Generation Wealth

I found this documentary exquisitely honest and compelling. Though I believed it intellectually, this documentary gave me the emotional experience that money, wealth and those who seek it are merely expressing a deep rooted human need. To be recognised. To be validated. But more importantly, it is only at the point of achieving it that we arrive at the cusp of greed. I will be watching it again. Its rich tapestry demands it.

Shines a light on the evolution of our collective, destructive and avaricious tendencies that could put our society, country and world in danger. It's well told and enjoyable film.

We live in uncertain times, people are obessessed with their image, their bodies, their 'fame' and their popularity, but there's one thing we are all crazy about...Money. This is a documentary which goes behind the scenes of the lives of the rich and famous, showing how these people have given up their souls, humanity and empathy in order to get rich. A great documentary which is highly informative, detailed and entertaining. It's not for everyone, but everyone should watch it.

This is a poor excuse for a documentary. The obvious theme, that money doesn't buy happiness, is somehow a grand revelation for the filmmaker. What is especially appalling about this wasted opportunity is that the filmmaker chooses to spend WAY too much time on herself and her mother and her friends, and her personal issues of abandonment -- which have little to do with the pursuit of wealth. Or anything else of interest, for that matter. The main subjects chosen for this joke of a film are often personal acquaintances of the filmmaker, few of whom add much interest or depth to the subject. There are a couple of compelling interviews, especially the one with the mother from Toddlers and Tiaras, but these are few and far between. Overall, this is a poorly organized, rambling mish-mosh of piffle, that crams boring, repetitive themes together to extend to an hour and a 45 minutes.. If you really want to learn more about the subject, just spend that time wandering around your local mall, it will be time better spent.

Generation Wealth is one of the most thought-provoking, engaging and original films I've seen in a long time. It is one of those perfect films that is both informative and entertaining from beginning to end and keeps you thinking about it long afterwards.

There are a ton of very obviously bought and paid for reviews which mislead you into thinking this is a masterpiece. It isn't. It's a bad documentation of an otherwise interesting topic that deserves a more sophisticated and less self serving approach. The filmmaker claims there's 25 years of material on the subject yet she fills half the documentary with off-topic snippets of her own life. Wealth is never really looked at here. What you see is some corners of our world where excess is the new order but that doesn't say much about the role of wealth in society. There's also a terrible academic interviewed throughout the documentary who vomits over-simplified apocalyptic nonsense as images of people pouring champaign over asses go by. Rubbish. The most unfortunate thing about wealth these days is that it can be channeled to paying for fake reviews about this junk. Avoid.

It cost ten times more money to MAKE this drivel than it took in on the free market. This is really all you need to know about this "documentary". The makers of this cannot turn a profit, or even break even... this should offer a clue as to how little they understand the concept of wealth/money/capitalism. It is generally those abysmally bad at creating wealth who are most eager to talk about it as if with knowledge. Yes, by all means, let's turn reality on its EAR and twist it 180 degrees around: a nation which has built, for itself and its children, the very best lifestyle ever in the history of mankind... is PATHOLOGICAL for doing so. How many other words can be utilized to undermine and devalue this virtue? Greed? Obsession?

And, more broadly, an examination of how pathology typically leads to even more pathology -- presented here in the context of how kids raised with incomplete and unsatisfied childhoods end up raising their own kids with the same or similar problems, leading to a snowball effect of pathologies that plague our society in innumerable ways. This is the key takeaway, despite the filmmaker likely not intending it to be: that childcare is extremely important (obviously), and the chain reaction caused by inadequate childcare may very well end up being eventual cause for America's collapse. As our nation's population has grown during Ms. Greenfield's lifetime; as time has progressed; as our economic system has found new aspects of life to commodify and squeeze into our GDP growth figures, the pathologies of our culture have ballooned in tandem with our economic "success." We may very well have passed the point of no return towards our societal collapse, as this film suggests. At the very least, we are precipitously close to it. Though I would like to say that this film is a must-watch, for its observations and lessons are so important for our nation's future, I think that such a recommendation is actually futile. As the professional critic reviews exemplify, for some folks (dare I say the majority of the US), this film will fall on deaf ears. We are so deep into our system of delusional desires and vacuous goals that we require great shock to awake to the truth. For this, there is no substitute for lived experience. Hence, as the reviews make evident, those who have experienced something that made them realize the truth of this film FOR THEMSELVES have rated it highly, while others have dismissed it as meandering and inconclusive. In other words, this film reaffirms the conclusions drawn by those who have already learned these same lessons for themselves, while baffling and even aggravating those who just can't/don't understand. We find ourselves in an unfolding catastrophe that is too alluring and complex for most of us to be able to perceive clearly -- let alone do anything about. In any case, thank you Ms. Greenfield for your effort in making this film, and in particular, your own introspection on how you (and your family) were in a way consumed by the pathologies of our society. This was powerful storytelling, beautifully filmed and narrated. 10/10