Born Rich

The supposedly inane problems of inherited wealth are reframed quite well in this film. I felt that there was an important contradiction made clear. America's 400 year old flight from Europe's monarchies and class systems is both long over and yet still taking place. I don't believe that this contradiction has anything to do with money.

Personal dignity is the prize at the end of the American dream. And yet dignity is far more elusive than we'd like to believe. This has a lot more to do with practical parenting and the real value that children have to their parents and how it's shown, NOT how much they spend or can spend on their children.

Americans have steadfastly (in principal) defined personal worth by personal achievement. Whether you began your days in humble circumstances or not, you can with effort, create the wealth and comfort for yourself and your family that you need. This is the American Idea. And yet this principal becomes mere theory for those whose lives are defined utterly by someone else's effort, often long before they were born.

The problems of these people are somewhat anachronistic to the rest of us. And also quietly disturbing because there is a wound that the American identity struggles with on the subject of wealth, power, history and privilege (royalty). Americans are both attracted to the glamor of privilege and repelled intellectually. Some part of our problem is universal; how to define personal value when those with power apparently don't need to worry about it. There is an important moment in the film where, in a candid remark, a young man describes a sense of pique he'd experienced where he had said to himself about someone he was annoyed with, "we could buy your family," and he believes it. This says volumes about the sense of narcissistic confusion that stems from an identity where basic values have not been passed down and personal dignity is not fought for. What more compelling is that the young man also seems to be aware of that fact.

A few of these people seem to be trying to reset their values to relate to the rest of us. This is a specifically American virtue and it separates them from the rest who have delusions of relevance bloated even more by this film's interest in their lives; they wouldn't be out of place in the courts of Europe a century ago.

A fascinating film.

Bravo to Jamie Johnson for having the guts to "show the dirt in his own backyard" so to speak. The only think worse than the idle rich is to have them mad at you, and still have to socialize with them!

This movie made me appereciate so much more what I have in my own self-made upper-middle class, graduate school educated life. I earned everything I have, and it's made me a richer, deeper, more spiritual person. I don't live every breathing moment with the fear that I'll upset someone and have my money cushion yanked out from under me.

Still, I shook my head sadly as some of these kids (Weil, Bloomberg, the Europeans, the A&P heiress [wait, does A&P even exist anymore?}) really are clueless. They are so oblivious to their narcissism that would otherwise be laughable if one didn't remember that narcissism is really only a mask for crippled self-esteem and an extraordinarily damaged sense of one's purpose in life.

Some of the others, particularly Ivanka Trump, appeared more grounded and in touch with the way the world really works than the aforementioned kids. Kudos to them!

Although I'm not rich, I have a few friends who are from the Palm Beach-Hamptons-have a place on the Upper East Side-old money clan, and although I sometimes don't "get" their lifestyle (a 3 million dollar beach house with Mercedes as a gift from mommy and daddy when one friend graduated college, another who hops his dad's corporate Gulfstream to Brazil every couple of months to have his suits made because he really likes the tailor), I can honestly say that they have worked hard at their own jobs, and are becoming successful in their own right (my beach house friend is a social worker, and her paycheck is donated to a charity that provides college scholarships for low-income kids).

I would like to see a sequel where these kids have to live for three months with no inheritance in a lower class neighborhood, and see who learns the most from it. That would be interesting to watch!

It is well-known that those with money do not ever speak of money--theirs or anyone else's. Jamie Johnson admirably shattered this longstanding taboo, despite pleas from his own father and lawyer not to make the film, and discovered the hard way what happens when the secrecy curtain is lifted from the uber-wealthy. "Born Rich" is ostensibly Johnson's way of finding normalcy, whatever that may mean to those born into wealth; unfortunately, he was ostracized from the Gen-X upper class for turning a mirror onto the real lives of his blue-blood friends.

The most fascinating part of Born Rich isn't what is seen on camera, but what took place offscreen. Luke Weil sued Johnson to have his footage cut from the film, claiming that he--an Ivy-league-educated adult--was tricked into signing a release. Weil's lawsuit was thrown out, and it is now apparent to the world why he didn't want his footage seen. Among other gems, Weil tells the interviewer that any woman who wouldn't sign a pre-nup is "an ungrateful little bitch," brags of coasting through Brown University without attending class, and how he would taunt classmates with "I can buy your family."

Sadly, Weil is not even the most odious of the film's assembled characters. That distinction belongs to Carlo von Zeitschel, a minor European royal who claims to be a descendant of Kaiser Wilhelm II (strangely, his name does not appear in the Kaiser's family tree). With his chain-smoking and foreign flippancy, he sneers "I have no intention of being loyal to any woman anytime soon, not that I probably ever will be... One day I'll fall in love and I'll get married, whatever. I'll probably get divorced a couple of years later." (In the DVD's deleted scenes, he dismisses his American peers as "so cheesy, they're like the f*cking Brady Bunch.")

Weil's and von Zeitschel's contributions to the film are embarrassing to watch, and epitomize everything that is wrong with inherited wealth. The other heirs in the film do not fare much better: Stephanie Erklentz quit her job as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch so she could spend her days shopping and sipping Bellinis with her friends. Cody Franchetti is an Italian textile heir who works as a model because he doesn't want a "real job." Juliet Hartford fancies herself a starving artist (minus the starving part) who, when asked what she would do with a million dollars in cash, says "I'd give it to the homeless," then bursts out laughing and spurts, "Just kidding!"

However, these vignettes also speak volumes about the sense of narcissistic confusion that stems from having enormous wealth handed down without integrity or values. The real problem with some of these kids is poor parenting, not excess. It is very clear that well-rounded, responsible adults come from proper mentoring, not undeserved wealth or social status.

And despite soundbites like these, Johnson manages to make you feel sorry for his subjects; despite their grossly excessive lifestyles, their wealth is tremendously isolating. These children are locked in their own private world, surrounded only by others like them. They have been trained to never socialize or date outside the upper crust, and while most attended college, their trust funds give them no incentive to make a meaningful contribution to the working world, and no mentors to provide guidance. (When Johnson asks his emotionally-detached father for career advice, he is vaguely advised to become a collector of historical maps.) He goes to great lengths to show the perils of having too much money, using his grandfather's messy life as an example.

The bright spot of "Born Rich" is Ivanka Trump, who is witty and articulate, and balks at the notion that the rich have no problems. She, along with S.I. Newhouse IV and Josiah Hornblower, appear to be the most well-adjusted of the bunch. They have contemplated the bizarreness of their lives, and seem to be aware of the trappings of decadence and materialism. (Newhouse chose to live in a shared college dorm instead of his father's plush Manhattan penthouse.) These three have no pretenses: they are just young adults with big bank accounts and huge legacies to fulfill.

The film is very short - barely over an hour - and Johnson doesn't attempt to delve into the more meaty issues characterizing the class war. He simply turns the camera on his friends, and allows them to expose the classism on their own. Some seem refreshingly average, others troubled, others spoiled, arrogant and mean. But they are all human, and face the same struggle for self-identity as anyone else.

This is why it is extremely important to remain thoughtful and open-minded while watching, and not to categorize all super-rich as "elitist snobs," or naysayers of the rich as "jealous." If you have such pre-formed opinions, you will find little here to change your mind or encourage you to think deeper. Still, every viewer will have a strong reaction to the film in some way, because inherited wealth is at odds with the capitalist principle of worth by way of achievement. That idea will undoubtedly rankle you, regardless of sympathies.

It took enormous chutzpah for Johnson to make this film. Though it is unlikely to change high society's hush-hush attitudes about wealth, or the public's reaction to class clash, this film is a daring experiment and (hopefully) a promising start to a great film-making career.

A lot of people are saying this movie tries to inspire sympathy for the rich - that is not the case.

It is one rich kid interviewing others. The Johnson + Johnson kid interviews the Trump kid, some Luke guy, and a bunch of others who inherited money from grandparents. They will never work a day in their life, unless they want to (one kid makes 50 G a year at his job). But their life isn't totally easy. But this isn't to inspire sympathy.

Overall, I'd say to give this thing a watch. I didn't wanna make this review too long or too dignified like others have done, I'm just saying that it's interesting to watch.

The only flaw is that if you don't catch it from the beginning, you won't know who everyone is because they don't tell you in the middle.

7/10.

Worth seeing. I wasn't as offended by the world-view presented as others were. These are very young people grappling with enormous privilege, which unsurprisingly, is its own circle of Hell. Ironically, their struggles are not very different from anyone else's. "What am I going to do with myself?" is something everyone asks. Not having to work is just the other side of having to work. Ultimately, we all still have to make our way in this world. But, one does get a sense of the truism of Thoreau's comment that(paraphrase)"to be born rich is not to be born at all, but rather, still-born." I saw this on HBO and watched Indian Point, another documentary, right after. There was Robert F. Kennedy, another child of privilege, hard at work doing something that matters to him. The individuals who are struggling in Born Rich could benefit by watching him at work and learning how to live.