“The Queen of Versailles” is Royally Revealing

A film about the typical American riches to rags story, “Queen of Versailles” is a documentary about a billionaire and the woman he married. They set out to build the biggest house in the United States.

Then the recession hits and they have to adjust to being poor and giving up their dream house, which includes an ice rink, bowling alley, 30 bathrooms, 10 kitchens, a half million dollar window, five million dollars in just a marble grand staircase that has room for a string quartet at the top. The house is only half done and they’ve put 50 million into it already.

This is an interesting film, making the audience go through many emotions. At first, the overflowing amount of wealth is sickening. Seventeen thousand dollar purses, the power that money brings, being able to fund and elect any candidate they want, having countless children in a packed and extravagant house, nannies, cooks, housekeepers, managers, living like royalty… except I guess they never read anything about Versailles and what happened there.

Then you feel a little bit of a change when you see their change. The wife in this film is a shallow gold-digger…or is she? She is an RIT educated engineer who funds and works at a store like Wal-Mart for people who have nothing. She is a giving person who is just trying to survive, just trying to do so in the skimpiest getups.

On the one hand, she is making dead on statements as if quoting Plato, and on the other she is saying that fewer children would’ve been a better plan since she had to fire the nannies. Taking her stretch limo to McDonalds, letting her dozen dogs crap everywhere, and letting the pet snake free to roam the house, there are definitely some “Grey Gardens” moments.

The husband is the most questionable of them all. He’s thirty years older than his wife and embodies the cocky, rich, slimy, out of touch, and greedy man that put this country in the position that it is. And yet, you feel bad for guy who lost everything and feels the loss of his one love, his company.

The kids they share are terrible, a product of the twisted circumstances they were conceived under. The maids, nannies and drivers are the standout real people.

As this family crashes, the audience doesn’t feel a sense of gratification. It is just sad that this white trash family that has no idea what a true American looks like is still, at the end of the day, a family, a screwed up family just getting by.

There is no hero. There is no star. This is a film about the American dream imploding in our pretty little faces. A film worth seeing, if you’re there to understand this is the one percent and this is what really happened. There is a human thread that connects us all and that is money.