Getty kidnapping drama — it’s worth gawking at
So far this year, we’ve had a docuseries on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, a new docuseries on “The Kennedys,” a limited series on the assassination of Gianni Versace and on Sunday, March 25, the premiere of “Trust,” a dramtic series whose first season dramatizes the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III.
Television can’t get enough of shows about real-life rich families. We watch because it’s reassuring to know that money can’t buy happiness, but also because, as Tolstoy put it, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its
Harris Dickinson (left) is the mysteriously kidnapped J. Paul Getty III; Donald Sutherland is his eccentric grandfather, tycoon J. Paul Getty, in “Trust” — an FX series about which the Getty family is not at all pleased.
own way.” The Getty kidnapping was already mined for the feature film “All the Money in the World.”
Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”) has created a series that says it is “inspired” by events in the lives of the family of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty. That gives the show a bit of leeway as it details the 1973 kidnapping of Getty’s grandson J. Paul III, but perhaps not enough: The sister of the late J. Paul Getty III contends that the series also defames members of the family and that it suggests that family members were involved with the kidnapping.
In a weird way, the potential legal action greeting the imminent premiere of “Trust” is fitting for a tale that was always bizarre in real life and is so in the FX retelling. Paul III (Harris Dickinson) is living in Rome overindulging in sex, drugs, booze and partying, but also producing paintings that he uses as collateral at a local
ristorante. His mother, Gail (Hilary Swank), is divorced from his father (Michael Esper), who lives in the shadow of his own father’s disappointment.
The head of the family, J. Paul Getty (Donald Sutherland), lives in a huge mansion in England with a harem of girlfriends and a newly acquired lion named Teresa.
Young Paul doesn’t pay a lot of attention to where his flatmates and menage partners Martine Zacher (Laura Bellini) and Jutta Winkelmann (Sarah Bellini) get money for food and drugs. But then money is needed and there’s a kidnapping. A ransom is demanded, but patriarch J. Paul won’t pay it, “not a cent,” as he says in a brief press conference. Eventually, Getty dispatches Biblequoting “fixer” James Fletcher Chace (Brendan Fraser) to Italy to negotiate.
The real story was bizarre, not only because one of the wealthiest men in the world seemed heartlessly indifferent to his grandson’s fate, but because the kidnappers got so frustrated with Getty’s refusal to pay, they sliced off one of their victim’s ears and delivered it as a message that they meant business. You can’t make this stuff up, as the saying goes.
Yet “Trust” often feels made up, and that’s intentional. Beaufoy and fellow executive producer Danny Boyle, who directed the first three episodes, adopt a slyly sardonic tone throughout the story as it unfolds through shifting time periods. With so many morally bankrupt characters, the slightly humorous tone leavens the mood a bit.
The performances are captivating. Sutherland’s Getty is all about limitless entitlement in business, his personal life and his family. He shows more affection for the lion than he does for any of his girlfriends, with the exception of Penelope Kittson (Anna Chancellor), a kind of den mother for the group.
Dickinson, who made a remarkable impression in the film “Beach Rats” last year, is extraordinary here as well. His J. Paul Getty III thinks he is running away from the family and his name, but he can’t run away from himself, and Dickinson explores every corner of that complicated psychological burden.