Saw Marie Antoinette yesterday, and I’ll say off the bat I was a little disappointed. I’m tempted to blame my fondness for Lost in Translation, but I think Sophia Coppola’s new film is just okay. It has its moments, most of which are carried by Kirsten Dunst who gives a really terrific performance. And Jason Schwartzman’s Louis Auguste is great. When crowned the new King of France after his grandfather (played by Rip Torn, who like Molly Shannon, Shirley Henderson, and the massive Marianne Faithfull, is underexploited) suddenly dies of smallpox, Louis Auguste bows down, turns his head upward and prays “God help us, we are too young to reign.” It’s a brief but enjoyable scene because Schwartzman’s Louis Auguste really is like a school kid who prefers playing in the grass with the other boys to courting pretty young ladies. His first real exchange with his new wife is as follows:
Marie: I understand your hobby is collecting keys.
Louis Auguste: That’s right.
Marie: So, you like keys?
Louis Auguste: Obviously.
This is another enjoyable but brief moment. In fact, it’s almost as if the film is just a string of brief but enjoyable (some less so) moments–some impromtu, some more carefully staged. And I’m inclined to say that this is what makes the film interesting.
Hanging from this string is the actual story, Marie Antoinnette’s journey (literally, from Austria to Versaille, and then figuratively, from being a curiosity to being a commanding presence), and it is not all that interesting. And historical accuracy is not what Coppola’s after. The film’s big theme is excess, and not just food and drink. One of the nicer moments in the film is when Marie is waiting to be dressed by her ladies-in-waiting. The court protocol is so excessive that she nearly freezes to death waiting, lady after lady. “This is ridiculous” she tells the Comtesse de Noailles (played wonderfully by Judy Davis), to which the Comtesse replies, “This is Versailles.”
The second half of the film focuses almost exclusively on Marie Antoinette’s own excesses, which don’t seem too fill us up that much. I wanted to feel hungover and depressed by the parties, as when I watch La Dolce Vita and Withnail and I or something. But I wasn’t.
The big problem with the film may be Coppola’s own excesses. And these excesses are not just visual (the clichéd montage of shoes and pastries, composed and arranged Busby Berkeley style), but aural as well. There is some charm in juxtaposing an 18th-century court setting with Bow Wow Wow and Adam Ant, and I think the juxtaposition is part of Coppola’s effort to portray Marie Antoinette as something of a Valley Girl; like Coppola herself, Marie Antoinette is essentially a kind and happy child of privilege. Her lineage allows her the sort of freedom and comfort that so few have, and the way she deals with her situation is with a healthy dose of John Hughes-style teen rebellion: “I didn’t ask for this, so I’m not obliged to follow the rules.” But a filmmaker cannot rely solely on the soundtrack to do all the work. Coppola seems to be interested in using non-diegetic music the way Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson do: in a way that allows it to somehow enter into and inform the world of the film–to the point where the line between diegetic and non-diegetic is blurred. But I grew bored with and even a little irritated by the music. The news of the storming of the Bastille was welcome news.
But as I say, the film has its moments, and I haven’t given up on Coppola. But I suspect that the boos the film received at its press screening at Cannes may have been prompted as much by its style as by the sympathetic treatment of its subject.
The anachronisms were far more subtle than I expected (and the use of extra-diegetic music far more complex and sophisticated than the critics, who have incorrectly labled the film as one where New Wave meets Versailles, have articulated). I was ready for centurial disruptions but what I got was a film which was far more nuanced and attentive to the excesses of obsequious leisure on the grandest of scales. For the most part I liked Marie Antoinette (obviously a bit more than John). It was beautifully, perversely vacuous, and I say that with compliments. Is there another filmmaker out there who wields tone and rhythm as uniquely as Coppola? She has, I think, a truly original point of view as a director. There is something about her hazy-dazy approach to female subjectivity which is quite subversive . . . wistful, nostalgic and playful yet always exact and exacting.
what does hazy-dazy mean?
Perhaps impressionistic would have been a better choice. Gossamery also comes to mind though her films are far from insubstantial (they are, however, delicate and light and floaty and youthful and dreamy).
but i like “hazy-dazy!” i just have no idea what it means (well, now i have some idea, but not enough to go out and use it). anyway, i just saw this and really liked it. i liked the breezy, contemporary (to us) feel of dunst’s and schwartzmann’s acting — i thought they were the biggest unachronism, brilliantly emphasized by the acting of the older people, who seemed instead to operate in “18th century” mode (or our understanding of what that should look like, which is in itself a result of the movies). this underlying generational comments makes of this film a costume variety of the teen film. i also liked rose byrne, who seems to pop up everywhere these days (she’s in the dead girl, and very good too). i found the music and the costumes appropriate and interesting. i loved them, and the shoes, and the pastries. i got very hungry.
coppola seems to suggest that since interpet you must, interpret you will. i enjoyed very much the feel of foreignness that permeates the film, conveyed, among other things, but the multitude of accents. it’s a cool idea to get the actors to retain their original accents. okay, simon is pointing out to me that judy davis went from australian to english and steve coogan from slightly working class to slightly posh. hmmm. i wonder what that’s all about.
Hazy-dazy is probably some kind of stoner lingo leftover from the America-that-probably-wasn’t during the sixties and seventies (I should probably consult an expert). Maybe it’s hazy-daisy . . . I should research the etymology. It appears that a hazy-dazy is an adult party drink and Stupid Evil Bastard offers up an opinion as well. The following seems to confirm my stoner hypothesis.
hazy-dazy is now officially part of my active vocab. thank you.
“it was i, you fools! the man you trusted wasn’t wavy gravy at all! and all this time i’ve been smoking harmless tobacco.”