When is an aspiring sociopolitical satire so exasperated with what it’s supposedly lampooning that its anger and indignation threaten to undermine the irony of what it’s trying to ridicule? Directed by Austrian pair Daniel Hoesl and Julia Nieman, their Sahara dry, deadpan social satire, “Veni Vidi Vici” (Latin for “I came; I saw; I conquered”)— about the untouchable nature of the rich and powerful of the world, and how consequences for their actions have largely vanished — isn’t necessarily that film. It manages to keep its anger in check (mostly), and there’s undoubtedly a perceptive tension between what’s psychotically absurd and what’s all too valid, both in the exaggerated film and what echoes into our real world. That said, the line between incensed rage and what there is left to laugh at in a world that cannot bother to hold the billionaire class accountable is razor-thin at times. Perhaps you’re unsure whether you should howl, cry, or laugh, and maybe that’s the point.
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Unmistakably built around Donald Trump’s arrogantly boastful and (not incorrect) 2016 pre-election brag, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible,” clearly “Veni Vidi Vici” is livid, and uses this infamous quote as a launching pad. But the film has many more targets in its sights than just Trump and takes sharp, savage aim at several corrupt, egomaniacal, seemingly unassailable privileged figures like Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeff Bezos, and the like.
“Veni Vidi Vici” centers on the Maynards, a family of bourgeois billionaires built around the blithe patriarch Amon Maynard (Laurence Rupp). Being the predatory magnates they are, hunting is a passion they all enjoy, but shooting animals has really become passé, so it’s on to the most dangerous game. As you might expect, bored, and very aware he is essentially wearing a clock of invincibility at all times. Amon starts gunning down people in the streets for the sport of it all.
“Veni Vidi Vici” is the type of film where a cyclist in a tour-de-France-esque tournament is gunned down; Amon steals his bike and then quips, “Recycling.” The gag is so audaciously glib and over-the-top that it’s almost making a meta-commentary about getting away with such an evident and crass pun. But it’s so absurd that it works; the film is all staged with a heightened realism that makes everything just a little off-center.
In Hoesl and Nieman’s intentionally flippant film, a “sniper” is terrorizing the city where the Maynards live, and gosh, who could this serial murderer be? But everyone’s complicit, obviously. Politicians, law enforcement, and media, too, because while everyone’s aware of Amon’s favorite casual pastime, no one is brave enough to accuse the industrialist because consequences do actually exist for those who subsist on things like day jobs and paychecks. One journalist, Volter (Dominik Warta), threatens to blow the whistle on Amon’s murderously brazen rampage, often committed with little attempts to hide it, almost as if a challenge to the powers that be. But his news outlet is skeptical and lackadaisical, clearly more concerned with the bottom line. And soon, his integrity and principle in the matter face the ultimate test, too.
Olivia Goschler plays Amon’s daughter, and she narrates the three chapters of the film (Veni Vidi Vici), essentially reciting his philosophies about how playing fair is for suckers and how success proves cheaters right in the end. She wins a polo match with an offense she gets away with, “A foul is not a crime, and even if it is, who’s to blame?” she posits. “The one who fouls or the one who looks the other way?’ Some of it is a little too on-the-nose, but so much of “Veni Vidi Vici” is so cheekily brash that it still does produce mordant chortles. Plus, flawed paradoxy and hypocrisy are so central to the text: family means everything to the Maynards, but anonymous human life is obviously cheap.
If there’s one central problem with the scathing “Veni Vidi Vici,” is that it’s seemingly a one-note joke told over 85 minutes—billionaires can literally shoot people, and they can get away with it— and it’s not all that innately funny. It’s tragic, really, and so the joke only has so much mileage. But this scathing riff on the evils of capitalism can still be deliciously witty when juxtaposed with the mischievous cinematic elements: operatic slow-motion, irreverently ironic use of classical music, and a cartoonishly plodding and honking score that seems to nearly be mocking the viewer for participating in this ghoulish exercise.
What “Veni Vidi Vici” arguably does best with little effort—and just a few critical pithy lines of sloganeering like “love live creative destruction” or the hilariously meaningless “relentless entrepreneurship!”— is unpack the sociopathic psychology behind the billionaire class. It’s not just wealth that makes them untouchable (though it certainly doesn’t hurt), but it’s that self-assured conviction of those who genuinely believe they are disrupting and thus “changing the world.” Because when you believe you’ve rewritten rules, the laws no longer apply, right? And when your insulating capital is such that no one dares question your assertion, cognitive dissonance takes hold; you truly believe you have ascended beyond things like rubrics and regulations that mere mortals are beholden to. The God complex of egomania is all too real.
Aesthetically detached, clinical, and with murderousness always happening in broad daylight, “Veni Vidi Vici” might arguably be more clever than laugh-out-loud funny or insightful. Still, some of the facetious formalism goes a long way. Ultimately, “Veni Vidi Vici” can’t help but give up the game with its dark, pessimistic ending, not exactly subtle about who its winners and losers are and who will always remain victor. Yes, capitalism, the inequities of wealth and power structures are sharply in its sardonic gunsights, and reality and satire often blur. But its most pungent assertion is the morbid notion that people who don’t know limits are worthy of your applause and celebration. Maybe what it lacks in true giggles, it makes up with in acidic contempt for all the ways we’ve failed at keeping would-be messiahs in check. [B-]
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