The introduction of a lion in the first act raises the Chekovian edict that someone will be eaten before curtain down.
Called Clarence, this rather lethargic Leo is one of the many telegraphed tropes in Michael Winterbottom’s sermonising satire of the fast fashion industry, GREED.
It’s all about having the lion’s share but having no pride. The cost of everything but the value of nothing.
As depicted in GREED, excess and noxious ostentatious behaviour is the tip of the iceberg, as what is submerged in errant capitalism is tantamount to slavery.
The modern equivalent of the unscrupulous plantation owner of yore is personified in Richard McCreadie, a dazzlingly dentured dickhead known to the many that loathe him as ‘McGreedy’. A pillaging pirate, a corporate raider, a course corsair.
Steve Coogan caricatures McGreedy as the dictionary definition of an upward failure, having driven business after business into the ground at a sideways profit to himself. A profiteer with profligate predisposition and predilection to creative bookkeeping and soulless exploitation of Sri Lankan factory workers.
Never a bright young thing, he is most definitely a blight old thing, a bore, a bully and narcissist, fit only for vilification or perhaps high office in capitalist governments.
GREED is set against the blue azure of the Aegean, on a Greek island commandeered by McGreedy to celebrate the shithead’s sixtieth birthday. The party is an excessive exercise in excess and conspicuous consumption.
Compassion and empathy have no purchase in McGreedy’s lexicon, if not blatantly obvious from the onset, then cemented when he conscripts a group of beach dwelling refugees essentially into slavery to cater for his narcissistic whims.
Acting kudos to lofty scene stealing status must go to Isla Fisher playing McCreadie’s ex-wife and mother to their pale Oedipal son, played by Asa Butterfield. Shirley Henderson is also a delight as Dick’s dour and despicable mother.
Buy GREED via Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on (digital) and (DVD)
