Movie: Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)
Quite remarkable how patiently this movie reveals its true colors. Much of the opening consists of Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) going through the neccessary rituals before her wedding to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman). At every step she is greeted by aristocrats with oddly-shaped pompous faces in heavy make up. The audience is not there to honor the new queen, but to control her, to make sure that at no point she deviates from the protocol. Marie never does, but Dunst always highlights her discomfort with the whole thing, portraying her with a youthfully naive rebelliousness and vulnerability, as if she has come straight of the set of one of her contemporary teen comedies. Schwartzman's ridiculosly funny performance - he plays Louis as a limp wimp coming straight from the set of Wes Anderson's most awkward film - creates even more sympathy for the young princess. Boh actors do a great job of highlighting how little all these rituals matter. The king and queen's first dance at their wedding may well be the most literal depiction of "going through the motions" ever put on film. And Coppola is so meticulous in showcasing the hollow ridiculousness of all this, that she has somehow even made the horses gallop in line with her vision. One of the funniest scenes is a simple shot of horse carriages moving across the Gardens of Versailles.
The film continues mercilessly tearing through Versailles after the wedding, presenting the court as a hotbed of gossip where everyone is just keeping appearances. Marie is one of the main targets of that gossip, due to her childless marriage. As getting a heir to the throne to cement the friendship between Austria and France is the main reason for the union in the first place, Marie constantly receives chiding letters from her mom Maria Theresa (Marianne Faithfull) commanding her to get on with it, which seems to also be the main function of Ambassador Mercy (Steve Coogan). Meanwhile, Louis spends all his waking hours in a state of confused terror, and the film leaves it ambigous whether that terror extends to his sex life, or whether he is gay. In any case, his wife keeps getting the blame for it.
This depiction of the tragic, oppressive absurdity of Versailles is funny, just and convincing, but also a bit monotonous and obvious. It's not that sophisticated or challenging to take the piss out of European monarchy, especially not for Americans. I still enjoyed the righteously contemptous glee and the sense of showmanship Coppola brought along for the ride, but was a bit miffed that this was seemingly all there was to it. And just when I resigned myself to it, the film suddenly shifted gears. With Marie adjusting to life at the court and even enjoying it, Coppola moves away from her self-reflexively ironic tone to revel in the opulence of it all. The film takes its time to depict all the gowns and shoes Marie gets to wear, and the joy she gets out of wearing and choosing them. We get close ups of delectable desserts, and see Marie and her friends at the court have fun dancing to anachronistic punk music (the film is good for many reasons, but if bringing Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bow Wow Wow to my attention was all it did, it would have been enough) at masked balls where men and women have all the freedom to flirt and frolic. And yet, still, when Marie finally does get a baby, it is involuntarily taken away from her to be breast-fed by the correct people.
Considerations of Sofia Coppola and her movies often end up focussing on her wealth and privilege and her supposed inability to make movies outside of it. It's obvious that being the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola has helped her enormously in getting a career, but it's equally obvious that she is a great and intelligent filmmaker who has very much thought about the world beyond her bubble. I was too young when I saw Lost in Translation and don't think I'll like it much more now, but really loved The Beguiled and The Bling Ring. Marie Antoinette may be her best though as it becomes about more than just the queen herself. Coppola has a lot of sympathy for the excessive demands put upon Marie Antoinette to always act in a correct way, and to be the woman and wife the world around her expects her to be, but she also knows that this is not unique to her. In fact, the rituals at the royal court don't serve to reflect society, but to shape it. If the queen doesn't perform her marital duties and procreate how can the rest of France be expected to? Marie Antoniette's struggles are those of many women, but it's easier to bear them when you are rich and powerful. Towards the end of the film, Marie Antoinette has become a happy mother and wife and powerful queen, yet still influenced by her past as an insecure teenager and political pawn. All of that shapes how we view her, and Coppola challenges us to embrace conflicting, contadictory feelings. In the final scenes she mourns along with Marie when she loses one of her kids, but gets back to her ironic distance when she is oblivious and indifferent towards the French Revolution coming for her head.
No comments:
Post a Comment