Lifestyles of the Rich and Crazy: Saltburn, The House of Yes and Grey Gardens
The lives of the obscenely, generationally wealthy are a perennial favorite in the world of cinema, and it’s no mystery why. These are people who live in such a different fashion than the rest of us and move in social echelons that seem weird and stilted to the general public. All of this becomes easily lampoonable, even within their most enviable moments. So let’s take a look at three different versions of the rich and crazy over the eras to see what we pity, what we covet, and what would ultimately drive us nuts as well.
Saltburn (2023) is the modern film in this collection, and without giving too much away, it’s safe to say that the rich people are not even the craziest characters in this movie. What is crazy about them is their adherence to old fashioned ways and that sheltered quality one has when everything in their life has been taken care of for them. Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is a scholarship kid at Oxford where he obsesses about then befriends a rich upperclassman Felix (Jacob Elordi). Thinking Oliver to be a charity case, Felix invites him to his family’s palatial mansion Saltburn for the summer break. Oliver turns out to be the most savage type of social climber, someone who digs his fingers into any cracks in a wall to scale its heights. While Felix’s family spends the summer doing what they normally do (wasting time in the lap of luxury), Oliver drives wedges between people, whispers doubt into ears, and goes sick lengths to keep himself at Saltburn.
What’s fun about Saltburn on whole is that we get to see the rich people crazy at first – it’s silly and weird and as precious as one would expect. Rosamund Pike as the neurotic matriarch Lady Elspeth has some of the best moments, babbling about being unable to look at anything ugly and passive aggressively throwing her friend out of the house. Once Oliver’s machinations start to become clear, the audience starts to view Elspeth as a harmless eccentric. The spoiled children seem more sympathetic despite their gilded upbringing and the skeptical cousin played by Archie Madekwe who spends the bulk of the runtime sniping at Oliver comes across as a great judge of character. It’s a great breakdown of ambition versus the circumstances of one’s birth and even how people within the same background and family can have upbringings varied enough to have wildly different perspectives.
In Saltburn, the rich characters have enough connection to the real world to know how ridiculous and decadent their lives must look to the rest of us. Moving to The House of Yes , we get to see just how weird and twisted the world of the wealthy can get.
The House of Yes (1997) is the best Thanksgiving movie ever made. Trains, Planes, and Automobiles can shove it. Ok good, we’ve got that out of the way.
A classic ‘going home for the holiday’ film, The House of Yes centers on the Pascals, a rich southern family with a lot of darkness bubbling up through the surface. Oldest son Marty (Josh Hamilton) brings his fiancee Lesly (Tori Spelling) to meet everyone but his sister Jackie (Parker Posey) is less than thrilled with what’s happening. As it turns out, Marty and Jackie had an incestuous relationship as teenagers and would role play as Jackie-O and JFK, specifically his assassination. When Lesly starts to figure out the sick connection the siblings have, she convinces Marty to leave but Jackie convinces him to play the assassination scene one last time…
The tension of The House of Yes seems like low stakes at first. Everything and everyone in the Pascal mansion just seems off-kilter: the mother makes odd proclamations, the younger son sort of lurks in the corners, and Jackie’s crazy-eyed expressions could unsettle anyone. Once the layers start to peel back, their insular little world goes from uncomfortable to downright psychotic. All the family members seem to bow to Jackie’s commands even though she’s completely unhinged (and out of an institution at the start of the film) and when there’s any pushback, she goes to extremes to get what she wants. Or to at least keep other people from getting what they want. The younger brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr) might be the closest to sanity but his attachment issues and need for genuine human connection wind up getting the better of him. Poor Lesly is only trying to be a polite houseguest then is only trying to get her fiancee out of this inbred house of horrors. She can’t imagine how deeply this runs in him as well, and how he literally can’t walk away despite knowing this will all end badly.
Time to bring this to a close with some real life crazy although not so rich once they’re being filmed. Grey Gardens (1975), the documentary that I refer to as ‘an actually scary Hereditary,’ is known mainly for its star (yes, I’m using that word) Little Edie. Little Edie and her mother Big Edie are the lingering survivors of the Bouvier line rotting away in a dilapidated mansion in East Hampton on Long Island. Their pedigree has fallen apart around them so despite their grim reality, they maintain the affectations and attitudes of the upper crust. They discuss brighter and considerably richer days while Little Edie bemoans the quiet and calm of their seaside home, saying she’d rather be in the city with all the noise and people. Big Edie shouts at her from off-screen and cooks meals on a hot plate in bed.
Grey Gardens is an anxiety inducing portrait of codependency and self delusion, and while it’s hard not to feel bad for the duo, it’s also hard not to laugh at their behavior. At one point, they were embedded in circles where their lofty style of speech and strange anecdotes might have been commonplace but now they’re being hounded by the Department of Health and feeding raccoons that live in their attic. Little Edie got to spend the last years of her life doing a nightclub show in Miami where she was beloved by the gay community – and still is, let’s be honest. In a way she did get a happy ending, being free finally of her mother. Yet, watching Grey Gardens with or without that knowledge, it’s hard not to feel a vice in your chest at the idea of being so closely linked to a world that no longer wants you and a person who can’t seem to stand you but not being able to walk away.
It certainly must be nice to be rich. It must be nice to be raised in huge mansions and not have to worry about paying rent or finding fulfilling employment or any of the rest of the junk we plebs have to deal with. But as we can see from the only documentary in this piece, nothing is guaranteed forever. A Lady Elspeth might not be too far away from being a Little Edie, and once the money’s gone, the crazy gets worse.
