the 'marie antoinette' trailer...

"I don't believe in reincarnation because I don't believe I can come back as a bug or a rabbit."

"You know, you're a real up person."

Note the one super-generic indie shot you see in the trailer - a slow dolly back isolating Dunst against Versailles. Yuck yuck yuck. Garden State and Wes Anderson have ruined that move forever.

looked like a zoom to me.

i wonder what she's going for by using this device in the film (if that part of the trailer ends up in the finished film). marie was to the manor born--surely she of all people would have felt at home, not alienated, in its monumental confines?

i'm looking forward to this, whatever my mixed feelings abt ms coppola's two previous films. for some reason the *idea* of this sort of hits the spot--i like that she's doing a period drama, and one about 18th-c. france in particular.

it definitely seems a "risk," but not in the vaguely moral sense implied by the entertainment news ("will the creditors stand for this?" "will she alienate the Academy?" "will this upset some middle-american straw men?"). just the basic artistic risk of taking on material that's been taken on many times before, but in a very new context.

What if that were a fake trailer for a completely different movie with all the same people?

ANTICIPATING!

She often found herself left out in the cold at Versailles as she wasn't really a part of the elaborate rituals that revolved around her husband. In order to enjoy herself a little more she had a small model village built in the grounds, where she would hang out with all her friends and get away from it all.

It was her rejection by the court and ensuing boredom that led to her going out boozing, dining and gambling around Paris, something that turned much of the French population against her and led to her getting the chop post-revolution.

i think a bigger reason she got the chop was because she was queen and they didn't want a figurehead for the counterrevolution out and about.

but whatever

i've been pwned

http://www.allocine.fr/webtv/acvision.asp?nopub=1&cvid=18603777&emission=&player=QT&debit=HD

Hilariously executed cunts.

Well, those who disagree can hope, then.

Sofia interview:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/6749567.html#cutid1

http://pitchforkmedia.com/news/06-05/18.shtml#shieldsbowwowwow

OMG my head just exploded considering this...

On the other hand... It spectacularly jump the tracks at the two-thirds mark, fast-forwarding through to the end without much of a conclusion. I get the feeling that the Jaime Reid typography and the Gang Of Four opening are only there because Coppola thought they were cool, not as any tangible thread to draw together the disparate elements of political/class disconnection which are scattered about. The Paris Hilton connection noted above is glaringly obvious, but there's no follow through. At the 90 minute mark, I was thinking "could we FINALLY have some angry mobs?"

b/w that adn the trailer, might be worth my 7 bucks

and it exists cause we are in the middle of a royal resurgance (and that stupid bio)

and its about her realtionship with her father, apparently

has anyone read the antonia fraser book?

what would be funny is if the movie has a scene with marie saying "let them eat cake!" and a cake song starts playing. or if they subtitle it "a knight's tale 2: period drama with modern soundtrack."

yep, very much so!

Like anybody would recognise a Cake song.

it's also an album by the cult!

NED RAGGETT...PAGING NED RAGGETT

It's "Ceremony"

This picture is hottt. I wish everyone would dress like this.

Not the first time I've used that phrase.

The modern touches add nothing, it would have worked as well, or better, as a straight period piece.

i agree, with the modern stuff isn't much, just songs on the soundtrack really. it's a period piece, pretty straight-up, only with no real story.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2006/101906/film5.html

It's so beautiful looking that I can't be bothered to care about its content. Kind of like how New Order are so good musically that I can't be bothered to care that their lyrics are terrible.

I think I liked it a lot. It drags a bit getting to two hours, but Marie is Coppola's strongest character yet.

roman/quentin buttbaby plz

the only visual anachronism were the converse (and maybe the fireworks?). the music is almost always very well chosen and placed.

The story of the young girl without friends, expected to exist in a cold, hostile environment with the weight of two empires on her back, is fascinating and new. The other stuff, not really.

the countryside scenes are very beautiful. they looked a lot like virgin suicides, actually.

I especially liked Dunst's curt but honest bow to the mob.

Marie Antoinette
Capsule by J.R. Jones
From the Chicago Reader

Sofia Coppola's portrait of the French royal (Kirsten Dunst) got a nasty reception at the Cannes film festival, whose patrons must not have appreciated the palace at Versailles being used as the set for a John Hughes comedy. Pop tunes by the Cure, New Order, Gang of Four, and Adam and the Ants punctuate Marie's alternately giddy and lonely life in the court of King Louis XV (Rip Torn); the audacious conceit reaches its apex in a colorful montage of jewelry, fabric, shoes, and stacked glasses of champagne that's accompanied by Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy." Coppola based her script on a revisionist biography by Antonia Fraser, though the film reads most poignantly as a personal statement; like Marie, the director was born to a life of privilege and carries the burden of a proud family legacy. The movie falls apart when the peasants storm the palace in 1789, an event completely outside Coppola's frame of reference--at least until the Cannes premiere. With Jason Schwartzman, Asia Argento, Judy Davis, Marianne Faithfull, Danny Huston, and Steve Coogan. PG-13, 123 min.

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/marie_antoinette

"In summary, this movie’s one of those side-by-side Shakespeare update/translations for developmentally challenged teens, where “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew” becomes “ WTF I’m depressed :( "

GROAAAAAAN

The sole exception is Argento, a fierce actress and herself a second-generation auteur, whose Eurotrash royal mistress “Madame” du Barry racks all this hazy piffle into sharp focus; the role is another throwaway, meant for easy laughs and an abridged lesson in court protocol, but Argento takes it in her teeth with weaselly tenacity. Her last appearance, casting a baleful backwards glance at Versailles after she’s been banished by the newly ascendant Queen, smites away any memory of Dunst—Argento knows she deserves this movie, that she goes after it with full-bodied insouciance, just as “Madame” du Barry goes after the crown.

I had exactly the same feeling, kyle.

I thought the bits without dialogue were my favourite bits of the film. The opening 20 minutes or so were exceptionally dialogue-free, and it worked beautifully.

absolutely OTM. i expected to hate this - i loathed "lost in translation" - and instead it blew me away. talk about ambushed by unexpected emotion ... the 20 seconds (or less) of "plainsong" by the cure and that shot of the newly crowned pair walking down the steps did something wrenching to my soul.

i'm still trying to work out why i'm so affected by it; sure, for me it taps into almost the perfect personal aesthetic (ballgowns, masks and post-punk: i mean, woah!) but there's something else there too ... i don't think i've ever been to see a film twice at the cinema, but for this i might just make an exception.

absolutely fucking glorious, that's what i'm saying.

See, theoretically this should make me happy too, plus the historical jones, but really all I care about is the soundtrack.

i dunno. i don't imagine this film will affect many - any? - people in the way it got to me. i mean, earlier this year i saw "the death of mr lazarescu" and was pretty much grabbing random strangers in the street and shouting: "GO AND SEE THAT FILM, NOW!" this is different, personal; i could never claim objectively that it's a masterpiece, or even that it's really anything other than a flawed costume drama. but subjectively - as if it had been written just for me - it shattered my heart. there's something there - some sense, some emotion, something intangible - that's going to stay with me for ever.

grimly, I'm glad we're on the same page.

I wrote this elsewhere: "Not for Coppola the earnest analogies between epochs that her contemporaries make as rehearsals for Academy Award ceremonies; Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette makes Norma Shearer's look like Madame Defarge. This is a film of which the Bret Easton Ellis of Less Than Zero would have proud. Dunst is the blank, busty girl dancing to Bow Wow Wow and "Ceremony" in your hometown '80s club* (snuff makes a dandy substitute for cocaine). How telling that Coppola regards her most famous utterance -- "Let them eat cake!" in response to the starving millions clamoring for change -- as a distortion attributed to rabble-rousing newspapers. Rousseau is Dunst's Deepak Chopra, inspiring "soul-searching" of the pastoral kind: the young queen retreats to Triannon to tend lambs with her curly-haired moppet of a daughter; and compared to the bewigged intrigue of which the royal court at Versailles is composed, who could argue? The conclusion is moving in a manner not acknowledged by any of the reviews I've read: the emo King Louix XVI (a jowly Jason Schwartzman) and his queen impassively sit at their dinner table while outside the mob calls for their heads. It's like every eighties movie in which the parents confronted their errant children about throwing a block party while they were on vacation."

i'd agree: it's not really about anything. it's a series of breathtakingly beautiful vignettes which add up to an approximate narrative. quite why i felt such a rush of emotion and sympathy for the marie antoinette character, i'm not sure: the weight of expectation on her shoulders? the desperate desire to do right? the slow subsumation into the obscene wealth of the court; the desire to enjoy some kind of girlhood; the realisation that, just for a few brief, glorious moments she really can have anything she wants? no, i'm still not sure - and i guess that's one of the reasons i love this film so much, ie i can't work out quite why i love it.

in a film based so fully on aesthetics, seemed to be the biggest comment of all ("they cannot appreciate beauty")

see, again, i just saw that as a fullstop, as the most definite of endings ... i'm really not sure there is anything there behind the glorious facade, the spectacle; and perhaps that's what the film's trying to say about the french court too, but in this case it just doesn't matter a jot.

Unlike LiT, there was no glory in ostentatious, party-hard wealth - the ceremony of Versailles was disdained, and the partying and shopping had an appropriately empty feel (Marie never seems to find enjoyment in those episodes), only in the relatively low-key country.

you think? i get the impression the character is loving it but obviously wants something more ... the partying and shopping are a "modern" rebellion against/reaction to the ridiculous formality of versailles, and - like clapping, singing etc - are an expression of self, of girlhood. but i think she's finding some enjoyment there!

How can anyone find fault with the lack of "accuracy" when the anachronisms are so overt and deliberate?

Although, I definatly liked the ballgowns, masks and post-punk.

I am really sick of the old trope about rich and/or pretty women not being able to have problems, too.

that bitch takes this shit further though. not only does she portray poor people as stupid nameless, faceless masses but they're basically the 'bad guys' in this movie.

Was France's support of the American Revolution the main factor that drove up taxes, alienated the poor and sparked the revolution?

"see! see! it wasn't just marie antionette and her shopping sprees! it was french tax money going to the american revolution too!"

?

not only does she portray poor people as stupid nameless, faceless masses

i don't think it's a great film, but it's a good one, and it has a lot of ideas. its politics are way more interesting and complicated than a lot of the reviews i've read, which seem to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in condescending to sofia coppola. the basic point is admittedly pretty broad and obvious -- "we live in versailles" -- but maybe not broad and obvious enough, seeing as how half the reviews i've read complain that it doesn't have any point at all. the refraction of the idea of marie antoinette through conventional disney-princess stuff, and through feminist historicism (the central drama being built around a woman's ability or inability to serve as a vessel for an heir, the asides about a woman dying in her 10th childbirth, etc), and through pop culture ideas of "rebellion" vs. what real actual rebellion looks like, and so on and so forth, it's true that not all of those ideas are congruent or coherent with each other, but there sure are a lot of them.

the whole return-to-nature interlude was a straight send-up of hollywood spirituality. and i loved marie getting ecstatic over rousseau but somehow missing in him the shadow of the guillotine; that scene where she and her daughter are looking at flowers and a hard wind starts blowing, i mean, there are portents all the way through the movie. the characters are disconnected from the world outside, but the movie isn't; it assumes we're smart enough to know what's happening outside the gates and it's looming from the very beginning.

i don't know, i just think sofia coppola's an interesting director. her movies have all had some obvious flaws, but i don't know many interesting directors whose movies don't. this is a much smarter movie than it's being given credit for.

versailles no; marie yes. i mean, the character's positively indulged by coppola! i'd agree with some of what you say about portents etc but the fact remains that there's no obvious narrative about the revolution: "it assumes we're smart enough to know what's happening outside the gates and it's looming from the very beginning" is all very well (and i happen to agree) but it would be just as easy to say: "what's happening outside the gates can easily be ignored for 99% of the film". as with everything, it depends how you watch it; however, i'd assume most directors would have taken a far more overtly political (or even, y'know, narratorial!) stance.

it's loosely based on antonia fraser's book, which is in itself a massively pro-marie work; and i'm sure i read something about coppola being fascinated/obsessed with the character. no, i certainly don't agree with the reading that it's all vacuous nonsense for "hello"-readers - absolutely not! - but i think it might be stretching things a little to suggest that it's deeply political.

"natural's not in it" was, i thought, a neat irony. and in this context the central refrain ("the problem of leisure/what to do for pleasure") takes on a slightly cheeky new meaning, no?

Coppola's film does well at making the same points - Versailles is wildly out of control before she even arrives (at the age of 14, don't forget), hence the drilling home of how absurd the whole grand levee nonsense is over and over again. The French monarchy was asking for trouble long before she came along.

I found myself feeling sorry for Marie at first, dropped as she is in a very foreign land under impossible pressure to get pregnant. As the film wore on I moved on to "bah, over-indulged footballer's-wife" type thoughts, then was quite pleased with her when she came over all dutiful and Queenly at the end, too little and too late.

One of the reasons she has been singled out for criticism over the years is undoubtably because she was a woman - she was scapegoated in much the same way at the time. And I can't help but think that some of the people pouring scorn on the film are doing so because everyone knows girls can't direct and she only got the gig because of who her dad is.

Finally, the NY Times did a nice piece where they reviewed MA and The Queen alongside each other, drawing some interesting paralells between Diana and Marie. Both living in extreme poshness, married off at an early age to become a future queen and broodmare. Both handed unimaginable sums of money on a plate, both cope with it badly and both die young. But one is evil terrible bitch and the other is queen of all our hearts.

so does "this heaven gives me migraine."

i don't know about its point of view on marie. i think she starts out more sympathetic than she ends up. versailles corrupts her. there are too many scenes deliberately making her out to be vain and careless to really call it a sympathetic portrait. if anything it's cautionary. she's not exactly likable, she's just somewhat less horrible than the people around her. i think coppola has mixed feelings about her, and dunst too, because they're both aware that as a woman -- even as a duchess and queen -- she's still trapped in lots of ways, by biology and custom and politics. but overall i don't think it's much of an apologia; there are all those scenes of her hapless adviser trying to get her to pay attention and she just refuses. until it's TOO LATE.

OTM the all above who noted that the film is quite obviously politically astute without being reductive.

i just ask u a question!

yeah, they were best sensed rather than seen. as in the very last shot, with just the aftermath of the destruction.

Yup. I mentioned them on the other Marie thread. At the Q&A after the screening, Coppola said that her brother (who was doing the second unit stuff) made the mistake but defended it anyway.

A enjoyable show of spleen, but I'm not sure why being "merely" the "doyenne of modern privilege" is a bad thing. I don't know a single "hipster" over 20 who "deluded" himself into thinking Lost in Translation was deep; Armond's been hanging out at the wrong Starbucks. Finally, to lament Coppola's use of those post-punk songs – "when young folk used their political consciousness to inspire each other with clever, heartfelt political/musical pronouncements" – is more sentimental than Coppola's reification.

the review posted upthread by elmo is a much better takedown.

OTM

what i mean is that there's a tendency to ascribe artistry and intelligence to, say, spielberg, or de palma, or clint eastwood -- they are widely (not universally, i know) assumed to be "serious filmmakers" -- whereas a lot of the responses to marie antoinette seem to assume exactly the opposite about its director and her intentions. anthony lane asks, ominously, "what does sofia coppola know?" armond white thinks she didn't even bother to read the lyrics to the song she used over the opening credits. which would be ok if the movie bore out all that condescension, but it doesn't. there are lots of ideas in it, and tons of signals that she has a very good idea what she's doing. i'm not arguing whether it's a better movie than mission to mars or whatever, just objecting to the pervasive, underlying sexism.

(plus it sure sounded good. and it chased one guy right out of the theater, muttering "jesus christ.")

LOLZ!

i was pretty ho-hum after this movie, but gypsy's posts have made me want to re-watch it.

yeah, but i guess i just don't pay much attention to that. i mean, look at david lynch. or any number of jazz players. it's always interesting when an artist can be articulate outside the bounds of their work, but it's a sort of unreliable metric for the work itself. i don't know what kind of movie she thought she was making, i only know which one i saw.

That and the way Brick cuts to black with the opening strums of "Sister Ray" are the two best musical cues I've seen this year. (Though Marty S. making the current Dropkick Murphys exciting was a feat.)

"Natural's Not In It" was great. I didn't read irony, I read 'this isn't going to be a tasteful Merchant-Ivory film, so pay attention.' Period pieces rarely start with a burst of energy, it was a nice change.

That's how I eventually interpreted it.

I think she was Cmte. d'Artois or something close to that.

as someone (probably gypsy mothra, but i can't be arsed scrolling up to find out) said upthread, yes, all those shots of cake and chandeliers are there for a reason; but the political element is really left very neatly for the audience to deal with as they see fit. at heart, i still see this as a story about doomed duty; an incredibly loving portrait of a girl who tried to do the right thing (and she does, so hard, for the first half of the film) before discovering FUN for the first time in her life, and who burned brightly for a few mere moments at the end of an era before the party came to an abrupt - but hardly unexpected - end. "you represent the future" says her mother's letter; oh, and how.

i still don't see it as the obvious celebrity parable that some critics have suggested; to me it's more about the impossibility of pleasing everyone ("letting everyone down would be my greatest unhappiness") and the irresponsibility of pleasing only yourself. my heart goes out to her during all the bucolic gambolling (and even to a lesser extent during the alcoholic gambling, which is, after all, still about filling a void): yes, it's dilettantism, but she's been trapped in this ridiculous existence at versailles since she was a child of 14 ... can you blame her?

the one thing that really hit me this time round was the absolute mastery of kirsten dunst's performance; she's not an actress i've particularly noticed up to now, but she plays this perfectly: every glance, every smile, every movement.

i guess i'll give "lost in translation" another shot, then. and watch "the virgin suicides" too. hey ho.

that's the question, isn't it?

then again, i've revealed myself not to be an impartial commentator.

Ha, I had the same thought.

"This is Sofia Coppola's third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you." - this is Coppola's second film on this theme - the other one was about the dumbest Yale philosophy major ever.

i've never really seen anything quite like this film, and yeah, the naturalism in a period piece that ebert talks about is only one of the things that feels really unique.

xpost -- hahaah. in retrospect i think lost in translation was like a student exercise in how to get interesting effects, but without any thought about why those effects were worth getting.

that and billy squier

he one, transfixing virtue of "Marie Antoinette " is its unembarassed devotion to the superficial. There is no morality at play here, no agaony other then bordedom, and until the last half hour, not a shred of political sense...

Lane

what i have noticed in most popular reviews of MA are variations of the above statement--i think that what is being missed, and what is being said thruout the film, and what isnt being picked up, are that

1) boredom, esp the boredom of idol capital, is a deeply poltical thing, the situtionaist corpse in the mouth, and by making the film extremely concentrated/insular , the absences of other places becomes screamingly obvious, the absence becomes presence.

2) what is called superficial or artifical, is a coded discussion of aesthetic messages--post warhol artifice adn surfaces are vital, that what is beautiful is vital. and that people who claim to seismeic change or marxist rhetoric, or deep reading or thinking are looking deep and refusing to look shallow.

3) i keep thinking of that question, at the beginning of the G04 song, the problem of leisure, what to do with pleasure--and how it contiunes from there, is a problem of great unending complexity, and its still a surface problem...we dont need to go deep to be ensared about it.

4) koons comes into this somehow, with his politics of scale, and his love of specatcle, adn his refusal to be ironic, and his reclaiming of verboten forms, including cute, soft, playful, delicate, voluminus, lush, lux, glam.

5) these are fashion words not art words.

6) art cant be fashion, its better then that.

(i dont know how this attaches, but listening to the classical operatic musical vocabulary that overwhelms the first words in the aria of the flight was smooth, in nixon was china...it sounds like court opera, french or austrian, gluck almost, but i dont know much about gluck's musical words--there is delicate eletronix thruout, in the background, plucked like harpsichords, and the music rises and falls into its excesses, and what is adam writing about:

yr flight was smooth i hope"?
smoother then usual i guess
yes it was very pleast, we stoppedin HAwaii for a day, And Gaum to catch up on the time. It's easier that way.

and it continues on that way for 4 hours.

i keep thinking that we ignore the delicate negotions of technocrats, gossip, the courts, and such things, because we are nominally democratic...

b/c its pretty it isnt political

and also this, b/c the post isnt long enough as it is

1) there is a section, early on, where marie, dressed in white, is about to become the dauphin's wife, she is driven in a blue carriage, to the edge of the woods, a tent is set up half on the border of austria, half on the border of france. her white dress is stripped from her, and she is dressed in the same blue as the carriage. the men waiting for marie are a darker shade, almost indigo, when she egts to versailles, all of the walls are a blue, almost b/w the robins egg of her dress and the indigo of the men, this colour, or this palette of colours, would continue to be a leit motif thru out the film

2) on the border, she is stripped, of clothing, a retinue, her favourite pug, she is no longer austrian, but french, its heartbreaking.

3) steve cogan, as advisor, attempting to keep everything in line, is an amazing performance, wise, amused, and the only one on the court who is not obsessed with excess. he also has the ugliest hair.

4) the cast can be divided in two, children of hollywood, indie hipster touchstones (ie steeve coogan, marriane faithful, molly shanon, rip torn, judy davis vs Jason Scharwtzman (Sofia's Cousin), asia argento (darios daughter), danny huston (johns son), mary nighy (bill's son), io bottoms (sam bottoms daughter)
exceptions: some of the french cast, kristen dunst (who has been in the hollywood scene for a decade, at 24)...this, i think, is the strongest evidence of the critical view that this is about coppala herself (that and its produced by her father adn her brother was teh 2nd unit director)

5) speaking of kristen dunst, i dont think that i have ever seen a performance this wise from her--i've also been intriuged by her blankness, and her gentleness, i cant describe why i think shes so good, but shes a delight to watch, and somewhere b/w grace kelly and one of hitchcocks blondes, and she has had a huge work history, 54 movies, she could hit 100 by the time shes 30, and a wide variety of modern pix, peroid peices, art films and commerical excesses, plus tv work...in seven years...and the best thing about this role, is her physciality, she comands a camera with her body, operatic, and much like elizabeth taylor in cat on a hot tin roof...

6) the best acting of her, is at the very end, where the mob comes to the palace, and they are waiting, have been waiting in terror for them. she goes to the window, and instead of adresses, pulls her hands across the ballsitrade, and places her head in the middle, soemwhere b/w a deep curtsty, a pilet, and acknowledging her upcoming death at the guillatine, it couldnt have lasted more than 5 seconds, but it was amazing.

7) the last scene, is a trashed bedroom, windows and mirrors smashed, chadilleres felled, walls smashed in, bed linens torn, its a still and it reminds me of the jeff wall photowork The Destroyed Room:

8) i am not sure that the jeff wall is delibrate, but the several qoutes of other art, of the time and place, are very delibrate, several qoutes of David, including a wry mention of his napeolon canvas, and a depeiction of elizabath vigee-bebrun painting, and there is a scene where this painting:
is seen full, and then seen in its present state (its called MA w. 4 children.) one of the things that i remember about the Frase bio, adn one o the things that i think is underwritten about, is LeBrun's presence in the court, the (most sympathetic, ebst painted, most delicate, etc) work, and the only propghanada in favour of our marie is these works, alluding to her presence, was wise. claiming that he politics of le brun and david were basically the same, however slight, was radical

9) speaking of the artifice, which ive sort of mentined thru out, there are two vital musical cues, one that begins the movie, and one that provides a pivot point, both by gang of four, the maoist poppunk group, that is now in fashion for aesthetic rather then poitical reasons, she restores the text from the music, the first contained the line The Problem of Leisure: What to Do for Pleasure and the second was natural not in it. AO Scott wrote about how this was not a superficial movie but a movie about sueprfiicialism, and the movie has two thesese, both contanined in these lyrics--the first is one thatall copola deals with, she makes us feel sorry for the idle rich, what do you do with cash, when you are not entertained (the songs come from an album called THats Entertainment!), or how does one keep oneself occupied when evberything is else is taken care of--it sounds like a ridicoulous problem, the philosophical impliations of at first the petit borgeious, and then (wht are the famous, the elite cultural workers and there hangers on in marxist discourse, when it comes to teh tricky mechanics of class in this new kind of world, ie lsot in translation) and then of course, Marie...and the second, is the question of artifice, and how to live authentically in a world that is (or seems) not to be real, the second question keeps trying to be answered, by shoes and deserts and masked balls and operas adn dancing, and drinking endless champers, and then, she says, i want to be more natural....so she cuts out the seeminly articial excess, she refuses to wear the wigs, starts with white cotton instead of silks/satin, and she has a little fake farm, all of the myths of her playing peasent--and this is the history of high camp, the beginning of slumming, and its easy to mock, but coppala makes it the beginning of decay, the fall of the empire,et al, and deeply tragic...

10) the formal dinners, are amazing, there are a dozen of them, and the best ones, are the ones where jason schartzman and kristen dunst eat alone, except for servants, and these dinners, are used to understand the dynamics b/w the two--the first ones feature dunst fucking up on protocal, (she reaches for a glass, she has been told earlier never to reach out for anything), also, the food, whole towers of asapargus, teacakes, cheese, whole fish on frames so they can stand up, taxideremed pheasents as a centerpeice for real pheasent dinners, et al...

11) food, of course, is nothing without ridicolous deserts, there is a whole section, set to the manic i want candy by bow wow wow where very nice shoes are interposed with very nice cakes, but there are other examples, from the beginning, where she eats bon bons, to her birthday party, waking up, amongst filthy plates, empty bottles, and enough cake to feed everyone, its about let them eat cake, of course, and also about hwo the film is a confection, and confections can be serious, and about how appearances matter more then "real food", and also are shot with such lush overwhelming

12)i wonder how critical the text is towards wealth and class, i assumed it was, but maybe it an apolgetica for the upper classes

13) the show is about the domestic, seems central to this. for a few reasons, the best acting, the best film making, of the movie, happens when the brother of the dauphin has a baby before marie, she flees, from the chattering classes, closes the door, and is aloen for the first time, the room is gilded, the highest in rocococ, and she collapses, weeping, laughing, breaking down, and the camera pans out, she is so small around all of that excess. there are several ebdrioom secens, but little fucking, adn there is discussion, consulation, letters, about her not having a child, and when she does have one it is a daughter, marie atoniette talks about how much she loves that child, and how she knows it is a disppointment for the court, and then when the infant is taken away to be nursed, she wants to nurse her herself, but such thnigs are not done, there are also dozens of people for the birth, and for the first unflowering, and for the rising...the crowds around things that are supposed to be personal, is haunting

14) she ends up having an affair, after she moves outside to her own house, where she lives a life of bohemia, away from the court--of drinking, game playing, sitting around and lsitening to guitar, dancing, etc etc, and it seems so happy, and not a forced spend till things collapse, mania, but genuine joy, and the fucking she does with louis is tennous, short, never really happens, it is an act of great delicate formality...she meets the swede at a masked ball she is not supposed to be at, and she later includes him in her (parodic, shadow, non-herichal, ?) court, and when they eventually have sex, it only happens once or twice, but it features stripping and rolling, and nakedness, and all of this unhibited fucking, wehre the penis in vagina is not an extension of the state, but for its own sake--and she ends up having a son, and its really ambigious who child this son is, she spends so little time in versailles, that it is basically assumed that the dauphin of a france is a bastard, but, like everything else in the movie, everything is half spoken, whispered, allueded to, etc

15) there are 6 long shots, lasting almsot 30 seconds each, throughout the movie, each of these shots are establishing of different moods, so if you cut these segments together, you would see the sun rise, at mid day, set, and then the dark, just as her power was doing all of this...

16) i think the movie is a masterpeice, difficult, beautiful, seductive, brilliantly acted, and smooth, working simletneously, adn without effort. i think she is the only director working today whos status is primalry visual. and i think you should see it

omgwtf? spell-check is F7 in MS Word, d00d.

gypsy mothra upthread review is pretty interesting though. I still have some issues with some of the historical inaccuracies that are gross, such as her getting drunk when in reality she was a teetotaller, but I agree with the comment that it's so obviously not of its time, who cares.

my wife and I both thought it was weirdly toned down, almost like they were trying for a PG-13. there's that Strokes scene, and then the one out by the elephant pen where Marie's brother's very important and successful sex advice to Schwartzman suddenly turns into a voice-over? wha? what did he tell him? the fact that King Louis' disinterest in sex was never explained was weird.

I didn't like this much at all.

i heard her talking about it in the office yesterday! i didn't interject because i was supposed to be working on something and didn't want to attract supervisory glares. also people in the office are most likely tired of me talking about marie antoinette.

i like all of s.c.'s movies, not sure in what order. i understand the complaints about some aspects of them -- particularly racial stuff in lost in translation (and also michel gondry bitching her out for the depiction of spike jonze in that). but i think where objections tend to be most off-base is in complaints about character development, narrative arc, etc., which i think are kind of category errors. her movies are more impressionistic and experimental than maybe they let on, or than people are prepared for when they enter the theater. which is not exactly the audience's fault -- you go to see a movie about marie antoinette with hollywood starlets, you kind of expect period-film biopic. it's just that coppola didn't make a period-film biopic. the movie's a lot of things, but not those things.

none of which means that people who didn't like it somehow should have liked it. but its terms take some figuring out, and judging it on terms other than its own is in some ways a misjudgment.

where some upthread saw the farm scenes as "a mini-Malick" I was thinking "she really falls back on prettiness a lot, huh?"

also how corny was "I Want Candy" as a song choice

Uh, er... was Paris Hilton stripped of her friends and family at 14, expected to produce an heir securing peace between two empires?

mainly the movie seemed to be about picking out trees and shoes and diamonds and having cake and champagne while you're in a bubble insulated from real life, no?

and also sept. 11.

i'm concerned with storytelling sometimes. it depends on the movie. i mean, if the emphasis isn't on story, there have to be other things that get my attention. i was pretty well engaged all the way through this -- not least just by trying to get and keep a handle on it. it kept shifting, which i liked. it didn't feel insubstantial to me, which meant that there was something there to grapple with, so i kept trying to get a hold on it. i'm not sure i ever fully did, but i didn't feel cheated either. it has remained interesting to think about for the last few weeks, so that says something.

but like they say, ymmv.

This is approximately where I wound up, which meant I spent the entire time feeling visually interested but generally bored. Coppolla is amazing with mood, especially when she's conveying it using light, music, and color -- the flat gray wintry light in the first half was the high point of the film for me, especially when paired with Radio Dept. and hound-fur -- but I just felt a terrific emptiness beyond that. It was as if no one involved had spent any time thinking through anything about the film: theme, plot, characters, even style. And this seems like an even greater failing given that the character in question is a nexus of so much stuff to talk about, and given that there are stylistic juxtapositions here that theoretically could have gone somewhere. I saw an interview with Coppolla where she claimed people's multiple interpretations of this film must prove how "provocative" it is, but surely it's exactly the opposite, as there's nothing provocative about this at all: people are reading it in a million different ways because there's lots of great sensory experience but no meaning inside, and the best anyone can do is guess after what it might all add up to. So: why this story? What's the point? "Marie Antoinette probably shopped too much, but she was under a lot of pressure?" Is that seriously the most that could be drawn from this? It's like making a film versin of the Odyssey where teh main thrust seems to be "Odysseus got lost a lot," and at times it felt like Coppolla was actively resisting dramatizing the character (or anything else). I understand her decision to keep this claustrophobically centered around M.A.'s emotional experience, but you'd think if that were the case we'd actually get some depth of emotional experience from her. We didn't: nothing happened to or because of the character that wasn't fairly straightforward and obvious and (if you ask me) basically boring.

The stylistic mixup was equally a problem for me: this was essentially a proper period piece with modern music and occasional flashes of modern behavior (most of which, in the theater which I saw this, didn't seem to be working correctly -- they were getting titters from various spots in the audience). I wish she'd committed more to the modern aspect: it's not hard to imagine this conceived as a fully-modern crazy-teenagers version of itself, the way Baz Luhrmann would probably make it, decadent frivolous idiots in the dying days of monarchy. (I would so rather see that film, especially if it could be the first decadent period piece in history to acknowledge that these people were totally filthy and vermin-infested 24/7 -- just one shot of some flies crawling out of a mile-hair floured-up hairdo and I'd be happy.) Instead we get a mostly-straight period piece, nicely atmospheric through most of it, completely clunky in its timeline, and with a Marie Antoinette who seems, by the end, totally distant and unrealized and cardboard. (When she says "my place is with the king" in the final minutes, it just ... has none of the weight of a character we've been watching for two hours.)

I dunno ... I spent a lot of this checking my watch and wondering if Coppolla had any plans or ideas concerning what this was about, apart from the purely visual and atmospheric. Which even that could have sufficed for this -- I feel like she was maybe attracted to Marie Antoinette as this dreamy atmospheric thinker, the sort of person who would (e.g.) construct a pastoral fairy-world for herself to escape to -- but even that doesn't come through strongly enough, because I don't feel like Coppolla's thought about any of this stuff at all. She's good at realizing the fairy-worlds on film, but other than that she just trudges through a lot of events with very little idea of what it might mean or how it might add up into anything like character or story.

Still trying to work out precisely how Lost in Translation used that quality to its advantage, whereas with this one it feels like such a detriment -- I assume a lot of it is that her subject matter here carries a way higher expectation of having thought about things.

Fixed.

Then it would be a Michel Gondry movie.

(Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.)

i guess i feel like character and story are not only not her strengths, they're not really her concern. she's a, um, i don't know, like a compositional filmmaker. it's all in the mise en scene, you know? the lighting, the mood, the music, the whole frame. i think anthony was otm in his fashion/design references, i think this is kind of like fashion filmmaking. which i don't mean as an insult, it's the application of a way of conceiving and conveying ideas that is not rooted in cinematic narrative conventions.

none of which matters if it doesn't work for you. the only reason i've been trying to figure it out is that it does work for me -- even though i understand a lot of the criticisms and agree with at least some of them. but still, it didn't bore me, or annoy me, or make me doubt its intelligence. and so what interests me is why, what's going on inside it, what's it doing that -- for me -- compensates for or makes irrelevant all the things it isn't doing?

Well see I don't really mind that she's an atmospheric filmmaker, and I'd agree that ideas can be carried by stuff other than conventional plot/character mechanics -- but I hesitate at the word "ideas" in that nonetheless. I'm not sure what "ideas" were being carried by this film. I guess that's the split between us. So yeah, I'd love it if you spent time thinking about it and tried to explain what it was, specifically, that all the mood and atmosphere actually conveyed to you: is it just a painterly "ooh, that's pretty, that's emotionally evocative," or do you get more particular content out of it?

Coppola cares a lot more about performances than Van Sant does these days. The nullity of Elephant's characterizations matched the sterile art direction and bric-a-brac, while Dunst's charm and deliciousness (and Rip Torn and Steve Coogan's) signified as much as the film's decor.

Another random note on the kind of stuff that disappointed me: I'm told that a lot of the grandeur of that particular court was actually kind of a political act, a way of propping up the image of the monarchy against failing confidence and (for a while) the lack of an heir? Which is way more interesting to me than the way it came out in this movie, where it felt more like, I dunno: "Marie Antoinette was born into a life of intense scrutiny and pressure, but on the other hand she had pretty much all the money she wanted, so ..."

not only paris hilton, but a whole generation of socialites, who have fake careers, and swim thru simulacra... (ie kimberly stewart, lindsay lohan, nicole richie, kristen calvari in LA; plum skyes, tom parker bowles in london, et al et al)

Anthony, I agree that there are some great parallels to draw there, but what would this film tell us about the idle rich and ennui and this point where we get so rich we want to live like rustic folk? I think a lot of my disappointment stemmed from it seeming to raise those issues, but not really being interested in them: Marie playing shepherd seems so modern-American, but I didn't feel like Coppolla had much in particular to say about that fact.

(P.S. sorry to post so much -- I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just kinda curious about how this film worked or didn't.)

Coppola's eye is ironic enough to regard Marie's pastoral idyll with a certain bemusement. Marie reads and applies Rousseau as a young woman today might look to Oprah for solace. Coppola's gift consists of refracting commentary through unaffected gaga wonder and a buoyant acceptance of privilege.

wouldn't saying something about it have been kind of obvious and belaboring the point? i guess one thing i think is interesting about the movie is its kind of detached, observational tone. it watches things happen and comments on them by watching them (the choices of what's onscreen vs. what's not) but it doesn't have some grand political vision.

...it is a teen-dream history scrapbook, with overtones and undertones that are darker and smarter than it at first lets on. The unkinder critics called it frivolous, but that is wide of the mark. There is plenty of frivolity on display, but it has both context and consequences.

...The credits are interspersed with shots of assorted fineries, and one langorous look at the film’s title character, embodied by Kirsten Dunst, sprawled on a chaise longue. She smiles knowingly into the camera and shakes her head, as if refusing to reveal some bit of gossip. The shot recalls Dunst’s teasing wink during the opening of The Virgin Suicides, and it is hard to miss the parallels. Like Lux Lisbon and her sisters, Antoinette is alluring, elusive and — of course — doomed. From the very beginning, Coppola plays off against the audience’s knowledge of Antoinette’s fate (as she did with the foretold deaths of Suicides). As Antoinette finds her way through the absurdities of court life, chatters with her friends, dotes on her children, fusses over her gardens, the coming revolution looms over all of it, giving an inevitably dark tint to the movie’s Champagne shimmer.

...Coppola’s Versailles is a world of privilege, vanity and waste, where power is both elaborately deferred to and endlessly sought. It is insulated and isolated from the concerns of the broader world – although not, of course, as insulated as it seems. There is a lot to gawk at in this hothouse jewel box, but not much to admire. Coppola lavishes attention on the resplendent table settings, wardrobes and wallpaper, but always with a queasy eye; these things are all beautiful, because they are meant to be beautiful, but it is a kind of wanton and ostentatious beauty that suggests an underlying rot. The mountains of fruits and fishes that pile up uneaten between Antoinette and her almost autistically unresponsive husband, Louis, are monuments of choreographed decay.

...The movie is really a series of riffs on the idea of Marie Antoinette, refracted through various prisms: fairy-tale princess clichés, feminist historicism, Hollywood celebrity gossip, post-9/11 tension. Like The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette is not exactly a narrative. It does have a story, but it doesn’t bother to fill in a lot of the background, nor does it detail the ultimate fates of Antoinette and Louis; it assumes that all of that is well enough known. The movie is largely interested in the atmosphere of Versailles, the way the abundance and indulgence mask the insularity and oppression of the place.

...The film ends with the royal family fleeing. The final shot is a silent view of their bedchamber, after the mob has rampaged through and trashed the place. The choice to end there – rather than with the iconic beheadings, which came four years later – is telling. Coppola’s interest is not in Antoinette, but Antoinette at Versailles. The film begins with her arrival there and ends with her departure, the palace in shambles.
Coppola has protested that she wasn’t making a political film, and she is right, in the sense that it is not an ideological movie. She does not aim to either praise or bury Antoinette, so much as contemplate her. But the film is certainly politically aware, as the Gang of Four song signals from the start. The song is about Western consumer capitalism, and so in its own way is the movie. And by locating her study of materialism at a historical nexus of indulgence and violent reprisal, Coppola inevitably reflects her own time. She may or may not have intended Versailles as an analogy to modern Western affluence, but either way that is how it reads. And the destruction glimpsed in the final shot can’t help recalling the destruction of Sept. 11. The point is not that there is any obvious similarity between the French mobs and the Islamic hijackers – in their grievances or their aims -- but that the obliviousness of Antoinette and her entire social caste has disquieting echoes in the comfortable quiescence of Americans at the turn of the 21st century. What is lost at the end is not Antoinette herself, but the illusions of safety and privilege promised by Versailles.

i think it does approach those issues (or not quite issues, but yeah you know), and i dont think a text needs to offer solutions in order to effective...telling us that ennui is a force that drives (art/fashion/tawdry sex) as much as any of the larger, more direct emotions seems enough to me...and the idea of rosseu(sp) as self help crashes the high against the low

or what mothra said

i dont exactly see 9/11 there, but i do see a concern that capital will go away, that random money on random things wont happen anymore

warhols central conciet, or one of warhols central conceits was a paralyzed fear that things would return to philly, and he would be broke and alone

coppalla will never be broke, but her ennui seems centered on what happens when money or men or pleasure leaves--how do you clean up a mess when you have never been taught the nessc skills

in VS, we never know why the sisters kill themselves, and we never figure out how they clean up that mess, and in LIT, we never know what happens, in that last scene b/w murrary and johannsen...

i think that the scene with the le brun portrait has something to do with this, but im not quite sure what...

in fact im pretty sure lebrun is the center of all of this

for the first time in ages, while watching a movie and after it ended, i felt that i was the audience this film was meant for - i don't know where that places me but i do know that that's a rare feeling for me re: film, books, tv, internet, etc etc. certainly i consume and participate in popular culture on many levels, but am often made kind of low-level anxious by it - and i think this is both because i'm not fully welcome and because i don't want to fully embrace something that doesn't speak to me or even that tries to speak to me, y'know, "get me". so i'm often left in this more observational mode than participatory mode, to tell the truth, and that creates emotional distance, a bit of ennui, i guess, which i really dislike.

so with this movie, i felt there was a balance between intellectualization and emotion and just frivolty and leisure that i really connected with. and i've heard many women also in their late 20s/early 30s say similar things - that in a way this movie is a sign of relief for us. it doesn't try to portray us or directly "tell our stories", but it does capture a set of complex feelings we have about ourselves and our places in the world.

so this is part of why i'm not concerned here about historical accuracies and character representations and narrative and things i'd often be concerned about in film/entertainment. as has been said upthread, s coppola is more a compositional filmaker, or a fashion (by which i mean not only clothing/adornment, but image and trend/change) filmmaker, where composition and fashion are clearly culturally informed and informing.

this is much more a poetic film than a prose film, obviously, and sometimes poetry isn't mean to be fully understood - you can let it wash over you and gather meaning from its tone, not necessarily all of its words, as central as those words might be. i guess i'm talking about a certain kind of artistic wholism, where the sum of the parts really is what matters - how the parts work together rather than their individual strength. and i like how the imperfections of s coppola's filmmaking style are actually integral to the film itself - i'm not looking for perfection - perfection is part of the cause of my above-mentioned anxieties. so seeing this film put me at ease yet still kept me thinking, was still a challenge of a sort.

and i don't know if i've ever felt as good, as at ease, while watching a film as i felt during the scenes when 'ceremony' was playing.
it was kind of weird.

somebody upthread might've said something about looking at the 'wrong thing' throughout the film... the rumple of otherwise perfect lace, the stairs' blue-velvet tread slipping, a background player's nosewipe, etc., and i couldn't agree more. the whole viewing experience (as far as i care) consisted of looking for gaffes and elements of humanity.

there are a lot of easy claims to make about this film's strengths, and most of them are outwardly dismissive of its weaknesses. e.g.: 'its lack of substance means X or Y' but the fact remains that even a smidgining of plot, of rooting and dramatic interest, of narrative structure, what-have you, could've improved the picture. a tiny nigh-subtextual question (will she conceive? will her relationship with Louis improve?) could've acted oil-carrier to a broader range of pigments than the limited range available. a smeg of counterpoint, a smeg of authorial distance, a smeg less quitude ('depth') and reflection (reaction) and the film could've seemed to me so much more than the sum of its parts.

it had nothing but narrative structure

young & forced into marriage, still uncomfortable about his body. He is plagued by self-doubt - his dauphin father is dead, the spectre of responsibility for all of France looms over him at age 15, and yet he is already expected to produce another heir.

for now, though:

The final shot is a silent view of their bedchamber

on my second viewing, i'm sure i could hear the beating of wings; the sound of an unseen bird. which obviously brought to mind a gilded-cage metaphor (not to mention a true "return to nature") ... thing is, nobody else i've spoken to seems to have heard this. did i imagine it? was it just my heart beating faster?

Robyn, could you expand on that one? The one thing I'm starting to get on board with, as far as what this movie is "about," is ... well, I guess the fact that female protagonists in the majority of things are assumed to have the same goals (a man and family), whereas this one presents a woman who seems unsure about what might actually satisfy her. (I suppose it's pretty extraordinary that having children isn't presented as any kind of solution; fulfilling, sure, but certainly not the thing that makes everything worthwhile.) That's something I can get behind, in a sense, but it's something I find a little hard to uncritically relate to, since I feel like the failure to solve that problem, on my part and on the part of the people around me, is kind of a major failing. Ha: it's MA as "grup," treated to such wealth that she has no idea what she wants to do with herself! She even makes attempts at the arts! Wealth and comfort liberate us to realize our own pointlessness!

i think this doesn't just present a woman, a character, to whom we're to relate, but presents a layered situation, a set of images working together. yes, marie antoinette is the title of the movie and she is the central figure, but the film is as much about the world she circulates in as it is about her - she's not exactly your traditional protagonist, if a protagonist at all. to me she's more of a central image than a character. and in presenting an image, s coppola opens up the viewer's ability to connect that image to other images - this is part of what i mean by poetic filmmaking.

i also felt the film conveyed the kind of feminism i adhere to - which is weird considering the era it's set in, i know, and that it presents only the aristocracy. but the film was made now and part of its success to me is that it treads the line between period piece and the contemporary without being annoyingly clever/intellectual about it - plus it's also conflictually nostalgic for the 80s - a time of growing up, teenagehood, for s coppola, and for me too. so the feminism i'm talking about is one that acknowledges conflict and weakness and confusion and fucking up (in youth and in all of life really) while at the same time celebrating women's capabilities and actions and strengths. not just what our potential might be, y'know, what we "could be", but what we are right now and at all the moments in our lives, laying that out and saying it's okay. (plus, this kind of feminism is not only about women, but about acknowledging of emotions, for everyone - i see feminism as a tool for understanding the layeredness of people and the world, rather than a defined position from which to act.)

because a lot of art/film/political-cultural criticism is still running around talking about "being strong" and reaching goals as a women and then being able to say that's done, i did my part or whatever. whereas i think that while that celebrates strength and ability, it still takes up the fairy tale mythology - that we're constantly working towards something - if we're "good enough" we'll reach that and everything's gonna be okay - we will be recognized and taken care of = happily ever after. so life becomes this constant effort of goal reaching - fine in itself, goals are good to have - but then another battle presents itself and says whoa, you were good enough but what that is changed, so you've gotta try again - it becomes wearing because the myth continues even though we thought we might've gotten to the end of the story. so yeah, marie antoinette lived that fairy tale princess life and yet she was not happily ever after, so this film tells us - it wasn't even that she was constantly sad or fully un-satisfied with life; she just was, like any thinking person, esp a young person, i think, up and down. and who lives in a constant state of happiness anyway? (one of the film's points, i think.)

one of the most perfect scenes to me was after she sleeps with the swedish soldier - it's a montage of her sighing and rolling around on her bed with a smile on her face - it's totally ridiculous and totally otm. my friend and i turned to each other and were like, holy shit, i've done that - and not only as teenagers but in our recent lives! it's a ridiculous thing, when thought about, when intellectualized, but that feeling is necessary to life. so scenes like that, as silly as they might seem, fit into the film to create a message that it wasn't all that silly really. yes, some of us do want a spouse and family and giddy love - why deny this or feel guilty about it? or why have to create bianaries btwn family life and work/intellectual life?

i don't think it's a major failing at all to not know what one wants to do with one's life, to not know what will satisfy - because this changes and conflicts arise throughout life that get in the way of satisfaction. yes, marie antoinette was wealthy and had time to dabble in trying to find what might satisfy her, but do we not do that at all class levels? even if we're struggling to make ends meet, are we all not still at some level searching for pleasure/satifaction even if we can't articulate what it is that gives that to us? (or if we can, acknowledge that what made us happy at one time might not continue to satisfy? more cakes! more babies! more extravagance! didn't work for her and it doesn't work for many. capitalist critique,obv, but also the truth.)

i suppose this is why i've taken a few paragraphs to get to your point - i wanted to talk about ways of being in and seeing the world and how our myths (these stories we grow up on and live with, some of which are as old as language) conflict with the "modern world" and the things we should want, the ways we should act (esp as women or as emotionally driven beings), and how the direction our lives go in is never set - we are always re-adjusting, falling down, getting back up, balancing - this fluctuating state doesn't mean we're failures at life - in all that are great moments of happiness, sadness and everything in between.

and so: the presentation of this not-new idea by this film felt less like a "telling" to me and more like a showing (but not a show-casing), less judgment, more openness, more places for connection.

also, robyn very otm, lots of interesting stuff. i've been thinking about what exactly is female about s.c.'s movies -- not "feminine", but i mean they feel kind of interesting and alien to me (as a not-a-female), and her whole sense of narrative seems female (or at least not male, in the cliche sense that male = linear, goal-directed, etc). also they're very much about women in a way that not many male directors manage without being either condescending or fetishizing.

where is the converse?

never saw it either

0:10 in this clip

gypsy mothra finds the raw kernel at the core of this movie.

is there any need for me to see this film?

i liked it because it was pink and i think they did heroin. okay, opium, whatever.

this is sofia coppola's biopic starring kirsten dunst (as marie) and jason schwartzmann (as louis xvi) by the way.

― amateurist0, Sunday, February 12, 2006 7:58 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have no memory of jason schwartzmann in this film at all! ie thank you brain for your finely tuned memory editing system <3

"i think this doesn't just present a woman, a character, to whom we're to relate, but presents a layered situation, a set of images working together. yes, marie antoinette is the title of the movie and she is the central figure, but the film is as much about the world she circulates in as it is about her - she's not exactly your traditional protagonist, if a protagonist at all. to me she's more of a central image than a character. and in presenting an image, s coppola opens up the viewer's ability to connect that image to other images - this is part of what i mean by poetic filmmaking."

This actually is pretty dead-on, it reminds me as well of how I felt with Morvern Callar, they both operate in that same way where the dreamy soundtrack collides with the visuals which seem so disconnected and remote. They both seem to have, what I suppose you could call, a female sensibility. Not that this movie is really like Morvern Callar but also, yeah, it is.

Like I feel like Morvern is more of a Munch figure than anything else, that scene where she pulls her skirt up to the fishermen.

ah Morvern Callar and Marie Antoinette, movies made only to showcase the director's great mixtape abilities :) (in Morvern Callar the soundtrack is actually on a tape IN the movie..)

anyway, so-so movies. Would prefer Marie over Morvern.

^^Missing the point!

as usual :)

Lol!

this movie was horrible tho - is that what everyones trying to say?

No this movie is great!

no im pretty sure its a terrible failure in every sense of the word - like i couldnt even get through it on a 10 hour flight type of failure

sucks for you!

not as bad as shrek 3!

never seen!

maybe u would like it!

maybe!

this film is really good. a LOT better than shitty lost in translash.

didn't even mind the terrible soundtrack.

LiT is fantastic and the soundtrack to MA has a LOT of awesomeness in it!

The Kevin Shields remix of Bow Wow + Couperin + Rameau + Avril 14th + Hong Kong Garden + Ceremony + Plainsong + Scarlatti =/= terrible

the idea of this film is truly promising. and there's something intermittently wonderful about all the decadent tableaux. but the actual experience of watching the whole thing, god. sofia coppola really makes movies like a fashion designer, for good and ill. she has about as many ideas in this film as might go into a very satisfying high-concept photo layout.

i guess i'll just watch the trailer again.

does this movie have its strong partisans? it came, and it went, and i haven't heard anyone mention it in almost three years.

also this is gonna sound obnoxious but for a director who is so invested in the pictorial, coppola isn't very visually inventive. every scene i've rewatched from this film is underwhelming in its orchestration of color, rhythm, etc. i just don't think she has the chops to make the most of her ideas.

Maybe not a strong partisan, but I think what Rrrobyn and Gypsy Mothra wrote upthread is spot on.
A couple of scenes have a true "classic cinema" feeling, while the Gang of Four opening seems to me like a pretty clear declaration of intents - Natural's Not In It.

I absolutely adore this movie and still watch it probably once every six months, but admittedly, a huge part of the appeal is Versailles for me as I've always been fascinated by it.

I've been reading about the French court and Versailles quite a bit recently, I keep meaning to watch this if only for the costumes.

Versailles as imagined and recreated by Sofia Coppola, because obviously there's nothing properly "historical" in this movie (hence the French "don't-touch-the-revolution" hate reaction etc etc).

sinker repped for it in his films of the year for sight and sound if that = strong partisan.

Versailles as imagined and recreated by Sofia Coppola, because obviously there's nothing properly "historical" in this movie (hence the French "don't-touch-the-revolution" hate reaction etc etc).

Er, uh, but it was actually filmed in Versailles, so not sure what you are getting at.

I meant I'm fascinated the Palace itself, so it was fascinating for me to see it.

Sorry, I wasnt that clear in my post!- I just wanted to say that Coppola clearly wasn't interested in a historical reconstruction of the Versailles life, one of the reasons I found some of the French criticisms amusing.

i remember being really let down by the allegedly nightclub-esque ball scene. kinda am on am's side with this one.

jason schwartzman pretty funny in it

I was a partisan – it made my best of the decade – but I've no interest in watching it again.

Sorry, I wasnt that clear in my post!- I just wanted to say that Coppola clearly wasn't interested in a historical reconstruction of the Versailles life, one of the reasons I found some of the French criticisms amusing.

Oh yeah, I won't argue that point! My father-in-law is a total scholar of her life and this era in general, so we watched this with him and it was great to hear his running commentary about the "real" history behind it. BUT he did fawn over the costumes and furniture, he thought they did an amazing job with all of that.

schwartzman was a casting coup!

(hence the French "don't-touch-the-revolution" hate reaction etc etc).
― Marco Damiani, Tuesday, May 11, 2010 9:13 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

some french, but cahiers et al really liked it.

the whole "natural's not in it" thing is like half an interesting idea (if quite on-the-nose). proudly wearing artifice on its sleeve and all that. but that's pretty much as far as the idea goes, aside from a general (and vague) rhyme between artifice and the "artificial" world of the versailles court.

i mean i hate to get all canonical and shit but visconti did this a long time ago, like 10,000x better. even in "ludwig."

do people even remember visconti anymore? i mean aside from "the leopard" which everybody knows.

i mean if you were ever mystified by the way the french toss about that term "mise-en-scène," just find an opportunity to see "senso" on the big screen. hay-yo.

Most of his films are rather awful (The Leopard and bits of Rocco and Senso excepted).

"most"? the only ones i'm not fond of are the strange, the damned, and death in venice (which were all made in a short period, ironically at the height of his international profile).

the strangeR

honestly though most of your posts seem either pretentious or callow so i'm not taking your opinion too srsly.

http://www.goodlightscraps.com/content/hugs/hugs-15.jpg, etc.

http://www.skeetermonkey.com/images/skeeter-attitude-1.jpg

http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d83451583769e201116893a7ad970c-800wi

I have no problem with seeming callow when discussing pretentious swill like The Damned and Death in Venice.

i liek this movee

I bought this for £2 when Zavvi were selling off all their stock earlier this year, but haven't got around to watching it yet. Maybe that sums it up for me.

sinker repped for it in his films of the year for sight and sound if that = strong partisan.

― toastmodernist, Tuesday, May 11, 2010 3:15 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

... and pirates of the caribbean 2 iirc!

i think this movie is ok... kirsten dunst is easy to watch. don't think i'd bother with it a second time or anything.

easy to watch, hard to listen to.

schwarzmann the best thing in it by far. have yet to see him in something where he wasn't enjoyable, he makes whatever shitty thing he's in better.

Funny People, for ex.

wait, we're still talking about the trailer, right?

Wow, Shakey. Our opinions are 180 degrees apart: I find him insufferable, and he's a drag in whatever he's in -- except here! His petulance is used to shrewd effect.

even the Fantastic Mr. Fox?

mark sinker's public tastes in film have a touch of chuck klosterman. sort of wilfully cheeky and aggressively idiosyncratic. i think mark is brilliant, though, unlike klosterman.

the orthography of "fantastic mr. fox" is extremely pleasing.

http://www.downoncemore.com/image_samples/fantastic_mr_fox_title.jpg

i mean, isn't that nice? it just looks nice, sounds nice.

let's try that again

http://www.webwombat.com.au/entertainment/movies/images/trailer-fantastic-mr-fox.jpg

"i mean i hate to get all canonical and shit but visconti did this a long time ago, like 10,000x better. even in ludwig".

I think Coppola and Visconti have very different approaches: at least to me, Marie-Antoinette is like a totally American teen movie accidentally shot in Versailles. And I mean this in a good way!

And talking about Visconti, why none ever talks about Ossessione, by far his best film (ok, maybe with Senso)? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj5_n3EHOwU

it's like a totally plotless american teen movie consisting of a series of tableaux and montage sequences, no? that's not a criticism, but if it can be likened to a "teen movie," one have to admit it approaches the category sideways...

"it's like a totally plotless american teen movie consisting of a series of tableaux and montage sequences, no?"

Definitely: it is somehow aimless and there's no real narrative core, but in some way this mirrors the actual feeling of being young, carefree, even a little dumb. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Coppola tells about Versailles thinking of Hollywood spoilt children.

teen movie without any funny dialogue?

Definitely: it is somehow aimless and there's no real narrative core, but in some way this mirrors the actual feeling of being young, carefree, even a little dumb. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Coppola tells about Versailles thinking of Hollywood spoilt children.

I don't know about any of your experiences with 'teen movies' but all of the ones I have watched have an intensely strong narrative core – but a hackneyed one. I can't actually name any teen movies (err, since the breakfast club) that consist of a series of tableaux and montage sequences that aim to mirror the experience of being young and carefree.

Marie Antoinette is totally aimless and lacking most any narrative, sure, but that is pointedly not a condition of any teen movie i have ever seen

"I can't actually name any teen movies (err, since the breakfast club) that consist of a series of tableaux and montage sequences that aim to mirror the experience of being young and carefree"

Marie-Antoinette is exactly this movie: far from perfect, but personal and that's what I like about it.

Marie Antoinette is totally aimless and lacking most any narrative, sure, but that is pointedly not a condition of any teen movie i have ever seen

― ampersand (remy bean), Wednesday, May 12, 2010 5:43 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

right, that was my point.

i was agreeing with you, sir

well, then, i raise my glass to you!

im so happy

if only robespierre et al were this conciliatory

Like The Dammed, with all its pretensions!

One of ilx crew's best habits is to keep in mind films/music/bks that everyone else has forgotten or passed anyone else by!

More good than ill in this 'fashion designer's' film. If you compare to things like A single Man, for example. But both I wouldn't mind catching on the film screen, then forget about it to then be reminded of its existence on ilx many months later.

or years later as the case may be!

I'm just rewatching this right now... it somehow seems even more naive than when I first saw it.
It completely changes history as though the values of the upper-middle class that supplanted the upper class in the 19th and 20th centuries -were- the original values of the upper class, doesn't it? So confusing...

u gotta admit it's a great trailer tho

so, so ahead of its time. would be a hit today. common critique i remember "she didn't get the history right!" is so stupid. the death of stalin came out at exactly the right time.

Watched it for the first time the other week. I remember seeing the trailer when it came out (I guess I would’ve been about 20) and mentally marking it as something to avoid, knee jerk reaction to a kind of cute My Mix Tape Movie! sorta thing. Appreciated the angle she was going for now that I’m some years removed. It was good.

I'd like to see a version of this scored with period music. Regardless of SC's intent.

Yeah, curious how or if it would really work that way.

It was nice. Seriously doubt it would be a hit today though. It mostly really made me want to re-watch Barry Lyndon.

well, as much as a hit as the death of stalin. maybe more. it certainly wouldn't get trashed like it did in 2006, and that's obviously far more important to a film's reputation & legacy than its box office numbers.

Weird timing - I’d never seen this having retrospectively hated LiT and reacting the same way to the trailer. But I picked up the DVD for two bucks at a market to show my daughters for the costumery and the patisserie, basically. I liked it more than I expected, and my sixteen years old said dad I literally want to live in this movie. Which I think is the point - fuck history, how would it feel to go back and live that person’s life as me?

Saw this at the cinema aged 18 and definitely wanted to live in it (I went and bought loads of velvet-embossed stationery immediately afterwards and started listening to New Order all the time), then was disappointed when every person I showed it to subsequently found it incredibly boring. I guess it is slightly over-long, but I still find it great fun. Sophia Coppola is a master of disaffected rich youth and I admire that she’s never really deviated from portraying what she intimately knows.

i remember liking it. reminded me a little of baz luhrmann's romeo + juliet

I kinda love this movie

it was stuck in my mind for days after seeing it. really left an impression.