But by the time the plot is done, the rich leave better off than they started—even Shane , whose marriage is now, presumably, for keeps and maybe won’t besuch a dick at his next hotel. The middle class characters are guilty and complicit, and the employees are: dead, disappointed, jailed.’ accomplishment is to feel enough like life that it appears as though the characters are making their own choices, as if structural forces aren’t all that there is, as if they are free.
is sympathetic to many of these characters, with all their flaws, because what they want is worth wantingTanya wants to figure herself out, to be less insecure, less broken, less alone; Quinn wants to get out from under his internet, his porn, his family, he just doesn’t know it till his iPhone drowns; Mark wants his wife and children to like him, for his family to mean something.