Inventing Anna - Audacious Entrepreneur or Con Artist?
Inventing Anna is a new Netflix series based on a true story, presenting viewers the journey of a young immigrant woman from Germany who pursued an ambitious goal of building a private social club for the elites of New York. This new Netflix tv show tells the story of Anna Delvey, but also expands on stories around this protagonist. It explores ideas of money, prestige, and power. The show keeps the viewers wondering throughout the series if she is really is a rich and genius young woman who will soon be cashing out on a $60 million dollars worth of trust fund, or is she just a genius con artist that was able to convince the elites of New York into believing she an heir to a fortune.
SPOILER ALERT
When writing about movies or tv shows I usually fail keeing the post spoiler free. If you haven't watch the series yet, and don't want to see any spoilers, please stop reading here. It is good tv show, interesting story, and entertaining to watch. I would recommend it.
That said, I will try my best not spoil the main events. What I value in movies, and especially tv shows is a good and thought provoking story. Inventing Anna is based on a true story, and that makes it even more interesting.
Normally, con artists are not good people and majority of them deceive ordinary people from their hard earned money. We normally call them scammers and fraudsters. However, stories of con artists who deceive greedy rich people who take pride in their wealth, see those with less money below them, and waste money on dumb things are at least interesting. The main question from the very beginning of the story is if Anna Delvey is such a con artist. What if she is a person who she claims she is, a daughter of a rich oligarch from Germany, and only the circumstances she found herself in may depict her as a con artist. The answer is not clear until the end of the story.
The show starts with Anna Delvey being arrested and charged by multiple grand larceny charges. Another thing that is not clear until the very end is if she will be able to win her case and get out of the jail or punished with imprisonment for many years. While viewers is eager to find out the answers two these questions, they also wonder if this is actually a true story. Each episode starts with a statement - *"This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up." It is based on a true story, however it is not clear which parts are made up.
By the time Anna Delvey got arrested, she already made herself a name of being part of the New York elites. When a journalist whose reputation was ruined due to past work, find out that Anna Delvey had been arrested, she makes a goal of getting an exclusive interview and investigate the story with hopes of unveiling something big and restore her reputation as a journalist. As series evolve, the story is told through the investigations this journalist is conducting to find out the truth. The journalist has her own story to tell and the show does a great job of developing her as a separate character within her own story as well.
The story shines a light on one of the common elements of the human nature. How everybody needs something from each other, and relationships people sometimes build are sometimes based on their personal gains. In the case of the journalist, she makes it clear and doesn't hide the fact that she is dedicating her time and efforts pursuing this story not necessarily to help Anna Delvey, but rather for her own gain of breaking a big story and fixing her reputation as a journalist.
At the same time, the lawyer representing Anna Delvey, also has taken the case while not even being paid, not because he wants to help someone in need of help, but for the purposes building his own reputation and clientele. Because the case attracted media attention, this could be a good marketing opportunity.
After arriving in New York and living there, Anna establishes connections, makes friends with people in fashion, arts, finance. She talks, walks, and behaves like someone who is used to luxury, has a great taste for fashion and arts. For one reason or another she fits in well within the New York's socialites and elites. When with friends she is generous in spending, when being treating at someone else's expense she only goes for the best and most expensive. Everywhere she goes she keeps talking how rich her father is. Nobody doubts that she is wealthy and belongs in those circles.
She has a very ambitious business plan, to create Anna Delvey Foundation which will be a private club for the elites of the New York where they can enjoy fashion, arts, luxuries and socialize. She finds a historic building as a home for this private elite social gathering place and takes on a journey of convincing famous architects, art curators, fashion designers, bankers, lawyers to help her make this plan a reality. She comes really close of achieving this goal, when it all gets interrupted with the arrest.
Of course the arrest wasn't sudden either. There were many unpaid bills that lead into complaints and resulted in an arrest. She lived a luxury style and at the 5 star hotels, tipping $100 bills for each interactions with the hotel service staff. Problems would start happening when hotels couldn't receive payments. This would happen on and off. Sometimes she wouldn't be able to pay, but then all of the sudden she has money to pay. There was always one reason for wire transfers not coming on time or credit cards being declined, her father would cut her off form time to time. Most of the time this reason would be convincing enough and nobody would ask anymore questions.
It gets a little bit more dramatic when she starts making her friends who she has always been generous to, to pay the bills when her credit cards would get declined. When this happened to a hotel concierge who she became good friends with, and who also helped her get into private elite circles, the hotel concierge started doubting Anna. But when finally money transfer came through and she repaid her, all doubts were gone.
Another friend, Rachael who worked for Vanity Fair wasn't as lucky. Anna invites friends to go on an expensive trip to Morocco. When her credit card decline issues reemerge once again, she put her friend Rachael in a very bad situation. To get out of Morocco, Rachael ends up using her work credit card as temporary solution and pays for the trip expense of $60,000. Rachael herself is not rich and doesn't really belong in those elite circles. But when there is an offer for a free vacation, cloth, or dinners she would never decline. After all she is too trying to fake it until she makes in New York. While from time to time it may seem that Anna has been faking her wealth all this time in order to make it with successfully closing a deal on Anna Delvey Foundation, it is still not obvious that she is faking.
As her Russian roots are also revealed, and it is now know that her family is of Gernman-Russian origin, there are also speculations that her father might be involved in not so legal businesses. Perhaps that's why there are sometimes issues with money coming on time and credit cards not working.
After the Morocco incident, Rachael still doesn't get paid back for the $60,000 charge on her company card. This leads to issues at work. At this point Rachael doesn't care about friendship anymore, and focuses on what she can get out of this situation. She cooperates with law enforcement authorities in tricking Anna out of the rehab facility to be arrested. Then she sells her story about Morocco trip and socializing with Anna to her workplace Vanity fair. As the story takes more media attention, American Express decides to forgive Rachaels $60k she owes. This one was strange. Banks forgiving loans. They must have got something out of this story too, or perhaps they just didn't want to be part of it.
In addition to all this, Rachael gets book deals for a total profits of $600k. Great deal to sell out a friend, no? To be fair to Rachael, she wasn't put in an absolute horrible situations when she found herself in debt for $60k that she didn't have and couldn't afford. Anybody in her shoes would feel scammed. While Anna deceiving financiers and bankers to get $40 million dollar loans approved for her business looked interesting, getting her not so wealthy friend in a financial hardship wasn't cool. At the same time, I doubt that was planned. It just happened. Or maybe there was no plan. That whole Morocco trip didn't make any sense, to be honest. Maybe if that trip didn't happen, Anna Delvey Foundation would become a reality? I don't know. Just a thought.
This story is about money, luxury, and friendships. But it is also a story about love. In fact, to get to the point she did Anna owes a great deal to her boyfriend Chase. Who himself is also an entrepreneur with a crazy idea of farming dream data. Yes, farming dreams. The company he has started is called Wake and technology he proposes can harvest dreams while people are sleeping or just when they wake up. Some crazy idea like that. That kinda turned out to be a scammy things too. Many were convinced to invest, he kept spending the money, and nothing came out of it.
Overall, it is an interesting tv show to watch. I wouldn't want to be in a position of any of the characters in the show though. That sounds like a very stressful lifestyle. I prefer simplicity, find greatness in simple things, and abundance in just enough. Have you seen Inventing Anna yet? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.
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