How the rich tick until their ethics

A new Amazon Prime Video series takes aim at Big Pharma with aplomb. In Dead Ringers, Jennifer Ehle plays Rebecca Parker, whose family is a not-so-inconspicuous ctional take on the Sacklers. In this world, the Parkers are the ones responsible for the ease of access in the US to opioids, and Rebecca seems to take joy in watching countless people su er under her family’s narcotic reign.

en, the Mantle twins, Elliott and Beverly (both played by Rachel Weisz), enter her orbit, looking for a world-changing investment for their visionary gynaecological birthing centre. Rebecca digs her nails into them, gaily watching them grovel for the kind of sizable investment only a soulless billionaire could provide.

Both twins are somewhat put o by Rebecca, but only Beverly is virtuous enough to stand up to her. After a cruel game goes wrong while the twins are holidaying at Rebecca’s upstate grounds in the second episode, Beverly confronts Rebecca and her group of equally callous cronies. “F**k you all — you are awful people,” Beverly says, straight to their faces. “Categorically, the worst people. e humanity has literally been f****d out of you over the generations. You’ve retained a face... and ngers, but you do not retain humankind in any sense of the word.”

It’s a dream moment for anyone who has ever wanted to say something similar to a deplorable tyrant. (So, all of us). But it’s one that seems to make Rebecca respect Beverly, at least a bit. Rebecca offers to invest in the Mantles’ birthing centre, and Beverly reluctantly accepts, hoping that she can wash the blood o Rebecca’s money without wilting the paper.

Of course, that’s not so simple. Tying yourself to a billionaire never is; it demands sacri ce and moral compromise, no matter how stalwart of a person you are. Bev- erly sees this rsthand when the sisters open their birthing centre, where she is almost immediately the recipient of a bucket of animal blood to her white doctor’s coat. is mimics Goldin’s real-life activist e orts to hold the Sacklers accountable, held in public galleries where Goldin’s art was displayed.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s the same group and they do the same f*****g thing wherever they happen to see my name,” Rebecca tells Beverly, locked away in a conference room. “I want to say it’s boring, but at the same time, I guess I admire their commitment.” en, Rebecca launches into a chilling monologue, one that serves as a rebuking of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, from the perspective of the a uent on the other side.

Beverly refuses to accept this, telling Rebecca that there’s nothing fantastic about seeing someone’s principles body-slammed out of them by security, while Beverly is trying to provide care to women at the most precious and sensitive time of their lives.

“You understand that she can afford her idealism?” Rebecca asks Beverly, referring to the activist that the building’s security tackled to the ground. “She lives with her mom and dad in a nice apartment in the city, and she took a class in school on capitalism, and one on socialism, and one on philanthropy. She has friends. She can a ord food. But sometimes she makes a choice that maybe she shouldn’t, in order to have something nice in her life: watermelon out of season, or an Uber if it’s late, and she feels unsafe...despite the fact that she fundamentally disagrees with the company’s politics.”

Ehle’s matter-of-fact, stony delivery is so hypnotic that we viewers nd ourselves mesmerised by her words. We momentarily forget that Rebecca is the human manifesta- tion of pure, unfettered wickedness.

Suddenly, it almost seems as if she’s making good points. Who among us hasn’t brie y compromised their own personal morals, taken an Uber despite the company’s proclivity for giving personal data to law enforcement, or eaten a delicious chicken sandwich from a fast-food outlet despite the chain’s anti-queer politics? e show’s writers know that we’re starting to analyse our own behaviour in our heads, taking this one step further with Rebecca’s sermon.

“We all do that,” she continues. “We all do cost-bene t all the f*****g time, and we don’t dissect every movie, because it’s exhausting, and punishing, and false. e fact that they come and do this— throw shit, and call me a murderer, and pretend they live in a di erent world, with di erent structures— means that they can occasionally make those bad choices and not dwell on them. And that’s ne. I don’t mind them. It’s the system, and I’m happy to play my part so the world continues to turn on its axis.”

Rebecca closes with one nal question, leaving Beverly speechless. “When are you going to shut the f**k up and do your job, Beverly? Because, frankly, I’m f*****g bored.”

Dead Ringers would like us to be so spellbound by Rebecca’s lecture that we don’t come out of our stupor until a few minutes later. It’s only when we nally claw ourselves free from Rebecca’s degenerate black hole — and admire how fantastic Ehle is in this scene — that we recognise that she’s completely wrong.

Rebecca is a soul-sucking antichrist put on Earth to happily fund the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Dead Ringers trusts us to remember this, while being audacious enough to dare us to sympathise with her.

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3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

During this bountiful blockbuster, Daisy recalls her friendship with Benjamin Button, who su ered from an unusual ageing condition that caused him to age backwards while resting in a hospital bed following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Directed by David Fincher, e Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) is a unique take on a romance drama. Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, and many others.

4. Dawn Of The Dead

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5. The Mother

Jennifer Lopez’s newest movie (2023) is an action-packed release guaranteed to make everybody happy with their weekend watching. e Mother is directed by Niki Caro. While eeing from threatening adversaries, an assassin, she emerges from concealment to protect her daughter, whom she abandoned earlier in life.

On Net ix May 12.