‘Dead Ringers’ Dares Us to Pity the Rich in One Chilling Monologue
When I finally got around to watching the stunning 2022 documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (which, by the way, is now streaming on HBO Max), I spent a good week bruising my own ass, kicking myself from behind for not making time for it sooner. That film—which details photographer Nan Goldin’s successful activist crusade against the Sackler family, who are largely responsible for the opioid crisis—is an unforgettable piece of cinema. It will leave you on the floor, in the best (and worst) possible ways, both drained of emotion and charged up for a fight.
If you watch the film, you’ll likely also walk away thinking that there is no possible way that anyone could ever again sympathize with the uber-rich and morally bankrupt. Until, that is, you watch Jennifer Ehle stomp her way into Prime Video’s Dead Ringers limited series, with a hint of giddy cruelty in her eye, to convince us otherwise. But that’s exactly what good acting, and smart writing, can do: compromise us, if only briefly, under its power.
In Dead Ringers, Ehle plays Rebecca Parker, whose family is a not-so-inconspicuous fictional take on the Sacklers. In this world, the Parkers are the ones responsible for the ease of access to opioids, and Rebecca seems to take joy in watching countless people suffer under her family’s narcotic reign. Then, the Mantle twins, Elliott and Beverly (both played by Rachel Weisz), enter her orbit, looking for a world-changing investment for their visionary gynecological birthing center. Rebecca digs her nails into them, gaily watching them grovel for the kind of sizable investment only a soulless billionaire could provide.