Directed by Alison Klayman

With such dedication to both his ideals and working toward them combined with his popularity, it can be argued that Ai Weiwei is the most important artist in the world. Never Sorry ably conveys this point.

How to Survive a Plague

Directed by David France and Howard Gertler

Its story is very well told. It is also a reminder that even though AIDS isn't the immediate nailing up of the coffin it once was, it’s still out there and plenty of people continue to die from it.

The Invisible War

Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering

The film itself contributed to changes in how allegations of sex crimes are handled. Like many policy changes, it’s not a solution by itself, but a step in the right direction.

The Queen of Versailles

Directed by Lauren Greenfield

Real life intervened and gave us a plot. We get to see people go through a range of emotions, both good and bad. We see a change in the way they interact with one another. There is substance and even sadness in watching their family fortune deteriorate.

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap

Directed by Ice-T

If you’re at all a (hip hop) fan, the nearly two hours flies by as a new perspective or another rhyme is never too far away.


The Real Winner: Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn)

And My Winner Is...

The Invisible War

Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering

"There are some works of writing or painting, speech, or film that do more than just stand as great works of art. They change things. They put before us something fundamentally wrong with the world — with the society we take for granted, with the institutions on which we depend and that in turn depend on us — and demand change. "The Invisible War" belongs in that pantheon, and is easily one of the most important films of the year." - Jonathan Hahn, The Los Angeles Review of Books

Click here to see all of The Dellies!

The Queen of Versailles

Directed by Lauren Greenfield.

2012. Rated PG, 100 minutes.

Cast:

Jacqueline Siegel

David Siegel

Richard Siegel

Virginia Nebab

Alyse Zwick

We meet 70-something year old David Siegel, his 40-something year old wife Jackie and their eight kids at their Orlando, Florida home in 2007. He is the king of an empire known as Westgate Resorts, the largest seller of time-share vacations in the world. He even claims personal responsibility for getting George W. Bush elected in 2000. It may not have been altogether legal, in his own words. As kings of empires usually are, he is also filthy stinking rich. He’s so wealthy, he is in the midst of building the largest single family private home in the United States, a 90,000 square foot behemoth he and his wife have dubbed Versailles. He estimates it will cost him about $100 million to complete. His company has also just built the biggest hotel on the famous Las Vegas strip. His eldest son Richard, (not by Jackie and appears to be about her age), runs it. Jackie is a stay-at-mansion mom who goes to expensive charity luncheons. Calling her a mom might be giving her too much credit as a team of nannies and housekeepers do most of the work. Jackie also shops. A lot. Life is good.

As you should know by now, a few short months later the bottom falls out of America’s economy. Since most of his customers begin tightening their purse strings Westgate is hit hard. To oversimplify, while what Westgate sells is physically manifested in vacations for their customers, on paper they’re sub-prime mortgages. David is hemorrhaging money and laying people off left and right (including most of his at home help) while desperately trying to save his business as a whole. In particular, he wants to save the hotel which is in serious danger of going into foreclosure. The completion of Versailles is also put on hold. Of course, all of this is a strain on the Siegel marriage as David grows ever more ornery and Jackie, not always kept in the loop, begins to feel alienated from her husband and is also stressed about the situation.

Jackie gets most of the focus, hence the movie’s title. To her credit, she maintains a healthy sense of humor about the whole thing. She slowly realizes how out of touch she and her children are. She tries to ratchet down some of her lavish habits but can’t quite keep it under control. For instance, a trip to Wal-Mart (probably a first) turns into a couple thousand dollars just in toys. With only four in-house employees, down from 19, to deal with her, David, their 8 kids, and I don’t know how many pets, things get pretty nasty around the mansion. Yet somehow, Jackie emerges as a sympathetic figure. Perhaps her husband becoming a rather grumpy old man gives us more empathy for her.

A bad break for not only the Siegels, but the entire country in the form of a recession turns out to serve this film really well. I’m guessing, they signed up to do this documentary as a way of showing off their extravagant (gaudy) lifestyle, a pat on their own backs for making it ridiculously big. If they had their way, it was going to say “Hey, look at how rich we are and watch us build our palatial estate.” Not to bash the wealthy but that would’ve been hard to twist into a narrative that was interesting to anyone. Real life intervened and gave us a plot. We get to see people go through a range of emotions, both good and bad. We see a change in the way they interact with one another. There is substance and even sadness in watching their family fortune deteriorate. Saddest of all, director Lauren Greenfield appears to have gotten it right judging by David’s reaction to the film. He and his family do not come across as well as they probably thought they would. After all, when filming started he was a billionaire with no end to his fortune in sight. At the film’s end he’s not exactly broke financially, but his spirits appear to be. He’s now suing Greenfield for $75 million for defamation of character. I’m not sure how he can win. Well, maybe he’ll win on Oscar night for Best Documentary. I don’t think he’ll enjoy that because then his loss will literally be someone else’s gain.