Review of The Bling Ring (2013) by Clarisesamuels — 05 Oct 2013

Director Sofia Coppola had the right idea when she decided to make a film about the undue influence that Hollywood has on adolescents. Based on a true story, a group of fairly well-off but troubled teenagers yearn for the designer clothes that are being shown off on the red carpets by their celebrity idols, who are too often undereducated and overprivileged, and who have risen to fame on a small amount of talent and even less intelligence. The group decides that the best way to fulfill their insane need for consumerism is to simply find out where some of the coolest, and stupidest, celebrities live and then just walk in and take what they want from closets that are like treasure chests filled with clothes, jewelry, purses, and shoes, not to mention narcotics and loose cash. Although this plan sounds naive and implausible, it turns out that many celebrities have so many sliding doors in their homes, they could not possibly be asked to keep them all locked. Paris Hilton wins the prize for accessibility--she keeps a set a keys under her font doormat.

However fascinating it is to see how the lives of a small group of teenagers are affected by these bad influences, Coppola ends up filming repetitive sequences of one break-in after another that leads these reckless teens nowhere. Within an hour of the film’s denouement, the viewer starts to get annoyed that both sides of this criminal activity are filled with individuals who are over the top, and the film unfortunately starts to get boring. Between the outrageously shallow values of the silly, misguided teenagers and those of the silly, misguided celebrities, it’s hard to tell the difference between the criminals and the victims of the crime. They all need help, and the viewer does not know which side to feel sorry for. (This is not really Coppola’s fault; the film is an honest assessment, but it still makes the film hard to watch--indeed, the corruption of youth plays like a horror film.) A case in point is that at the end, one of the teenaged criminals ends up serving time with Lindsay Lohan, who was one of the gang’s victims, a scenario that apparently played itself out in real life.

Beyond the naive logic and foolishness of the child criminals, we have to examine what is at stake at the heart of this issue. The treasure in this film, the prize that is sought and won, is every designer dress, bauble, lipstick, purse, and pair of shoes that every teenaged girl has ever dreamed of. And what Coppola hits home to us very nicely is not just how superficial the Holy Grail of fashion has become, but how undeniably dreadful it all looks. The designer dresses are ostentatious; the designer shoes are just plain ugly and might qualify as lethal weapons; the baubles are gaudy and unseemly. These wardrobes could not possibly be worn by the celebrities we admire; if so, our heroes are all vulgarians.

So what has gone awry here? Too many people amassing too much money, more money than any individual knows what to do with, despite the excuse of “they work hard.” It is a problem that leads the rich and the irresponsible to set a bad example for youth and just about everyone else. When you have too much money, you just want to shop, shop, and shop, and apparently party, drink, and do drugs. Consumerism is a form of mental illness. The solution is clear. The rich have to be taxed, and the taxes have to be poured into subsidized health care, subsidized university education, and subsidized nursing homes.

This film makes the solution to the problem so sickeningly clear that even the head of the Tea Party will convert to socialism after watching it.