Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Sofia Coppola
Cast :
Kirsten Dunst”¦”¦”¦.Marie-Antoinette
Jason Schwartzman”¦”¦”¦.Louis XVI
Rip Torn”¦”¦”¦.Louis XV
Sofia Coppola inherited plenty of expectations by following in her fathe’s footsteps. While having the same last name as the man who directed such classics as The Outsiders, Apocalypse Now and The Godfather may open some doors, the pressure to write and/or direct a classic film is much greater on her than on almost any other director working in Hollywood. Francis Ford Coppola has four great films on his resume, four more than a lot of directors, as well as having helped write the seminal classic Patton and having helped write or adapt to the screen the four great films on his resume. So when it comes to his daughter, both critically and commercially, the standards by which she is held accountable to are much higher then plenty of other directors. Having already nabbed an Oscar for writing with 2003’s Lost in Translation, Coppola has followed her fathe’s output habits by attempting at going for quality over quantity with Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette follows the legendary French queen (Kirsten Dunst) through her formative years. It’s a period piece that follows the queen from her ascension to the French royal court via marriage to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) from her native Austria at the tender age of 14. From there the film moves through the life and times of Antoinette, following her from her initial days as wife of the heir to throne to being crowned as the Queen of France upon the sudden death of Louis VX (Rip Torn) through the beginning of the French Rebellion that would ultimately lead to the forced removal of the monarchy.
The film is a departure from Ms. Coppola’s prior directorial work in both scope and scale; this is a period piece filled with lavish costumes and picturesque scenery. Shot on location at Versailles, this is by far Coppola’s most ambitious project to date. Lost in Translation focused much more on minimal, focusing less on Tokyo’s foreboding presence and more on the intimacy of the surroundings, Marie Antoinette is a costume drama that has a much larger reach to it. This is one of history’s most notorious rulers, someone who was rumored to have said “Then let them cake” upon hearing of a bread shortage amongst the population, and it would be easy to portray Antoinette as the shrill, arrogant queen history often paints her as. It would also be easy to have everyone use era-appropriate accents and try and recapture an era that history only knows through events and paintings.
What Coppola does to great effect is bring the era to life with a “punk rock” sensibility, if one had to find a term for it. The film is shown through Marie’s eyes and as such it comes with a whimsical innocence of sorts. This is a cast that is quite international, as opposed to being native Frenchmen, and as such the cast is allowed to use their normal accents as opposed to try and use fake ones. It allows for better understanding of the dialogue, for starters, but what it really does is make the world more accessible.
We see through Antoinette’s perspective, as this world filled with courtesy and customs seems all the more unique from this perspective, but it also lends a unique manner of introduction. Putting in songs from a band like Bow Wow Wow and other bands from the 1980s illicit a much stronger emotional response throughout the film; sometimes going against the grain brings out great results and Coppola wisely interjects modernity into a film about a specific time period to great effect. Marie’s inexperience with this world, and gradual introduction to and eventual rebellion against, become easier to grasp through Kirsten Dunst.
For Dunst, Marie Antoinette is an attempt at an Oscar vehicle for her. Better known for more “cute” roles than serious drama, as a resume filled with films like Wimbledon and Bring it on are a bit lighter fare than this undertaking. And while surrounded with plenty of other actors generally considered more serious thespians, Dunst doesn’t try and match them by overacting or bringing something to the character that isn’t inside her. Marie Antoinette is at heart a girl who wants nothing to do with the customs of the role she finds herself in, just the lifestyle, but she’s more of a product of her surroundings than someone who is truly a bad person. Dunst brings a sensible performance to her, as she’s a woman who’s had everything indulged to her due to rank so it’s no surprise that things like politics would be something she wouldn’t be eager to discuss.
It’s a different take on the historical figure from Coppola, and it’s quite the entertaining one. Coppola has crafted a film that not only looks magnificent but it also is much more accessible than many prior costume dramas in the last decade.
