Viewing List Response 1: The Queen of Versailles

The Queen ofVersailles was an intriguing film. Director Lauren Greenfield’s approach to the film was effective. It didn’t feel like she was manipulating or exploiting her subjects, rather it felt like she was spending enough time with them to the point where they just ended up revealing them for who they actually were. David Siegel—one of the film’s protagonists—clearly felt otherwise, because he sued Lauren Greenfield for defamatory content (the courts ultimately ruled in her favor). I felt like most of the people in the film had a voice: the Siegels, their children, their nannies, their childhood friends.

One of the most effective scenes of the film in my opinion was a scene that took place after the financial recession hit. At this time, Jaclyn Siegel (David’s wife) was going through the house getting rid of things. She finds a lizard cage and interrogates her adopted daughter as to whether or not she has fed her pet. The piece of wood hiding the animal is pulled aside and as Jaclyn pokes it the blackened, shriveled chuckawalla flops limply. She exclaims, telling her son “Look, the lizard is dead!” to which her bewildered queries “We have a lizard?!?”

Footage used in the film included not only footage shot by Greenfield’s team but archival footage from news sources, old news clippings, and especially old photographs of Jaclyn and David from their newlywed glamour days.

Despite their exorbitant spending and occasional egregious obliviousness to their financial realities, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the Siegels. Like many other people, they were caught in a trap biting off more financially than they could chew, only their bite was $100 million more than most, their meal the memory of Versailles.