Marie Antoinette

[nolawitch58]

We watched Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst and directed by Sofia Coppola last night before the Hornets game. The reviews I read when the film was released were mixed, so I was prepared to maybe not like it. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.

First off, let me admit that I had previously held a dim view of the woman based on popular culture stereotypes of her as a profligate and vapid twat. I also fault history teachers who make no effort to correct the misconceptions. The reason may partly be that she was a woman and history has heretofore been all about the men. Who cares whether one eighteenth century European queen was maligned?

The problem with history is that there is too much of it to grasp in the short amount of time one is in grade school. The truth is much more complex than the paragraph that explains how the Austrian Marie Antoinette married the Dauphin Louis of France to create an alliance between the countries. There may be some elaboration about her not producing an heir immediately and her lavish lifestyle. What gets omitted is that she was twelve years old and Louis was fourteen when they were married. People back then didn't experience the pangs of puberty as early as we do in this century so it's no surprise it took them several years to become interested in sex and have children. With all the crowds in their bedchamber at any given time, it's also no surprise they took so long to develop intimacy. Who besides an exhibitionist likes to have an audience for the deed?

Moving on to her spending habits, she was royalty in Austria and accustomed to being spoiled. Of course, she was bred to breed (ugh) more royalty so she had to be married for political purposes. When she arrived in France, she was stripped of all her worldly possessions, even her dog. What twelve-year-old wouldn't feel a sense of loss at that sort of treatment? With all the crap of ladies in waiting up her ass every waking minute and torturous protocols to observe, it's no wonder she gravitated to anything that would provide her comfort. She wouldn't be the last girl to hide her misery in a persona of clothing.

The film was lavish in production values. Doubtless, the designers not only had a huge task, but also one that provided them with great satisfaction as evidenced by the attention to detail in the extras' clothing by social status (the peasants in the mob scenes appeared more shabby than the nobility of course). The sets were as beautiful as the costumes and allowed the opulence to fade into the background for the action taking place upstage. The camera work was expert, although on occasion the editing lapsed into music video vernacular.

My one complaint was that the music was mixed too loudly on the soundtrack. The selections were good, if jarring at times, but they were too loud compared to the sections of dialog that preceded and came after them. The modern music was mostly from the '80s: Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Cure, Bow Wow Wow, etc. and was evocative of another historical period of excess and pandering to the wealthy.

I'm not sure I particulary like Marie Antoinette after seeing the film and reading the Wikipedia entry on her, but I no longer detest her outright. Apparently, the Faux Noise of her day spent quite a bit of effort to slag her in the press. As we've seen as recently as during the Bush maladministration, the press cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. As Robert Wuhl showed in his HBO special, Assume the Position, sometimes the legend is better copy than the truth. And the media no longer cares to make the important interesting; they're too busy making the interesting important.

Comments

[entheos93.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you knew this, but that was filmed in the real Versailles.
So if you've never been to Versailles, now you've seen it.
The amazing thing is, how the fuck much pull do you have to have to film ALL those scenes at Versailles?
There are big budget, major French films in which the Versailles depicted is a set. It pretty much always is...there's a huge fake Versailles at a movie studio in France.

Daddykins has some SERIOUS pull.

As an aside- I grew up with these kids, and I dated one of the sons for awhile. What Coppolas want, Coppolas get!

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that and the credits on the small screen were so dinky, I had to check IMDb for some of the info. Holy shit! That family can bring it, big time.

Did you like the movie? What did you think about the music?

[entheos93.livejournal.com]

Meh...Sofia's work never, ever jibes with me, for some reason. I loved the production design. I liked the fact that it wasn't really a historic epic, but rather, a teen film. It's very relevant that these were kids, and just what do you expect to happen when you've put the wealth of an empire into the hands of a teenage clique? With an angry and suffering populace?
Still, a little historic background would have been nice, rather than to assume that everybody knows the whole story of the end of the Empire.

The music was one of the things I really disliked about it. Just tacky. Oh, but the shoes...THE SHOES!

[saminz.livejournal.com]

I confess to knowing little about the lady apart from the famous "then let them eat cake" line ;-).

In any case, it's absolutely true that we can't begin to imagine how life must have been for these kids who were planned for and shoved around by systems which, to them, must have seemed absolutely un-questionable. It can't have been much fun. But then, that's not what it was about anyway, back in those days...

I don't think much of Versailles ever got much over 12° in winter, for a start ;-p.

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

She didn't even say that. The press was merely doing a hatchet job on her because she was a foreigner.

Versailles looks beautiful, though I'm sure it was uncomfortable as hell: cold in winter and hot in summer. If you've got that big a place and that much stuff, the upkeep alone would be hellishly expensive. Never mind wanting to make "improvements."

[entheos93.livejournal.com]

This is true- the trend of the day was to lampoon and seriously malign the dynasty in press. There are TONS of great cartoons, prints and pamphlets from the era that are just incredibly mean- and Marie was usually the main target. She was Austrian, you know- the French people weren't crazy about that in the first place.

Unfortunately, not alot is really known about their private lives outside that sort of media. Nobody, but nobody penetrated that Court who could not be trusted, by threat of guillotine, or otherwise.

[ms-issicran.livejournal.com]

I get that movie makers are trying to make up for decades of Hollywood taking license with history to indulge their sense of art, but sometimes the attempt falls short.

Let's leave the hitorical documentaries to the public television folks and just embrace that anyone with money and a sense of empowering self importance is going to make a movie that portrays their reality, not necessarily mine.

Having belched that out, I wasn't totally awed and satiated with this movie, but did find myself watching it again (I'd bought the DVD) just to soak in the costumes - at least someone in Hollywood has a sense of integrity.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I couldn't watch the entire thing. To me, it was just awful. I think the modern soundtrack really killed it for me, and it's going to make it impossible to watch in another 10 years, because the music is going to be so hokey. I prefer my period films to have period music. The music is as much a part of the setting as the sets and costumes, and music from that period is pretty well documented.

I also found the film incredibly tedious, and the acting very mediocre.

There was a French film, I believe called "Le Roi Du Solei" that I saw in High School French class (about Louis XIV, obviously), that really drove home the opulence and excesses of the Versailles court. I recall being very impressed with that film, and this one pales in comparison (even with my 30 year old memories of it).

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, not only was the music totally wrong for the period, it was way too loud on the soundtrack. As the shoe montage zipped by to "I Want Candy," I felt embarrassed on behalf of the subject matter. I know Coppola probably wanted to make it accessible to a modern audience, but the '80s music she used would only be familiar to people in their late twenties and older.

Maybe I'll hunt down Le Roi Du Solei. I'm going to brush up on my French so I don't sound like a complete American idiot this summer. There are quite a few French films I love and will watch repetetively. Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete is one. I enjoyed La Vie en Rose despite how depressing it was. Thanks for the recommendation.

[voxwoman.livejournal.com]

I think it may be this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441457/ I thought perhaps it was more recent than that, but a 20 minute documentary seems about right for a French class...