This documentary directed by Lauren Greenfield does a pretty remarkable thing. It induces feelings of outright schadenfreude and compassionate sadness nearly simultaneously. In depicting the story of David Siegel and his family, who own the mammoth Westgate Resorts, there’s a temptation to find only delight in their fall from upper class nobility to coupon cutters, but his wife Jackie and their children end up being sympathetic in a way, perhaps with a heavy emphasis on the pathetic.
All the elements of The Queen of Versailles are kind of expertly handled without making you realize what it’s doing. It’s holding up this family as a kind of symbol or stand-in for the country as a whole, perhaps, showing the longer-term effects of America’s epidemic emphasis on the financial short term. At times it plays like one of those TLC shows detailing the glamorous lives of the rich and famous but then pulls the rug out from beneath the starring cast. If you find it impossible to feel sympathy for this family, at the very least you’ll feel for their poor pets. They did nothing to deserve their fate except belong to a family that couldn’t handle crisis. In fact, that aspect could also have a kind of sad symbolic meaning.
This list is just the tip of the iceberg. What were your favorite documentaries from 2012? If you have more recommendations or objections to anything listed here, please share your thoughts in the comment section below. There’s bound to be some omissions in a year this rich on a list this short.
