Oscars 2022: Snub to House of Gucci is the final nail in the coffin for the satire that's more moody than sombre

“Don’t focus on the process, focus on the result,” Patrizia says at one point in House of Gucci, which is perhaps an apt comment about the effect of OTT on genre-defying cinema.

When Ridley Scott’s film came out last year, it was preceded quite naturally by hype around its impossibly assembled cast. Reviews, however, pointed towards a forced assembly of caricatures that though based on real people, resembled ridiculously animated mimes. It is probably a sign of the times that lucid recreations, that would not too long ago be considered decorated homages, are now routinely rejected as boilerplate nonsense.

The announcement of the Oscar nominations firmly closed the lid on a film that is perhaps the craziest, most out-of-its-body satire of a world that most people struggle to take seriously. House of Gucci is preposterous and pompous, but maybe, that has always been the point.

Lady Gaga in House of Gucci

In 2013, David O Russell’s American Hustle, a bewitching yarn of loony characters caught in the delirious quagmire of a cons and crime was hailed for breaking the mould of both tone and genre. Defined by most as a ‘hellzapoppin’ black comedy, the film challenged the sovereignty of classifications by confiding in the chaos of crisis.

House of Gucci, about a practically well-known scandal in the history of fashion, thus, had two choices to make. Be the gritty, sombre take on a story that has already been told a million times over or wear its preposterousness on the sleeves. Scott, of course, chose the latter, casting people against type in roles they were not exactly meant to embody but amplify. You could argue Scott wants to show us the comic-book version of the Gucci scandal with eye-popping rhetoric and smugness that at least orally, does not apologise for the elite behaving like the elite.

Adam Driver and Lady Gaga in House of Gucci

Scott’s film features some truly remarkable performances that can at once be regarded as trashy or mercurial. In the cranky and dialled-up role of a lifetime, Lady Gaga is stunning as the scandalous but flawless Patrizia. As the bespectacled nerd Maurizio, Adam Driver steps into the suit-y dexterity that betrays his oblong face and embodies the operatic machismo of a to-be victim.

In their roles as cousins and co-owners Rodolfo and Aldo Gucci, Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino are mesmerizingly cartoonish. “Gucci doesn’t belong in a mall, it belongs in a museum,” Rodolfo says to his cousin at one point, which is perhaps an ideal metaphor for the film as well. It is the kind of film that brings the museum to the mall, and does therefore obscure itself to genre habits. It is hilarious, at times ridiculous, and yet mortifyingly a spectacle about inconceivable people. 

Al Pacino in House of Gucci

Of the many performances that have been cast to precisely hit home, the point that elitism itself feeds into an aura of performative morality, it is Jared Leto’s disappearing act as the wholly inept cousin Paolo that underlines the fundamentals of the film, its desire to prosthetic-ise the story rather than unpeel it with inconspicuous minimalism. Paolo is absurdly, and yet affectingly, the wounded gazelle among of a pack of stylised wolves, the natural born outsider, someone who, though tragic in this context, also stands out for his inability to build or sell himself. In fact, he might be the sanest of them all, only that no one buys his kind of sanity when a ‘legacy’ is at stake. Predictably, Leto’s role received the harshest share of criticism in a blowback that spared neither the more illustrious members of the ensemble cast nor the convincing, leading acts by Gaga and Driver. 

The point of House of Gucci perhaps is not be earnest or reflective, but to be pompous and accessible, drip with froth and lather to the point its slips. Exaggerations become inflection points for an audience that can would otherwise only offer awe to a story out of reach. Murder, betrayal, and clairvoyance naturally feed into the ideas of noir, and yet Scott attempts to wriggle free of these bindings and offer a more colourful take beyond the pinstripe nature of fashion and its intrigue. No wonder then that most characters, their demeanour, and their Italian identity feels more a like bandaged carcass rather than a clothed mummy. It is this curiously ill-fitting aesthetic that carries intent but is lost on people who would rather have the gritty, sombre retake. 

Jared Leto in House of Gucci

It was always likely that once critics panned Scott’s film, it would not register at the Oscars. In a world underlined by woke centrism and anecdotal revelations, there is perhaps little space for a film that is a thing unto itself, obscure, explicit, and exotic but in the most unobvious of ways. It is about a gruesome, troubling scandal in an aggressively rich family, and yet it is balmy fun, peppered by stunning performances from Gaga and Leto. But gone perhaps are the days of mainstream jugglery, where conflicting, indigestible personalities can be taped to the explosive devices of satire and clumsiness. We are possibly back to heroes and villains again.

Oscars 2022 will take place on 28 March.

Oscars 2022. Illustration by Poorti Purohit

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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