Writer: Daniel Hoesl
Directors: Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann
Clearly influenced by Michael Haneke, their fellow Austrian, Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s Veni Vidi Vici is an unsettling black comedy examining the power of the rich. The wealthy literally get away with murder in this film, which premiered at Sundance last year. With long, often static, shots in the style of Haneke, this political satire asks why no one has the balls to stop the rich from imposing their own stamp on the world without regard for others.
Of course, money and a promise of a share in power will seduce some to turn a blind eye. However, in Veni Vidi Vici there’s another reason why people may choose to look away; they might be killed. Everyone knows that billionaire Amon Maynard is the sniper who is randomly shooting people in the Austrian town. The film begins with one of these murders. A cyclist is targeted as he makes his way up a steep hill. With the help of Alfred, his butler, Maynard throws the cyclist’s body over the side of the mountain, before commandeering the bike to cruise downhill. Maynard has come prepared and wears Lycra and a helmet.
His power is limitless. He persuades the local government to reclassify a nature reserve in order that he can build Europe’s largest battery factory in it. He takes over rival businesses without their permission. He wears funny outfits to press launches. He gets people out of prison. And no one will stop him. It’s not hard to see the parallels of America, Trump and Musk.
There’s only one chink in his armour; his wife is struggling to get pregnant. He has his own daughter, Paula, from a previous marriage and two adopted daughters, but new wife Viktoria’s IVF treatment is unsuccessful. They toy with the idea of hiring a surrogate, one who would have nothing to do with the child afterwards. Otherwise, they have the perfect pastel-coloured life, living in luxury in a mansion beside the mountains.
Sometimes the best satires are barely recognisable from the truth, but Hoesl’s screenplay always feels like a fiction. A government minister invites her spoiled child to political meetings; the police show no desire to find the real suspect for the shootings, and the press would rather report on festivals than the killing spree. If this does bear some resemblance to real life, then the odd tribal chirruping that accompanies many of these scenes works to keep the viewer at arm’s length. Despite the sunny interiors and the garden parties, and the Strauss and the Ravel, there’s a chilliness to the film that is easy to admire, but hard to like.
“If you’re born poor, it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor, it is your mistake” Paula confides in her voiceover. However, this is no rags-to-riches story; more a tale of how the superrich retain their supremacy and how they push for exemptions in the law to protect their privilege. And the sycophantic bureaucrats only enable their behaviour.
Out of Maynard’s family, wife Viktoria shows a smidgeon of decency. Played by Ursina Lardi (who was also in Haneke’s White Ribbon), she exudes a nineteenth-century haughty elegance, almost unaware of other people’s troubles, but her desire for a child makes her nearly human. Her husband (Laurence Rupp), on the other hand, is an eternal manchild, too used to getting his own way. He kills people (because he can?) but baulks at hunting animals. Meanwhile, daughter Paula (Olivia Goschler) is like an evil Katniss Everdeen in waiting, weapon at the ready.
The rich came, they saw and they conquered, but there’s a sense that Hoesl and Niemann’s film is too sophisticated, too clever, perhaps distancing us too far from a world that certainly isn’t ours. But if this is a metaphor for the world we live in, we haven’t got a chance.
Veni, Vidi, Vici is screening at the 3rd watchAUT Austrian Film Festival from 13-16 March and the Glasgow Film Festival.
The Reviews Hub Score
They conquered, we lost
