Movie Review: All the Money in the World

A Moral Fable

By Jonathan Price

For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Many souls are being lost in the pursuit of wealth in this film (2017, directed by Ridley Scott) Very few souls seem worth saving, perhaps that of Paulo Getty’s mother Gail (Michelle Williams), devoted to her son. risking the world and abandoning her divorce-gained custody of her other two children to get him back. Perhaps also worth saving is her aide and eventual co-conspirator, Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg).
    At the top of the pyramid of moral perfidy sits, guess who?, J. Paul Getty (in this version played by Christopher Plummer, but I foresee a resurrection at some point of the original version, where he was played by Kevin Spacey). Getty is the world’s richest man – ever – and its first billionaire. But others aid and abet him or are juxtaposed against him in moral fervor or fiber or tenor. Getty’s initial response to the kidnappers of his grandson Paulo, in a public statement to reporters, is what he will give as ransom: “Nothing.” One of the most interesting foils for Getty is the Italian “don” who eventually takes charge of Getty’s grandson (buys him, actually) in the kidnapping scheme after the first team of (inept) kidnappers fail, give up, and seek the easiest way out. This don, never identified by name, is – when we first see him, late in the film – advising employees in his fabrication sweatshop about how to better imitate high fashion goods – with more fashionable and better-sewn zippers. He is a minor businessman, admittedly corrupt, but thoughtful, in charge, and with a focus on making money. In other words, not so different from J. Paul Getty himself. The don quickly decides that the kidnapping negotiations have stalemated and he needs to move them forward. He chooses to hire the “doctor,” who will sever Paulo’s ear; and they will send it to the other side in the negotiations.
    We see Getty bargaining with Arab sheiks, in the 1930s or 40s, to give them a better deal than Standard Oil; we see him launching the world’s first supertanker to accomplish his dreams of oil supremacy. We also see him in large touring cars, chauffeured, or in his English mansion with its extensive rooms. Or he is hidden behind doors, inaccessible to Gail, his distraught (former) daughter-in-law as she pleads for aid in rescuing her kidnapped son Paulo, appropriately enough named after his grandfather. The rooms of Getty’s mansion are vast, and Getty seems comfortable, inaccessible, and alone. Many doors, gates, and servants prevent entry or access to the owner. In only a few scenes does he have human company other than hirelings – there is one intriguing scene on the grounds of his estate, where two attractive young women are firing shotguns at clay targets. Their relationship to Getty is unclear. His relations consist of estates, guns, furniture, lawyers, and expensive paintings.
    There is always something a little out of focus or off-kilter about Getty. He has a series of apothegms about life and money, but in the end, most are undercut by his dubious behaviors. He tells his former daughter-in-law that he has no cash whatsoever to offer for the ransom (diminished from the original $17 million, and at this point about $10 million); however, in a following scene we see Getty pay $1 million in cash for an allegedly noteworthy painting of dubious provenance that he is warned not to display publicly.

Others judged in the film are the original kidnappers, venal, amoral, but not particularly violent. The one guarding Paulo, Cinquanta (apparently his nickname, “50”), frequently lets his mask drop so that Paulo could identify him. Later, at the climax, when Paulo is freed, Cinquanta appears suddenly in an Italian village street and stuns one of Paulo’s pursuers with a deft blow. The “doctor” is efficient, knowledgeable, undoubtedly compensated (but not according to medical standards of insurance companies) and severs Paulo’s ear, which we witness in painful detail; the young man gets no anesthetic, and neither do we. Meanwhile, families of Italians associated with the kidnappers diligently do laundry, bustle about rooms, do the dishes, and don’t seem particularly bothered by the essential human transaction at the center. The don has about ten women in a room diligently counting the ransom without any particular emotion.
    Paulo’s father is perhaps the saddest case of all: as he ages in the film, he goes from assistant to his father to drug-addict to Moroccan deadbeat. He appears spectrally at the kidnap negotiations – though he is clearly still on drugs – apparently to assume custody of the other children in exchange for the ransom money.
    Fletcher Chase appears to occupy the shifting moral middle ground. He’s far more into the details of kidnapping and ransom than his employer, and he is skilled at what he does. He informs Gail he doesn’t carry a gun because it’s not helpful in these situations and only gets in the way. Yet on the Getty estate, next to the two female clay pigeon shooters, when he is handed a shotgun he casually lowers it and hits two targets simultaneously. He knows what he is doing. Yet he is too easily convinced that his employer is being scammed by a “joke” perhaps launched by the grandson and daughter-in-law and tells Getty to back off. Actually, only a casual remark and a rumor were enough to launch this withdrawal. As he discovers, essentially, his employer’s indifference and inhumanity, he switches sides and helps Gail negotiate and get the final money and is present at the exchange, which doesn’t go as expected. Paulo eventually survives his captors’ attempted recapture/murder of him and is returned to his mother. In a following scene, we see Getty apparently entirely alone in his mansion suffering a fatal stroke or heart attack. Despite his attempt to disinherit her, Getty had made her executor of the trust and the estate, so she takes over.
    Paulo himself is first seen as a longhaired teenager (he was 16 when he was kidnapped) ambling the late night Roman streets, apparently looking for drugs or prostitutes – but aimlessly and not very intently. The opening prostitutes are suggestive symbols of all the figures in the film for whom money is an evasion or sale of fundamental human commodities. When a passerby warns the young man to be careful, he assures that person that he is savvy and can take care of himself – apparently because he knows some Italian. Nevertheless, in the very next moments, he is hustled into the kidnap van thinking it’s a solicitation from a prostitute. He is also the recipient when he is young of an archeological artifact from his grandfather – attended with tales of its provenance and great value. When his mother remembers the gift, in the middle of negotiations, and searches frantically to find it in her apartment, Sotheby’s experts inform her it is worth but a few dollars. Not that all of this is entirely convincing; supposedly Gail is broke, and two months behind in rent, but she is always seen smartly dressed and lives in large, well-furnished apartments and can travel to England quite quickly. Presumably, the child support is very generous, but not much is made of this factor.

At the center of this film are wealth and its assumptions and consequences, hardly viewed favorably. The current President of the U.S. is reputedly a billionaire. The film claims Getty was the first billionaire, but despite the American focus on amassing wealth, there are very few artistic (as opposed to biographical) studies of those who actually accumulate it. In films, perhaps the iconic study is Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane, with its echoes of analysis of William Randolph Hearst. Like Getty, Kane dies alone, apparently longing for his childhood security (Rosebud) – a bit corny. The moral seems to be that wealth is isolating and destructive. Perhaps a more sympathetic portrait of a famous, but reclusive plutocrat of the same era is that of Howard Hughes in The Aviator: a tormented and near-psychotic figure who is also somehow capable of inventive engineering, daredevil flying, canny business decisions, and attracting admiring women. Yet there have been “good” billionaires in American life, to a greater and lesser degree, depending on one’s perspective: Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Carnegie (often unsung lately, but responsible initially for most of the public libraries in the U.S.). Even William Randolph Hearst – in real life, as opposed to his movie alter ego Kane – was a relatively happy man, though he had bad taste in making castles. In the film Getty lives in a castle in England and is trying to build one in Malibu. Getty was a notorious penny-pincher, to the point of comedy, incivility, and – as emphasized in this film – ultimately inhumanity. He installed a pay phone in his house so guests, visitors, and workmen could not freeload long distance calls. While trying to negotiate the ransom and deal with her family in Rome, Gail is forced to use it, but one of Getty’s servants loans her the many coins necessary. Getty doesn’t want to pay the 17-million-dollar ransom originally demanded; in fact, he is initially willing to pay nothing, arguing at the time that his refusal to pay protects his other 14 grandchildren from kidnapping and, actually (though not in the film), that his stance is a principled response to terrorism, violence, and the overall breakdown of order, though it is clearly just cheapness. As the negotiations advance, the ransom is lowered to $10, then $7, then $5 million. Getty eventually gives in, limiting his contribution to what his attorneys assert would be tax deductible; on top, he gives part of it as a loan to his son, so he can deduct interest.
    Though the film shows the billionaire dying just after his grandson is rescued, Getty actually waited a full four years to die. Like any art form, the film takes liberties with fact – with history – to heighten the dramatic tension. Though it portrays Paulo’s father as completely drug-addicted and worthless, he was the first in the family to ask his father for the ransom. At the end, we have the sense that Paulo is rescued, and that his mother, poetically justified, takes guardianship of the estate. But Paulo never really emerged from the trauma of the kidnapping, returned to drug addiction, became paralyzed through a drug/alcohol overdone, and died at 54.
    The epilogue shows us a version of the Malibu estate, where Getty’s wealth apparently went after his death – it was turned into a premiere art gallery. But some of its holdings are redolent of the deal Getty makes in the film, for a painting of dubious vintage and supposedly bought on the cheap.

Copyright © 2018by Jonathan Price