Generation Wealth doesn't go about trying to garner sympathy for the children of the rich and famous; instead, it opens up into a larger conversation about, as Greenfield intones, "our collective greed, and its price."

This personal approach gives the film a sharp intimacy, and from here Greenfield pulls out to reveal how similar patterns are reshaping lives and families the world over.

Through her dedication to other people's lives, and with such open-book storytelling of her own, Greenfield is able to make a stunningly deeply resonant documentary about notions as seemingly obvious as the value of love over wealth itself.

Lauren Greenfield's stinging indictment of greed and excess also packs an unexpected emotional wallop.

An ambitious essay documentary that is often brilliant but is let down by a parallel focus on Greenfield's own family and career which becomes too sentimental and stretches the film out beyond its natural length.

Greenfield makes a compelling argument for a society on the brink of precipitous decline, choosing to interpret the runaway vanity and rampant materialism observed in her own work as harbingers of our imminent destruction.