Over the past few years, the rich have been particularly appetising for filmmakers. In Europe, you have Ruben Ostlund skewering them in films like Triangle of Sadness and The Square. In the UK, actress and writer-director Emerald Fennell has upset a few stomachs with her divisive takes on class. In the U.S., The Menu took “eat the rich” in nearly literal terms, putting food and the wealthy at its centre. Veni, Vidi, Vici by the Austrian-based directing team Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann is a new item in this ever-expanding corpus.
The film should get a decent run across Europe and ensured if modest interest from U.S. audiences. It has premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
From the start, Hoesl and Niemann show their hands. The film opens with an Ayn Rand quote: “The point is, who will stop me?” As we come to see, that line is a wonderfully fitting epigraph.
At first, we are treated to the sight of a cyclist laboring atop his bike. It seems to be going well until bang! Someone takes a shot at his arm. Whoever has pulled the trigger is off-screen. The injured and perplexed cyclist reverses, then stops to assess his wound. Another bang! He’s dead. Two men show up. One takes the bereaved’s bike; the other attempts to clean up. Other cyclists appear. It is broad daylight.
Throughout the film, these random murders will continue and there is no real mystery as to who the gunman is. His name is Amon Maynard; he’s rich; he’s a family man; he has plans to build a large company. A voiceover by his daughter makes it clear that their family isn’t particularly interested in what is ethical. In fact, in a bit, we’ll learn that Maynard has managed to shove off a businessman in a hostile takeover. But cry not for the victim: he was Maynard’s mentor. The pupil has merely grown old enough to displace his master, using his master’s own tricks.
Laurence Rupp, clearly enjoying playing Maynard, renders the character a sunny, blithe one. There is something not quite right about his toothy smile, but he is not a detestable villain. His teenage daughter Paula (Olivia Goschler) from a previous marriage, his wife Viktoria (Ursina Lardi), and their other kids witness him as an engaged father, which might be the easiest way to get viewers not to hate a totally despicable character. It also helps that Rupp is good-looking. Still, there are those who consider Maynard as prison-worthy or worse.
One of them is a man who sees Maynard as he “hunts” one fine day. Another is Volker (Dominik Warta), who in the cinematic tradition of headstrong journalists struggles to publish an exposé on the wealthy man. Their similar intentions will lead them to different paths, both of which say something about confronting evil perpetuated by the rich in a heavily unequal society.
Such a theme will not come as a surprise to fans of Hoesl and Niemann, for whom the rich and their milieu have long been of interest. Their documentary Davos captured ordinary people in the titular location which is now synonymous with the popular event that attracts the global elite to Switzerland. Before that film, Hoesl had taken a satirical brush in examining capitalism in 2016’s WinWin. To the themes explored in those projects, the pair has added bite and blood.
In Hollywood, the addition of bite and blood should be enough to guarantee a mass market strategy. But for better or worse, Veni, Vidi, Vici has a distinctly European sensibility. The mainstream American need to crowd-please is absent and some of the choices (like an early scene introduced in rather needless slow mo) betray the directors’ art house mindset. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe just maybe a film intent on critiquing a class of people present in every society should consider bringing viewers in, rather than keep them at a remove?
Nonetheless, Veni, Vidi, Vici is technically impressive, the sound design—eerie and quirky—particularly so. To emphasise Maynard’s blatant perversity, the film is almost always bright and shiny. Nobody in the post-production suite seems to need darkness to hide untidy shots and tacky edits.
But, of course, the central question for films in and around the eat the rich subsection of cinema is: who is this supposed to be speaking to? For Veni, Vidi, Vici, the answer is probably the society. Everybody is encouraging the wicked ways of the wealthy; nobody is truly trying to stop them.
The filmmakers themselves don’t seem too convinced that the rich can be stopped in a capitalist world. Which suggests that Hoesl and Niemann are too clear-eyed about the world to offer comforting narrative turns. Or maybe it has something to do with Austria, as Michael Haneke has repeatedly demonstrated. And the film was produced by Ulrich Seidl.
In any case, they show us Paula becoming enamoured of her father’s ways and building up the skill set to replicate his hunting. They seem to understand that even as you are eager to eat the rich, their young are just as hungry to eat you. But unlike you, they have the resources to purchase the cutlery needed and their teeth are intrinsically sharper. As another wealthy, unscrupulous character once said, they “drink your milkshake!”
Cast: Laurence Rupp, Ursina Lardi, Olivia Goschler, Kyra Kraus, Tamaki Uchida, Dominik Warta
Directors: Daniel Hoesl, Julia Niemann
Screenwriter: Daniel Hoesl
Producer: Ulrich Seidl
Cinematography: Gerald Kerkletz
Editing: Gerhard Daurer
Sound Design: Gerhard Daurer
Sound: Claus Benischke-Lang
Production company: Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion
Venue: Sundance (World Cinema Dramatic Competition)
Language: German
Duration: 86 Min
