Movies About or Around Europe: "Marie Antoinette"

I had previously watched "Marie Antoinette" around the time it first came out, but decided to watch it again when I remembered that it was shot on the grounds of Versailles, one of the places I plan to visit on my trip. I had lukewarm feelings about the film the first time I saw it, and those feelings remained the same on a second viewing.

The movie has a beautiful, decadent surface. It seems to revel in that decadence, with montages of endless pastries and shoes, grand displays of meals, endless expanses of lawn, ever-changing gowns and hairstyles. Of course, this is appropriate for a movie about Versailles and its excesses, yet the attention to characterization does not match the set design or the costume design, and this mismatch is felt. As much as I admire Kirsten Dunst in general, I felt like she was out of her depth here. Either that or the script or the direction didn't make use of her talents. It's possible that Sofia Coppola wanted to portray her as such an ordinary girl that she became too ordinary. The placement of a pair of Converse shoes in an otherwise period shot, for example, seems aimed at convincing the audience that she was just an average girl.

However, it seems to me that only someone like Coppola - the product of a less-than-average childhood, daughter of a celebrated film director, with access to more wealth and privilege than her average audience member - could perceive Marie Antoinette as quite as ordinary as the movie wants us to believe.

There are good things about the movie - It's beautiful to look at, in terms of the aforementioned costume and set-design and also in the cinematography. It's also interesting in terms of the little-known historical information that it hints at, though doesn't fully explore. Curious movie-goers such as myself might take the initiative to follow up on such things as her long-term affair with Axel Von Fersen (http://www.pbs.org/marieantoinette/faces/ferson.html http://leahmariebrownhistoricals.blogspot.kr/2012/02/decrypting-secret-letters-of-marie.html) and whether or not she really uttered "Let them eat cake!" http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake

Marie Antoinette meets Axel Von Fersen, played by Jamie Dornan.

It is certainly good to view Marie Antoinette not as a villain, but as a human in a particular set of circumstances which may have blinded her to the misery around her, which possibly were even designed to shelter and protect her from the world of ordinary people. It's never a good idea to see people as "all good" or "all bad", and this movie does its bit to emphasize that every time there's a beheading, there's a human being inside that head.

That said, the movie also seems to celebrate that decadence in a way that reminds me of the more-recent, but also more critical "The Wolf of Wall Street" which similarly drenched the audience in depictions of excess. Unlike "The Wolf of Wall Street," however, which hints at the complicity that the audience has in propping up the lifestyle of the super-wealthy, "Marie Antoinette" merely displays the wealth without exploring why/how such inequity comes to exist. "The Wolf of Wall Street" seems to posit that inequity is maintained, at least in part, by a public which themselves longs to possess such wealth and celebrates displays of excess. Though political and economic subjugation likely play a greater role in inequity, the public's admiration of wealth and luxury on a grand scale certainly enables it. "Marie Antoinette" has no interest in thinking about why, however. Coppola's film also fails to meaningfully question the value of wealth and material things, as "The Wolf of Wall Street" arguably does, through its shots of miserable drug abuse, extreme anxiety, marital disaster and the betrayal of friends.

Though it's played for comedy, no sensible person wants to end up like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill in this scene from "The Wolf of Wall Street."

 After a short period of unease with palace protocol, Marie seems to glide easily into her luxurious lifestyle and take refuge in material things when her marriage proves less than thrilling. The endless leisure that money can buy seems to suit her just fine. There is no moment where the decadence seems to sour on her, not even as she is taken away from Versailles to her imprisonment. There is no moment where the audience is shown a downside to such luxury. Marie Antoinette is a material girl, through and through, and the movie finds no problem with this. The only downside to enormous (and one might say, obscene) wealth portrayed in the movie is the possibility of its destruction by an angry mob. The movie's angry mob, is never shown in any kind of sympathetic light. Their hunger and poverty is merely theoretical hearsay in the film. They only appear in person once, at the end of the film, as a chorus of angry voices and darkened, seemingly senseless, torch-carrying faces. The final shot is of a beautiful Versailles bedroom in disarray after the mob's attack. It is almost as if to say - "how thoughtless of the mob to destroy such beauty."

The last shot in the movie - not a bustling Versailles of today, open to the public, the beauty available to all, but rather a scene of beauty thoughtlessly destroyed by a mob we never come to know as real people.

It is not an original thought, but for some people to live in such luxury and decadence, many others must live in suffering and poverty. This movie shows us the height of the luxury and the enjoyment of it, as if to advertise to us how great it must be, without showing the cost in others' lives or criticizing its value. It is meant to be, perhaps, just a sympathetic coming-of-age story of a misunderstood historical figure, but because Marie Antoinette was such a political figure, failing to deal with the politics in any real way weakens the film in my view, or makes it at least difficult to enjoy. Adding the modern music - especially the 80s anthem "I Want Candy" - adds an extra layer of superficiality to the proceedings. Whether or not Marie Antoinette herself ever uttered the words, the film is giving us cake, heavy on the icing, where bread might be more suitable or interesting.

Perhaps the only political message that the film delivers is that the rich, by their very remove, can become oblivious to the people they rule. This may indeed be true, but it doesn't hold the king and queen very responsible for the roles they played in their own ignorance, nor does it question the value of concentrated wealth. Politically this movie seems nearly as oblivious as its title character.

In terms of European inspiration, however, I am at least glad that it has inspired me to look up further historical information on its central characters.

For a glowing review of "Marie Antoinette" check out Roger Ebert's take:  http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/marie-antoinette-2006

For a critical review that I happen to agree with a lot of (and which is written, sadly, with much more aplomb than mine):
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/23/061023crci_cinema?currentPage=all