In the 21st century, we often like to believe we're creatures of intellect who have occasional emotions. However some scholars have put this notion on its head: we are really creatures of emotion who use our intellect occasionally but not consistently. Anna Sorokin, Russian providential, posed as Anna Delvey, German heiress. People liked her and wanted to befriend her but not because of what she actually had accomplished. The reason the doors opened to her was because she convinced people she was of impeccable European pedigree.
There's an interesting moment in "Inventing Anna". Anna is trying to convince a philanthropist/investor to help her realize a dream of an exclusive club for artists. In their first meeting, the philanthropist says he doesn't invest in ideas, only people. In other words, only the people really count, not the ideas. No matter how good the idea, if you're not "in", don't waste my time.
Later, Anna meets him a second time. He confesses he's heard people of the upper crust mention her. All of a sudden his opinion about and demeanor towards her changes, and he appears to be open to helping her financially. What changed? She knew the right people. That was it!
A tremendous expose of the world of elites among artists and monied people. Many lack talent but they have the power to act as gate-keepers, and sometimes they slip up and let someone "in" who shouldn't be there. Julia Garner offers a tour-de-force performance as the woman with a thousand faces. She adopts an elite German accent to hide that she is in fact a Russian with no family pedigree to speak of, but she fools many around her, hook, line, and sinker. She also proves the Devil wears Prada.
A couple of decades previous to Anna's story, a German provincial name of Christian Gerhartsreiter was posing as Clark Rockefeller, a supposed distant cousin in the Rockefeller clan. He wore monogrammed jackets and spoke with a transatlantic accent, and was able to fake his way into the elites of New York. And the best part (or the worst): he convinced an attractive businesswoman who was making $1 million a year to marry him!
Anna Sorokin must have adopted aspects of Gerhartsreiter's play book. What Anna and Clark had in common: they both claimed they had access to millions of dollars because of their connections, Clark as a supposed Rockefeller, and Anna supposedly having a super-rich dad we never see or hear from. And they never spent a dime. Other people fooled by the their antics often spent thousands on them not realizing that both characters at their core were essentially impoverished and would be homeless and destitute if not for the welfare they were being provided under false premises.
And yet even after the elaborate con of Clark Rockefeller was revealed, the upper-crust didn't learn the lesson. (Some people claimed they "knew it all along" but of course never told anyone!) They still want to believe that what you see is what you get. If someone "acts" in the right way, dresses the right way, speaks the right way, then they must be "one of us", a completely elitist way of navigating the world. It exposes a world so caught up in image that they don't see the snake pit for the flowers.
There's an interesting moment in "Inventing Anna". Anna is trying to convince a philanthropist/investor to help her realize a dream of an exclusive club for artists. In their first meeting, the philanthropist says he doesn't invest in ideas, only people. In other words, only the people really count, not the ideas. No matter how good the idea, if you're not "in", don't waste my time.
Later, Anna meets him a second time. He confesses he's heard people of the upper crust mention her. All of a sudden his opinion about and demeanor towards her changes, and he appears to be open to helping her financially. What changed? She knew the right people. That was it!
A tremendous expose of the world of elites among artists and monied people. Many lack talent but they have the power to act as gate-keepers, and sometimes they slip up and let someone "in" who shouldn't be there. Julia Garner offers a tour-de-force performance as the woman with a thousand faces. She adopts an elite German accent to hide that she is in fact a Russian with no family pedigree to speak of, but she fools many around her, hook, line, and sinker. She also proves the Devil wears Prada.
A couple of decades previous to Anna's story, a German provincial name of Christian Gerhartsreiter was posing as Clark Rockefeller, a supposed distant cousin in the Rockefeller clan. He wore monogrammed jackets and spoke with a transatlantic accent, and was able to fake his way into the elites of New York. And the best part (or the worst): he convinced an attractive businesswoman who was making $1 million a year to marry him!
Anna Sorokin must have adopted aspects of Gerhartsreiter's play book. What Anna and Clark had in common: they both claimed they had access to millions of dollars because of their connections, Clark as a supposed Rockefeller, and Anna supposedly having a super-rich dad we never see or hear from. And they never spent a dime. Other people fooled by the their antics often spent thousands on them not realizing that both characters at their core were essentially impoverished and would be homeless and destitute if not for the welfare they were being provided under false premises.
And yet even after the elaborate con of Clark Rockefeller was revealed, the upper-crust didn't learn the lesson. (Some people claimed they "knew it all along" but of course never told anyone!) They still want to believe that what you see is what you get. If someone "acts" in the right way, dresses the right way, speaks the right way, then they must be "one of us", a completely elitist way of navigating the world. It exposes a world so caught up in image that they don't see the snake pit for the flowers.