“The Bling Ring Film – Sofia Coppola”;
It all starts off with two teenagers, Rebecca (Katie Chang) and Marc (Israel Broussard) meeting in the hallway at their high school in Calabasas and soon becoming friends. They got interested in minor theft, which led to burglaries and stealing cars. The first burglary was of someone who Marc knew, they took some items from the person’s house and stole the person’s car. Celebrities’ homes in Los Angles soon became the targets for burglarizing without the celebrities being aware that they were being robbed. After just the two of them robbing celebrities’ homes, they expanded the gang by including Nikki (Emma Watson), Sam (Taissa Farmiga) and Chloe (Claire Julian). Rebecca and Marc were the leaders in the group constructing who would be their next target, in the simplest way. Then, they all would go to the celebrities’ home, break-in and steal the celebrities’ possessions such as designer clothes, shoes, watches, etc. Lastly, ending the night by going to the club or party to celebrate. This is a film that’s based on the Vanity Fair article "The Suspects Wore Louboutins" by Nancy Jo Sales. The Oscar award-winning writer, producer and director Sofia Coppola’s 2013 The Bling Ring film, contained both strengths and weaknesses in the creation of the film. It can actually go both ways on whether it was enjoyable or not depending on the type of audience. I recommend the audience be those that can relate to having to deal with results of peer pressure or those concerned with American culture.
As the director, producer, and screenwriter of the 2013 film, The Bling Ring Film, Sofia Coppola’s intentions of this film were to showcase a group of teenagers and how they have this fascination with reality television stars and Hollywood actors/actresses such as Paris Hilton. Coppola tried to recreate actual events and dialogue that really occurred in the real life Bling Ring event. Her main focus when producing this film was capturing the culture of young teenagers and what it means to be young. Also, focusing on the separation that the characters have from the world.
During the course of the film, there were a lot of scenes that had some dry moments because there was a lack of suspense that a typical crime and drama film should have for the satisfaction of the audience. Personally, the film should’ve shown more suspense than what was displayed. For instance, there was a scene where the police came to check the premises of one of the celebrities’ homes that Rebecca and Marc were currently robbing, while trying to leave they came across the police parked on the street in front of the celebrities’ house so they hid out behind the bushes in the front lawn until the police left. This scene could’ve been better to generate more of a suspenseful scene like having the police search the whole premises which would’ve had Rebecca and Marc trapped there making it harder to escape. Another scene that had a lack of suspense was when Sam was waving around the gun she found in one of the celebrities’ home and pointing it in Marc’s face. I thought that she was going to actually shoot him or something in the midst of playing around with the gun. Lastly, the scene where it could’ve been more suspenseful was when one of the girls from the group, Sam, climbed through the window of her boyfriend’s house dancing around showing him the gun that she had stolen from one of the celebrities’ home. As she climbed over him holding the gun while he was laying in bed the boyfriend pulled Sam down on the bed and a shot was fired. In hopes that either one of them accidentally got shot just to create more of a suspense scene, instead they started making out like nothing happened.
Likewise, there was a lot of repetition throughout the entire film than it should’ve been because that made the film so predictable as to what would happen next. For example, every time the group of teens thought about wanting to rob a celebrity they would first look up on the internet to see when the celebrity isn’t going to be home, google the location of the celebrities’ residency, then go to their house and rob them of their possessions, afterwards they would go to a party or club. FINMAN66 from the Fandango website agreed with his review of the film by stating "Good performances from the young actors, and a great from-real-events premise, but it got somewhat repetitive in the middle, with too many too-familiar scenes of characters out-of-control when given too much access too quickly to drugs and money". All the repetition in the film has been just a waste of time because Coppola could’ve switched it up to where the screens weren’t so similar.
Despite the fact that there were some issues with the suspense and repetition, the morality of the film was clear and concise. This film teaches the lesson of peer pressure and how it can effect a person’s life. The effects of peer pressure played a tremendous role throughout the movie making this film worth watching regardless of the weaknesses in the movie. The dialogue from The Bling Ring, Marc said, "I loved her, I really did. She was the first person I felt like was my best friend … I loved her almost as a sister, that’s what made this situation so hard." This was the scene where he started to feel guilty about burglarizing the celebrities’ homes and he knew that it was wrong, but he didn’t tell Rebecca because he didn’t want to jeopardize the relationship that he made with her. There were other instances where he felt some concerns about what they were doing, but Rebecca ended convincing him that everything will be alright and he just went along with it. Based on the end of the film, it goes to show that peer pressure can only jeopardize your friendship but your freedom as well.
Moreover, the correlation with youth today and how American culture is perceived when dealing with youth reminds society of how naïve youth is and a lot of the mistakes that are made by people are when they are young. There are some young people in society that have this obsession with becoming rich and famous, so they would do whatever it takes for them to get that point in their life. Usually, young people who have rich parents who are also famous would prefer to have more money and the parents of young people that doesn’t have great wealth would do whatever it takes to become wealthy at any cost. I think part of the reason why the group of teens in this film went on a robbing spree partly had to do with the lack of attention and parenting that the parents give to the troubled teens. Stephen Davis from the College Movie Review website agrees, saying "I was most disappointed with the parenting (or lack thereof) that is depicted in the film. The lack of supervision is likely downplayed for the benefit of the story; however, when the eventual happens you can't help but feel that the parents to these adolescents deserved it (if not more than the kids themselves)." There were instances shown in the film where the parents seemed like they didn’t think twice of what their children were up to. For instance, the scene where Sam and Nikki was having dinner at the table with the rest of Nikki’s family and the mom, Laurie (Leslie Mann), asks about Nikki’s audition. They hesitantly lied to the mother telling her that the audition was okay, that it was for axe body spray, and a lot of other lies that they came up with. Everything that Sam and Nikki said out of their mouths at the dinner table the mom went along with. Since the parents in the film lack of parenting has caused the teens to act out in a way that was unlawful. Maybe if the parents were stricter than the teens would’ve have done a ridiculous stunt like burglarizing homes.
In addition, it’s been a great concern with youth today in American culture because the young people have this perception to have a good life that they need to have expensive luxuries and an exceptional amount of money. As young people have this perception about what it means to have a good life, society has put them into a group as a typical teen wanting the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Also, people often associate fame and wealth with notoriety or popularity. For instance, if a person is famous they get into certain places, meet a lot of people, and other celebrity treatments, such as eating and traveling well with the amount of money they have. Thejoshl from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) website mentions "Sofia Coppola gets it; she gets this social media generation. How do I know? I'm part of it. I know girls like this; the types that don't believe something exists unless it's been posted on their Facebook, Twitter or Instagram." Throughout the entire film Coppola wanted to show how youth today are so obsessed with the internet that they are withdrawn from the world. For instance, at every celebrities’ house that they robbed, they always took pictures wearing the celebrities’ possessions and posted them on Facebook. Even when they went out to the club they took pictures of themselves than making conversation with one another. It is sad how American culture downgraded from what it used to be before technology took over isolating us from the world.
Granting that The Bling Ring is a crime, drama, and biographical film filled a lot of unfulfilled expectations, the message the director was trying to convey with the effects of peer pressure and how American culture is perceived. This film helps the audience relate to the situations going on in the film, but not making it inexcusable. The reality of it is that there will be times where peers will try to convince their friends into doing things they don’t feel comfortable doing, but it’s up to that person to make the decision as to whether it’s something they really want to do. Also, that we sometimes need to engage in the world rather than having our eyes glued to our phones and internet.