'House of Gucci' Review: Gaga, Driver shine in Ridley Scott's polarizing project
Sir Ridley Scott is one of the greatest filmmakers of this generation and there is no doubt that whenever he comes out with a movie, a sense of excitement comes over everyone. He is known for directing films extraordinary like ‘Gladiator’, ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Alien’ and ‘Body of Lies’ in his career. However, Scott hasn’t been able to produce a massive blockbuster in recent times. So, when he announced that he would be tackling the story of Gucci murders in his latest movie, everyone felt that Scott is now going to his roots.
Titled ‘House of Gucci’, the film tells the controversial story of Gucci's heir Maurizio Gucci and his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. The couple met all of a sudden and started a relationship. They married each other after dating for two years and were leading a happy life. But their life turned upside down when Maurizio left Patrizia and never came back. But the real question is why did he leave her? And what caused Patrizia to take such a drastic decision of planning a murder? This is the primary focus of the film and yes, the controversial part comes as well, but it comes right at the end. The movie’s strength lies in its acting ensemble and they take the movie to a whole new level. However, there are a lot of instances where you feel that movie is being stretched for a silly reason.
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The movie starts with Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) preparing to be a lawyer while Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) is handling his father’s business. They end up meeting each other at a party and as soon as he tells his name, she realizes that she is talking to the heir of Gucci Empire. So, she starts approaching him and starts meeting him. After many meetings and dates, they both kiss each other and fall in love. Maurizio takes Patrizia to his father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) and he is not pleased with the fact that Patrizia’s family has a truck business. Rodolfo tells Maurizio that he shouldn’t marry her, but Maurizio loves Patrizia and wants to be with her.
Maurizio leaves everything for Patrizia and they start living with each other. A few months later, they get married to each other and start a new life.
Meanwhile, Maurizio’s uncle Aldo (Al Pacino) contacts them and calls them for his birthday party. Patrizia is really excited because she always wanted to be a part of the Gucci family. Aldo tries telling Maurizio that he should come to New York and handle Gucci, but Maurizio wanted to be away from all this. Things change when Rodolfo dies and his shares go to Maurizio. Although Maurizio has 50% shares it is Aldo who’s running the company.
This is where things start to get a bit intense because Patrizia doesn’t like how Aldo and others are underestimating her and Maurizio. Meanwhile, Maurizio doesn’t believe something bad is happening because he never wanted to be a part of it.
The best thing about the movie is that Ridley Scott has tried covering all the main players of Gucci. Apart from all the aforementioned characters, Paolo Gucci (Jared Leto) is also an important part of the movie. Paolo was Aldo’s son and wanted to take Gucci into a new direction by reinventing but no one ever took him seriously. Scott shows all the important scenarios of the Gucci family in an amazing way and gives viewers an idea about how dark everything was behind something so glamorous.
As far as acting is concerned, every single actor has done a phenomenal job in the movie. Lady Gaga portrayed the complex character of Patrizia Reggiani with precision and even though her accent is a bit odd in some scenes, her acting overshadows everything and makes her a force to be reckoned with. Get ready to see her names getting announced during award ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Adam Driver is turning out to be one of the greatest actors in this generation and has once again given an excellent performance. His mannerisms and expressions are quite close to how Maurizio Gucci used to have. This is why Driver is such a brilliant actor as he continues to impress everyone with his acting skills and digging in deeper to show viewers how the Gucci heir actually behaved.
On the other hand, Al Pacino and Jared Leto are the scene stealers here. Whenever they are on the screen, something magical happens. In some aspects, the duo is even better than Gaga and Driver. Pacino, even at this age, manages to do scenes that require a lot of effort while Leto is completely unrecognizable at first and the way he speaks and walks is simply outstanding.
Although Salma Hayek has a smaller role, but she is absolutely brilliant in the movie.
The movie is based on a true story. So, most of the scenarios shown in ‘House of Gucci’ are real. This can be tricky sometimes because one mishit and the entire family can come for you saying that it’s false. However, Scott has done a great job in showing what actually happened between Maurizio and Patrizia and how Patrizia tried to pit the Gucci family against each other.
All in all, Ridley Scott has made one of the most polarizing movies of this generation. There will be extreme reactions to it because of the way the story is told and how the ending still makes this controversial story completely unbelievable. Either people will love it to the core or hate it. There won’t be anything in between.
Personally, I loved what I saw and will remember this movie for a long, long time.
‘House of Gucci’ is currently in theatres.