In the 2025 film Materialists, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans) reconnect as she is trying to figure out her own love life with Harry (Pedro Pascal). One part of the film people love to harp on is John’s wealth.
John is not rich. He’s a failed actor who still has roommates in New York City and part of their issues as a couple were rooted in his inability to buy Lucy expensive dinners. John’s monetary situation had nothing really to do with him and everything to do with Lucy and her own relationship to wealth. She’d rather allow a relationship to fall apart because of material things than figure out their reality.
Director and writer Celine Song has had to deal with a lot of people missing the point of the difference in wealth between John and Harry and when one interviewer brought up a “funny” Letterboxd review to Song, the director politely pointed out why she doesn’t find it funny at all.
The review in question said “broke man propaganda??? in THIS economy??? I don’t think so.” It was alluding to John and Lucy’s relationship. Song responded by saying “It doesn’t make me laugh because it is really disappointing to me. I think that there’s a very real confusion about feminism and the history of feminism.” She went on to talk about the history of the women’s liberation movement and how it was always about fighting classism as well as everything else.
Song said that she felt it was “cruel” to talk about John in the way that the review does and that the classism of that is a very “troubling result of the way the wealthy people have gotten into our hearts.”
Just because someone is rich doesn’t make them better
The idea that John being less well off than Lucy and especially less well off in comparison to Harry being “propaganda” is a disservice to the film and the idea of wealth as a whole. Lucy believes that Harry can be her true love because she sees his wealth, what he can do for her, and the happiness that that money can afford her. But it isn’t the kind of love you are willing to fight for.
At one point during the film, Lucy talks about how marriage often leads to divorce that will alter the ideals of the children who have to go through it. But she fails to realize that it isn’t just about providing for a family with the money that someone like Harry has. It is about having a love that you would willingly fight for when times get tough.
Money doesn’t always last but love does and I think that Song and Materialists did a great job of making it clear that it wasn’t just about what Harry could provide but rather what John’s love could do for Lucy in the long run. Diminishing the story to “broke man propaganda” ignores what love can do for people and doesn’t help the discussion around Materialists at all.
(featured image: A24)
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