The Siegel family is somewhat complicated. Jackie Siegel, the mother, and David Siegel, the father, have a 30 year age difference. They have eight children and live in a mansion in Florida. They were building the biggest house in America...on accident. Throughout the documentary, they interview Jackie, David, the children, Richard Siegel, the nannies/maids, and other people. However, I mainly focused on Jackie because even though she isn't portrayed as intelligent, I think she is the most realistic one during their financial crisis.
If the film was different, of course everyone would act different. Jackie wouldn't have acted the way she did if the housing market crash did not occur in 2008. If this crisis did not occur the film would be different. The family wouldn't have acted the way they did, and people wouldn't have talked about the issues and problems that were being dealt with throughout the documentary. David wouldn't have had to lay people off and he wouldn't be as stressed as he was in the interviewing. Towards the end of the film, David was getting on my nerve; being disrespectful and rude to his family. He didn't tell Jackie about the finances when going through the crisis and he never mentioned anything about the Versailles mansion. Specifically in the film, there is a scene where David states he is a "victim of [his] own success or failures." Basically, David works for a living and he can't separate his business life from his personal life. To me, this scene is very upsetting and it shows because he is never involved in the family during this time period. He is always in his study and during one scene, didn't say "I love you" to his one son. He was being, I think, very disrespectful to Jackie and his selfishness of the company showed. He was hard-headed about his resort companies and kept his family in a financial situation. At one point towards the end Jackie states, "I'm not a stupid person, but when I don't have the information, I look like a stupid person." I love that she said this because it comes to show you how isolated her husband was when dealing with the housing market crash and not allowing any outside opinions to contribute to solving the crisis.
I agree with you a 100% on how disrespectful David was being towards his family. To me just because you are stuck in a horrible situation like this you should not bring it out your kids. They are just trying to be supportive and making him feel a little better but he does not show any respect back. So with this said, I could not explain it any better than you did. :)
ReplyDeleteI disagree a little about Jackie. I feel like although she was a little uninformed about the severity of her financial troubles, she did know that to some extent they were having problems. But she continued to go shopping, and get botox and laser treatments. That isn't necessary and a huge waste of money. She mentioned that her husband threatened to shut off her credit card, or worse that he wouldn't be able to afford to pay the bill. So she knew that money was getting tight, but still spent crazy amounts of money.
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