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No movie is made or broken by one or two aspects either working or not working. It is a unique medium that blends visual, audio, and the standard conventions of narrative storytelling that has existed for as long as humans have been orally telling each other stories. A movie can fail however if a few key aspects of the storytelling have problems, it can drag the entire movie down. House of Gucci has a lot of small unforced issues that make it a shade tiresome to watch.
The most obvious of these issues is that the pacing is inconsistent and not articulated to the audience. The movie opens in 1978 and ends in 1997, but over the course of the meandering two hour and forty minute, there is no explanation of how much time has passed between scenes. There is no makeup to age any of the characters and the fashion is consistent across all the scenes so the only way to tell if time has passed is if Patrizia and Maurizio’s daughter is on camera and has suddenly aged from newborn to child to teenager. This is a major issue because the movie chronicles what is largely the mental decline of Patrizia as she attempts to play Lady MacBeth and assume control of Gucci and if the movie explained that years are passing between scenes, this effect would have worked better. Even a chyron that explains when the scene takes place would be helpful.
The second issue is a more subtle one, and one that only comes from a reasonable expectation of movies of this type. The movie is called House of Gucci and when a movie features a setting or inanimate/intangible object as a key part of the plot, there is an expectation that this object become as much a character as any character portrayed by an actor. For example, in Netflix’s Daredevil, the region of Hell’s Kitchen is as much a character who grows, evolves and responds to the plot as Matt Murdock or any other character in the movie.
The titular company does not play an active role in the movie as everyone around it acts on it. There is the opportunity to show the company to expand as they make money or contract as financial issues strike, but the affluence of everything in the movie is consistent the entire way through. There is the interpretation that the stoicism of the company is intentional or designed to reflect the fact that the company can survive the struggles of the family, however the problem with that is that the movie paints all the people involved as deeply concerned with the well being of the company. It is a strange paradox they create which ultimately harms the movie.
Despite this, there are a few shining moments in this film. The acting is exceptional from most of the cast. Lady Gaga continues to prove herself to be an acting talent while Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Salma Hayek bring their characters to life with fantastic performances. The movie does have impressive production design and costuming as well, recreating a sense of wealth and affluence no matter what is happening to the family over the course of the movie.
The movie is average and only elevated by the acting performance and production design. Unlike other average movies with above average acting performances (Joker), the acting performances are not enough to overlook the narrative shortcomings and bring the movie up to above average.
Rating: 6.5/10
