Director Ridley Scott sets such a ponderous pace with his new film House of Gucci, and adopts such a glacial, heavy, “classy” approach in general, it’s quite confusing.

He’s claiming in interviews that the film is a satire, “and satire is a posh way of saying it’s a comedy.” We can all agree that Jared Leto in a secondary role brings the comedy relief whenever his unrecognizably plump, balding, would-be fashion designer character Paolo Gucci is on the screen hoping to “soar like a pigeon.” But if the movie as a whole is a comedy, the leaden tempo and generally brooding tone are even more puzzling.

Scott has been promoting the movie in such addled interviews, we can’t look to him for any persuasive insight into what he thinks he was doing, as he shoots his mouth off in the stupidest way possible to anyone who puts a microphone in front of him. You’ve probably heard about his blaming the colossal failure of his other movie this year, The Last Duel  — which looked ludicrous — on millennials, whose addiction to their cell phones apparently prevents them from wanting to go see period films that supposedly teach us history. Scott said incoherently on Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF, “The millenians [sic] do not want to ever be taught anything unless you’re told it on the cell phone.”