Greed
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Michael Winterbottom; Additional material by Sean Gray
Starring: Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, David Mitchell, Dinita Gohil, Asa Butterfield, Shirley Henderson, Jamie Blackley, Shanina Shaik, Asim Chaudhry, Tim Key, Ollie Locke
Comedy/Drama - 104 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2020
Written by: Michael Winterbottom; Additional material by Sean Gray
Starring: Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, David Mitchell, Dinita Gohil, Asa Butterfield, Shirley Henderson, Jamie Blackley, Shanina Shaik, Asim Chaudhry, Tim Key, Ollie Locke
Comedy/Drama - 104 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Mar 2020
Director Michael Winterbottom has something to say about the fashion industry. If you are not already aware, the fashion world’s models, money, and yachts moored in Monaco rest atop sweatshops in Southeast Asia, vicious exploitation, and environmental calamity. Plenty of films extol supposed virtuosos such as Anna Wintour, Manolo Blahnik, and Coco Chanel, but these are individuals who design and present; Winterbottom pokes at the owners and financiers, the pyramid’s tip. Presented as comedy, satire, and farce, Greed isn’t the first film to make fun of fashion, plenty of Derek Zoolander quotes continue to entertain, but gurgling beneath the one-liners is a social message. Winterbottom aims for awareness, perhaps even shock. However, his intentions lay buried under so many obfuscating levels of plot, characters, and mockery, only those already concerned about the industry’s sins will receive the message – Winterbottom is choir preaching.
The prolific British director behind three foodie Trip films starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon and a handful of other experiments in drama (A Mighty Heart) and even mania (24 Hour Party People), Winterbottom enlists Coogan (Stan & Ollie) to play a megalomaniac billionaire charlatan, Sir Richard McCreadie. Even the name is a one-liner – Rich McCreadie, sounds like greedy. Preparing for an over-the-top extravaganza for his 60th birthday, Richard considers his current status in the word, his industry, and his family nestled amongst the picturesque scenery of Mykonos and some Syrian refugees camped out down below on the public beach. Winterbottom also has something to say about the welcome and non-integration refugees receive in the European Union, but as much as his fashion messages are blurry, what he wants to get across about the refugee crisis is downright opaque.
The prolific British director behind three foodie Trip films starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon and a handful of other experiments in drama (A Mighty Heart) and even mania (24 Hour Party People), Winterbottom enlists Coogan (Stan & Ollie) to play a megalomaniac billionaire charlatan, Sir Richard McCreadie. Even the name is a one-liner – Rich McCreadie, sounds like greedy. Preparing for an over-the-top extravaganza for his 60th birthday, Richard considers his current status in the word, his industry, and his family nestled amongst the picturesque scenery of Mykonos and some Syrian refugees camped out down below on the public beach. Winterbottom also has something to say about the welcome and non-integration refugees receive in the European Union, but as much as his fashion messages are blurry, what he wants to get across about the refugee crisis is downright opaque.
Richard employs a writer, Nick (David Mitchell), to follow him around to write a glowing biography. The gimmick provides Winterbottom with the mechanism to hop around in time. Nick interviews former school mates, business competitors, and oddball family members which lend the film a temporal momentum. We discover Richard is not necessarily a fashion visionary, but rather a shrewd corporate raider. In front of a Parliamentary hearing, he does not disguise his methods, but places the blame on the legislators – “everything I do is completely legal”; as in, you let me get away with this. But, Winterbottom at least makes choices. He wants the audience to laugh. We watch Richard take over a successful clothing store chain only to get mad for the color he chose for the walls. “Fuscia! It’s the actual color of a twat; it’s French for fuck me!” I wonder how much of that is Winterbottom’s script versus Coogan’s improv.
In the McCreadie world, money equals goodness. “Kylie Jenner has over a billion Instagram followers and is on the cover of Forbes; well, she must be a very good person,” Richard muses. When Richard’s mother (Shirley Henderson) haughtily removes him from his boarding school right before he is expelled, she ensures the headmaster Richard will succeed…not intellectually or even philanthropically, but financially. Richard’s immediate family is as atrocious as you imagine them. His daughter stars in a reality TV series filming amongst the party-organizing chaos and at times feels more real than anything Richard imagines himself to represent. Richard’s ex-wife (Isla Fisher, Nocturnal Animals) remains on very good terms with both Richard and his new wife (Shanina Sheik, The Mummy) and even flaunts her current boy toy around the happenings. Richard’s youngest, Finn (Asa Butterfield, The Space Between Us), displays the consequences of being a forgotten child raised in and around a cesspool with an acute lack of role models.
Everyone believes money, and/or the idea of money, makes them intelligent and posh. Richard reacts with incredulousness at some of the prices celebrities wish to charge for them to attend his soiree. Winterbottom makes time for the A-listers who thrive off the fashion industry’s largesse and mocks quite a few of them for showing up to play paid gigs for the world’s James Bond villains. Whether or not the famous names which pop up really do respond to these kind of parties, Winterbottom ensures we know the names H&M, Zara, and Marks & Spencer, the leading British fashion power houses directly responsible for the abhorrent working conditions in places like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Amanda (Dinita Gohil) is a McCreadie logistician, but she is also the character with a backstory into one of the sweatshops. In Greed’s second half, when it finally turns its attention to fashion’s charade and dirty underbelly, is when Amanda’s face time morphs from flummoxed flunky to more assertive assistant.
At 60, Richard likens himself to Russell Crowe in Gladiator and someone quotes “Ozymandias”. We’re talking emperors among men here. Yet, is this the way to provoke outrage or even rekindle the conversation about confronting the fashion industry’s over-sized footprint on the world? This attack on exploitation comes off awkward. Its messages about low wages and refugees crossing the Mediterranean have no room to breathe underneath Richard’s gladiatorial gamesmanship and the next witty one-liner to pop down the chute. It is up to the viewer to judge whether or not Winterbottom considers Richard a villain. The world let him be this way. The rules we create, the boundaries we set, and the atrocities we allow all set the stage for a man like Richard to thrive. Are his sins our fault? Perhaps a more serious film would attempt to answer that question.
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