The Man Who Bought Mustique

If you thought those Monty Python sketches about the upper classes of Britain were exaggerated spoofs, this film will show you otherwise. These insufferable twits really exist, and here is exhibit 'A': a sad relic from the colonial age, one Lord Glenconner, the eponymous (former) owner of Mustique, a three-mile-by-one-mile island at the bottom of the Grenadines, near St. Lucia. Glenconner is pathetic, retrogressive, imperious; he 'belongs in another century,' as someone says in this film.

Director Joseph Bullman endured this delusional man for several months, but it was all worth it. He gives us a brilliantly intimate portrait of not just the lord, but the attitudes of the Idle Rich, those displaced 'remittance men,' those 'sweepings of Europe,' as many people called them not so long ago. They're a dying breed, and they fairly ache for the glory days of 'the British Empawhh'. Bullman shows us these people without comment or criticism. His perceived tongue-in-cheek subtlety is wonderful to behold.

Glenconner is a bitchy neurotic; he uses linguistic anachronisms direct from the ruling class: 'darling' (describing his disabled son), 'jolly good,' and 'frightfully,' as in (when talking about the native Grenadine workers on Mustique) 'they're all so frightfully slow and stupid'.

The film's ending concerns a trip to Glenconner's makeshift digs on Mustique by the late Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth. Here we see the loopy lord at his most obsequious. He flies into hissy fits because his 'disloyal' and 'stupid' servants make mistakes. He is near hysteria before the Princess arrives. She looks bloated, unwell and frightfully bored with Glenconner's tacky proceedings, which include wall hangings of various Kama Sutra sexual positions. The rich, as many of us know (see Donald Trump and Richard Branson), aren't necessarily blessed with good taste.

John Cleese would make a wonderful Glenconner if this were remade as a movie.

I began to watch this documentary in hopes of seeing the wonderfully idyllic dreams of a visionary become a reality.

What I finally witnessed was one of the most frank documentaries on the character of a man I've yet seen.

I must congratulate the filmmakers who put this together and possessed the guts to portray this arrogant man, warts and spots exposed.

When the Princess finally arrives, I only felt total embarrassment that he subjected her to those Kama-Sutra type images as some kind of pre-breakfast entertainment. It was pathetic.

His self-proclaimed admission to being a "rat" seemed quite appropriate.

Why he is "loved" is an example of why despotic rulers are successful and lauded. Some of these people have no other choice but to follow.

Why he found it necessary to openly insult the filmmakers is unexplainable. I've never cringed so much. Except perhaps during a Pauly Shore movie.

If you want to see a fully honest and candid portrayal of a man, see this. You won't be disappointed.

I generally need to like the main character of this sort of documentary in order to be drawn into it. This is not the case with the Man Who Bought Mustique, the story of an English Lord who buys an island and parties with the jet set of the 70s on it. But a year after seeing this film its effects are still with me. The Lord is, most would probably agree, a jerk. He's so popmpous that he thinks he's the director of the film, which the filmmakers are wise to let him believe, giving them wonderful access. They capture the many facets of this man, to our delight and guilt-free laughter. Yet it is his uniqueness in this world is what lure us in deeper. Could it be that we're not so different from him after all?