Marie Antoinette

About half way through watching “Marie Antoinette” the elderly couple in the next row down got up and left. They weren’t going for popcorn or a bathroom break, no they gathered coats, purse, and other such personal belongings and exited the theater having had enough of the film. You know what, they probably wouldn’t get it anyway.
Sofia Coppola’s third, and most recent movie is certainly not for everyone. It’s the cinematic equivalent of walking through Versailles, admiring the lavish décor and hundred’s of rooms, while you’re blasting New Order, Bow Wow Wow, or The Cure into your ears. Not for the traditionalists to say the least.
These things are not said out of disrespect for the movie, on the contrary the style is most important part of this movie and it is handled expertly by one Hollywood’s most promising directors. To call Sofia Coppola an “up and coming” director would be a slight. Let us not forget that she was nominated for “Lost in Translation” in 2003 for Best Director and Best Picture Oscars and she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She has certainly established herself apart from simply being her father’s daughter.
There is a certain sort of theme that Coppola has established as her preferred choice, the theme of young women in a foreign overwhelming world. Whether or not she often portrays this as a reflection on her upbringing in the movie industry is beside the point. She knows how to show it well.
Kirsten Dunst, who worked with Coppola on her first film “The Virgin Suicides,” is marvelous in this role. The transformation in appearance, from a child of fourteen to adulthood, can be attributed to the makeup crew. The performance, though, is her own achievement of blending the beautiful Austrian born French queen of the paintings and history books with a modern day attitude that fit the infamous queen.
I could not help but to think of Paris Hilton when, in the movie, Marie Antoinette performs for her court and husband in a little opera at the theater in Versailles. It’s the same old story; little wild rich girl who has the means to make herself into a performer without the talent because she can just pay her way through that step. But then I realized that it wasn’t Marie Antoinette who should be making me think of Paris Hilton, it’s the other way around.
The tabloids at the supermarket scream the most recent exploits of this party girl or that one, what clubs they were at and with whom they were seen. Marie Antoinette did it first! Enough about Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid, I want to party with Marie and Louis at a Parisian Masquerade or better yet, at her eighteenth birthday celebration in the wild and colorful halls of Versailles!
That’s the thing about “Marie Antoinette,” it does what movies like “A Knight’s Tale” tried to do, but it does it right. It bridges that gap between then and now. Every shot looks like a vividly detailed painting of the time. The costumes are magnificent. The way the characters carry themselves and move around the palace fits the setting perfectly. And then the soundtrack comes screaming through it all to bring the modern attitude that doesn’t even bother being veiled, thinly or otherwise.
The viewers connect with Dunst’s Marie Antoinette because we see the frightened girl who is just trying to please her mother, her new husband, and the two countries she joins. It’s this girl who is outwardly thrilled to see the brand new baby boy of a Duke and Duchess, but hides away in her room to sob alone at her husband’s unwillingness to consummate their marriage long past their wedding night.
We come away from the movie understanding the queen better because we see it all from her point of view. Everything’s on silver platters and done with ceremony as she idles away her youthful exuberance and frivolity until one day the angry mobs of the outside world are at her gate demanding her life.
What was black and white on the boring pages of some musty old book is alive and in Technicolor. With the actual palace of Versailles as a backdrop, and all the finery it has to offer adorning the actors and actresses, Sofia Coppola has painted a truly marvelous biopic of one of history’s most famous young women. Supposedly Marie Antoinette, when told of the peasant’s lack of bread, brushed the news aside with the response of “Let them eat cake.” It seems we’ve been given our cinematic cake, though instead of beheading Sofia, I applaud her.

B+