What an interesting movie, that was first reaction when I finished watching “The Queen of Versailles”. It was a reaction that for me had no definite meaning, while I felt some disgust at this obscenely rich family “The Seigels” I realized that they were lost in their own world excess and consumption. I watched it a second time and found myself  moved towards the second half of the movie when the 2008 financial crisis hit the country and directly effected David Seigels company. I found the irony in David’s company selling  people time share, or dreams of owning for a period of time the lifestyle of a rich person. His empire was based on selling dreams, a dream he himself bought by borrowing cheap money to expand and maintain the cost of his enterprise. What moved be was how his wife Jacqueline dealt with the gradual loss of her lavish lifestyle.

The movie explains how she began as an software engineer working for IBM then moving on to  become involved in the pageant industry which would introduced her to her future husband David. Jackie is the star of the show; she manages simultaneously to pull off being a contorted emblem of the American dream, a spoiled beauty queen, and tragically compassionate. “I grew up in a one-bathroom, three-bedroom house, and I can remember I would have to wait in line to use the bathroom,” She meets David while participating in a pageant and after some courting got married. It seemed like the American dream, she married into money and her life changed. The movie goes to show how it all became easy for her, she became a big time spender, living her life in the “what is bigger is better” ideology. She had a large family, as Jacqueline herself would say “if it was not for the nannies I would not have been able to raise my kids”

But the man with the biggest slice of humble pie on his plate is David Siegel himself. Having his company Westgate expanding operations by building a large Tower in Las Vegas before the 2007 financial crisis seemed like a dream about to become reality. David would consolidate that dream by building building the largest single-family home in the country. The Seigels call it Versailles, after the 17-century French royal palace of the same name.  David refuses to turn the keys to his Las Vegas tower over to the bank, though it would mean his company Westgate could resume selling timeshares and that Versailles’ construction could restart. In a twist of unrecognized irony, David dedicates the Vegas tower to his deceased parents, whom his grown son Richard Siegel notes “were never wealthy [because] they lost their money in Las Vegas.”  The company then borrows from the bank against that mortgage at a much reduced rate from what they demand from their customers. It’s a profitable model when lenders are willing to dole out the loans; not so much when credit markets are tight or frozen. At one point David derides the bankers for making poor decisions, maybe not understanding that his own success was borne on the backs of securitized loans from subprime customers based on the false assumption of an ever-growing future. Soon the customers started to mirror the rest of the country going through the financial crisis by ceasing payments on their time-share loans Westgate’s situation became especially dire. That monthly cash flow was payroll for thousands of employees. For David there were no savings, per se, for the company, as unused capital was unproductive capital. Everything was tied up in the byzantine structure of multiple credit lines and properties in areas hit hardest during the recession.

Rather quickly the company’s staff is drastically reduced and David becomes effectively yolked to the whims of lenders that had made the whole operation possible. The Seigels begin the gradual demise from their abundant consumer lifestyle to a less privileged existence. While I felt bad for Jacqueline and her continual denial of reality I kept reminding myslef that this woman chose this lifestyle. She chose to be a trophy wife and marry and older wealthier David to reap the benefits, even her daughter admits this when she says “just because she is a trophy wife she does not deserve to be treated this way”. In a way she chose to give up some her dignity for the benefits of constant consumption. Her addiction of busying stuff  best be shown when we see the amount of bikes and other stuff she constantly buys. She might realize it but the maids just put the new bikes next to dozen or so old bikes that have not been used. Another Perspective is also wrought large by nanny Virginia Nebab, who gives viewers a tour of a playhouse, long abandoned by the Siegel children. Nebab uses the tiny structure as a refuge. David, for his part, is introspective; if he had to do it all over again he’d have fewer resorts, etc, but “No one is without guilt. I’m the same way” for getting used to cheap money. For all his introspection it was hard for me to sympathize with David. It seemed hard for him to not be in control. he was a consumer just like the rest of the family. He bought his wife, he wanted to build the biggest mansion, it was all about acquiring stuff. He seemed to have a hard time truly making a human connection, I could see this with his older son who worked for him. David game him an opportunity and means but they did not share a father son relation, it just seemed like a employer and employee affiliation. David’s relationship with his wife is properly portrayed towards the end of the movie when when a disappointing David says ” I feel like I am taking care of another child” .  He seems  bitter for the way things have worked out, at one point telling an interviewer that his marriage doesn’t make him happy. Jacqueline does seem childish in her obliviousness when the money started to dwindle. She confesses ignorance to the house being in foreclosure. She’s somewhat frustrated that her husband borrowed against the value of the land and house.  It is still difficult to reconcile my emotions on the subject matter of the film. The simple impression that, despite their great wealth, the Siegels are still human like the rest of us, with human faults, making mistakes and paying (slightly different) prices.  There is simply too much difference in wealth, or to be more precise in the adversity these people go through to make me relate to them in a human sense.  To me the differences matter more than the similarities and while the Seigels seem to be stuck in a loop of vicious consumerism their problems seem to material and unemotional for me to relate to them. I seemed to me that people like the Siegels really do play by different rules, the social chasm that income disparity had created became an unavoidable social norm and in “The Queen of Versailles” the cultural in-sensitivities of the ultra-rich are on full display. This can be seen when a cost-cutting Jacqueline earnestly asks the Hertz car rental guy, “What’s my driver’s name?”