Marie Antoinette: Coppola's candy-coated revolution
So much hatred has been spat at Sofia Coppola and her latest movie. Jonathan Ross, speaking on his TV show, said sniffily that he wasn't sure there was a guiding intelligence behind Marie Antoinette (this from the man that raved about Adam Sandler's latest turkey, Click. Not sure where you find the "guiding intelligence" in that one).
Time Out London, with a poker firmly lodged where the sun don’t shine, tells us that this "grand folly of style over substance" "leans heavily on decor, shoes and various superficial confections", and concludes that it is "hip – but never history." I’m sorry? What? Time Out London has the final say on what makes history? Who says it’s not history? Whose history is it anyway?
Nina Caplan, meanwhile, in the free London newspaper London Lite (the name speaks volumes), is also concerned with cutting Coppola down to size, huffing about the “narcissistic writer-director” and her “lofty indifference to the cinema-going public” – and she, too, is quick to criticize the movie’s historical credentials (apparently there aren’t enough peasants in the movie for Caplan’s taste; it’s just not *realistic* enough).
Not everyone is so consumed by bitterness, however. One critic who isn’t worried about realism is Pam Cook, who has written a superb article about Marie Antoinette in the November 2006 issue of Sight and Sound. Cook takes a refreshingly original and intelligent angle on the movie, defining it in terms of travesty, with all the pleasure and subversion that involves.
Over in the US, Roger Ebert is also excited by the movie, giving it four thumbs up out of four, and stating, beautifully, that “Every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic”.
Turning to rottentomatoes.com, a quick glance of the reviews there shows that among audiences, opinion is dramatically divided. And this is one of the fascinating things about this movie; just how worked up people get about it, whether they love it or hate it. I’ve seen it twice now, and I’m still struggling to decide.
Something, apart from its sheer, undeniable gorgeousness, keeps drawing me back. I can’t quite pin it, or how I feel about it, down – and that intrigues me, gets under my skin. I loved Virgin Suicides, was less keen on Lost in Translation (I’m allergic to Scarlett Johannsen), was seduced by this latest film and yet also felt vaguely critical.
And for me, too, I’ve come to see, it’s about Sofia Coppola. Deep in my heart, I suddenly realize, I’m envious of this successful, confident, beautiful young woman. Her style, her aura, her privilege, her brains, her pregnancy, her Oscar. I don’t come out of this admission very well – but I can’t help but think that my secret pricks of resentment are reflected and writ large, without any heartsearching, by the vast majority of film reviewers. There’s something rotten at the core in the way in which Coppola gets picked on – a lifetime of bitching that started when she appeared in in Godfather 3 and was slated for her performance, and, far more disturbingly, for her looks (not pretty enough, apparently. Big nose.)
Partly born from that mean streak in us Brits that needs to put down the success of others in order to feel better about ourselves, this vitriol is also, I think, tinged with misogyny. (And the bitchy voices were certainly not limited to this side of the Pond.) That a young female director should take the brave step of breaking free from the grip of her father (a man hailed as a god in the eyes of many cinephiles), making her own movies according to her own very distinctive aesthetic, becoming, heaven forbid, an auteur in the meantime; that’s outrageous enough. That she should take the story of a female historical figure and play with it, experiment, imagine, dream – apply with cool confidence her own, personal and impressionistic take on historical “fact” – this is not only shocking but actually terrifying to some.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian offers a considered and interesting take on the movie, but perhaps inevitably misses some of it. Intrigued by this “anthem to doomed youth”, he pays due respect to Coppola’s consummate skill as a risk-taker, but frets at the fact that we never really know what is going on in the young queen’s mind. Personally, I’d disagree. The moment when the still childless Marie runs to her room and breaks down in floods of anguished tears after having congratulated her sister-in-law on the birth of her new baby, for example, is a shard of real, raw pain that reveals the young queen's fragility and frustration.
This is a ravishing, enchanting movie – and somehow that fact is seen as irrelevant, a sideline. But in Coppola’s work the visuals are never a sideline. The visuals tell the story – dreamy, seductive, mysterious, troubling – and in that, she is an artist. Why should visual pleasure be seen as shallow? Why is costume, and décor, seen as superficial? And why should Sofia Coppola, in painting a portrait of a shallow world, be judged as shallow herself? Could it not be seen as a supremely bold move to put herself and her privileged world under the microscope – to reach out and communicate and lay herself bare? To make art out of what she knows?
Maybe many, men and women included, find themselves embarrassed by the sheer overblown femininity of Marie Antoinette’s world. The responses to it bear a strong similarity to those to Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, another audacious visual spectacle that plays with “historical fact”. Marie Antoinette is a movie of parasols and plumes and ribbons and bows and flowers and shoes and hairdos and hats and chokers and candy and corsets and corsages and cakes. Lots and lots of cakes. Mountains of fondant fancies and cream buns, pretty fruit tarts and rainbow-coloured macaroons. And these cakes aren’t just “superficial confections”. As Marie Antoinette becomes more claustrophobic, more trapped, more miserable, the candy and the conspicuous consumption increases.
It’s been repeated ad nauseam that the movie was booed at Cannes. What is less commonly told is that it also, at the same screening, received a standing ovation. And that many movies showcased at Cannes get a similarly mixed reception. So much for historical verisimilitude. When it comes to slagging off Sofia Coppola, it seems, it’s not so important to stick to the facts.
Incidentally, the macaroons, as key to this movie as the ravishing Manolo Blahnik shoes, were ordered from French patissier Ladurée; you can buy them from Harrods.
They are, literally, divine.
Superficial? Moi?
Time Out London, with a poker firmly lodged where the sun don’t shine, tells us that this "grand folly of style over substance" "leans heavily on decor, shoes and various superficial confections", and concludes that it is "hip – but never history." I’m sorry? What? Time Out London has the final say on what makes history? Who says it’s not history? Whose history is it anyway?
Nina Caplan, meanwhile, in the free London newspaper London Lite (the name speaks volumes), is also concerned with cutting Coppola down to size, huffing about the “narcissistic writer-director” and her “lofty indifference to the cinema-going public” – and she, too, is quick to criticize the movie’s historical credentials (apparently there aren’t enough peasants in the movie for Caplan’s taste; it’s just not *realistic* enough).
Not everyone is so consumed by bitterness, however. One critic who isn’t worried about realism is Pam Cook, who has written a superb article about Marie Antoinette in the November 2006 issue of Sight and Sound. Cook takes a refreshingly original and intelligent angle on the movie, defining it in terms of travesty, with all the pleasure and subversion that involves.
Over in the US, Roger Ebert is also excited by the movie, giving it four thumbs up out of four, and stating, beautifully, that “Every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic”.
Turning to rottentomatoes.com, a quick glance of the reviews there shows that among audiences, opinion is dramatically divided. And this is one of the fascinating things about this movie; just how worked up people get about it, whether they love it or hate it. I’ve seen it twice now, and I’m still struggling to decide.
Something, apart from its sheer, undeniable gorgeousness, keeps drawing me back. I can’t quite pin it, or how I feel about it, down – and that intrigues me, gets under my skin. I loved Virgin Suicides, was less keen on Lost in Translation (I’m allergic to Scarlett Johannsen), was seduced by this latest film and yet also felt vaguely critical.
And for me, too, I’ve come to see, it’s about Sofia Coppola. Deep in my heart, I suddenly realize, I’m envious of this successful, confident, beautiful young woman. Her style, her aura, her privilege, her brains, her pregnancy, her Oscar. I don’t come out of this admission very well – but I can’t help but think that my secret pricks of resentment are reflected and writ large, without any heartsearching, by the vast majority of film reviewers. There’s something rotten at the core in the way in which Coppola gets picked on – a lifetime of bitching that started when she appeared in in Godfather 3 and was slated for her performance, and, far more disturbingly, for her looks (not pretty enough, apparently. Big nose.)
Partly born from that mean streak in us Brits that needs to put down the success of others in order to feel better about ourselves, this vitriol is also, I think, tinged with misogyny. (And the bitchy voices were certainly not limited to this side of the Pond.) That a young female director should take the brave step of breaking free from the grip of her father (a man hailed as a god in the eyes of many cinephiles), making her own movies according to her own very distinctive aesthetic, becoming, heaven forbid, an auteur in the meantime; that’s outrageous enough. That she should take the story of a female historical figure and play with it, experiment, imagine, dream – apply with cool confidence her own, personal and impressionistic take on historical “fact” – this is not only shocking but actually terrifying to some.
Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian offers a considered and interesting take on the movie, but perhaps inevitably misses some of it. Intrigued by this “anthem to doomed youth”, he pays due respect to Coppola’s consummate skill as a risk-taker, but frets at the fact that we never really know what is going on in the young queen’s mind. Personally, I’d disagree. The moment when the still childless Marie runs to her room and breaks down in floods of anguished tears after having congratulated her sister-in-law on the birth of her new baby, for example, is a shard of real, raw pain that reveals the young queen's fragility and frustration.
This is a ravishing, enchanting movie – and somehow that fact is seen as irrelevant, a sideline. But in Coppola’s work the visuals are never a sideline. The visuals tell the story – dreamy, seductive, mysterious, troubling – and in that, she is an artist. Why should visual pleasure be seen as shallow? Why is costume, and décor, seen as superficial? And why should Sofia Coppola, in painting a portrait of a shallow world, be judged as shallow herself? Could it not be seen as a supremely bold move to put herself and her privileged world under the microscope – to reach out and communicate and lay herself bare? To make art out of what she knows?
Maybe many, men and women included, find themselves embarrassed by the sheer overblown femininity of Marie Antoinette’s world. The responses to it bear a strong similarity to those to Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, another audacious visual spectacle that plays with “historical fact”. Marie Antoinette is a movie of parasols and plumes and ribbons and bows and flowers and shoes and hairdos and hats and chokers and candy and corsets and corsages and cakes. Lots and lots of cakes. Mountains of fondant fancies and cream buns, pretty fruit tarts and rainbow-coloured macaroons. And these cakes aren’t just “superficial confections”. As Marie Antoinette becomes more claustrophobic, more trapped, more miserable, the candy and the conspicuous consumption increases.
It’s been repeated ad nauseam that the movie was booed at Cannes. What is less commonly told is that it also, at the same screening, received a standing ovation. And that many movies showcased at Cannes get a similarly mixed reception. So much for historical verisimilitude. When it comes to slagging off Sofia Coppola, it seems, it’s not so important to stick to the facts.
Incidentally, the macaroons, as key to this movie as the ravishing Manolo Blahnik shoes, were ordered from French patissier Ladurée; you can buy them from Harrods.
They are, literally, divine.
Superficial? Moi?
posted by Samantha Cook | 9:17 AM
2 Comments:
I think what is interesting is how something like the upcoming 300 could be excused for it's historical inaccuracies and yet still be somewhat praised stylistically while Marie Antoinette could be slammed for being too stylish.
I dunno, there's just something about stylish filmmaking that's both appealing and yet superficial in someway. I guess it's not so much the idea that it's Sofia Coppola or that she's some sort of pretentious filmmaker. But because of the content she used. Had she used any other subject matter with similiar style I doubt there would be so much crticism.
I haven't seen it since my backhole of a town doesn't have it yet. But perhaps Marie Antoinette doesn't suffer from being too superficial, but not enough to define itself as superficial. Something like Sin City, 300 or a Tony Scott film in which you could easily enjoy the visuals without the guilt of seeing a poorly plotted movie. Perhaps it's us who need baby steps into the stylish world of film. I guess history can't be stylish unless it's super-hyper-stylish.
I think because Sofia Coppola tries to give an impressionistic view of a historic moment – melding subjectivity, anecdote, imagination, visual poetry and more – it becomes difficult to pin down,unstable, and therefore troubling.
Perhaps it is not the stylishness that people have such difficulty with, but the evasive, mercurial nature of the work.It bothers us.
Looking forward to hearing what you make of it!
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