By Bentley FordPLAY Columnist
The French received Marie Antoinette the film as they did Marie Antoinette the queen: with torches, pitchforks and guillotines. The audience at Cannes clamored so loudly, hollering for the director’s head, that those of us not lucky enough to attend could hear it over here. Yet, supposedly, smatterings of applause followed the loud hiss of disappointment. Somehow, somebody loved this film. The film had divided an audience of the world’s most respected critics and celebrities, creating a small whirlwind of rumors and confusion that overshadowed both the film and the festival.
The head some wanted and others applauded belongs to director Sofia Coppola – a product, like her titular character, of hereditary rule. But, unlike so many monarchs, she has earned her crown, and has done so by creating the most controversial film of the year. Not for a spiraling depiction of revenge, nor for a portrayal of love between two gruff and gay cowboys. This isn’t the political and social quasi-controversy of yesteryear. Today’s controversy, now playing at a theater near you, concerns culture, history, cakes, wigs, Converses and cinematic narcissism at their finest.
Marie Antoinette has left me torn, too. I can’t help but love a film that I should – and maybe even want to – hate. Fortunately, many critics have printed their soaring praise for the picture. Similarly, critics who absolutely reviled the movie have presented their arguments. That leaves room for my take on the whole debacle. And so, The Case Against Marie Antoinette by Somebody Who Can’t Explain Why He Loved It:
Where Coppola’s previous films have used atmosphere and aesthetic to complement winning performances, most notably those of Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, here Coppola uses admittedly gorgeous cinematography, hiply anachronistic music and soft-as-velvet, smooth-as-chocolate atmosphere to conceal deadened performances and a slight screenplay. Where she once had confidence in her talent, she now opts to hide it.
For instance, Jason Schwartzman’s turn as Louis XVI is particularly painful. Surely, Coppola made some oath upon her bloodline to cast her poor cousin Schwartzman in a role that could potentially reinvigorate his career. Unfortunately, his flaccid, childlike performance hardly deserves the billing. Likewise, Kirsten Dunst’s pouting and posturing left me aching for ScarJo’s sultry poignancy. Dunst giggles and bats her eyelashes through a narcissistic and detached performance Paris Hilton could have given us. She looks lovely in the gowns, but the loveliness ends there.
Coppola treats her trivial, loveless screenplay similarly. Here, she has tried her best to create a feature that lacks any and all drama, emotion or responsibility – be it to the characters, to history or to the audience. She has ignored the traditional need for conflict to propel a film from scene to scene, and has denied the audience their favorite activity: becoming more emotionally involved with the onscreen characters than those that populate their own lives. Where her earlier films dealt with a lack of love between lovelorn characters – the caged and virginal vixens, the young and old trespassers in Tokyo – Coppola here gives us shallow caricatures painted with the sticky colors of melted candy.
And, rather than confront the disconnect between the decadent royalty and the downtrodden people that sparked the French Revolution, Coppola’s screenplay ignores political and historical reality altogether. The only conflict present in the baroquely beautiful Versailles involves impotence, infidelity and the kind of frivolous turmoil that makes more sense on Gawker than on screen. And, well, come to think of it, all of these apparent flaws that shirk traditional filmmaking and storytelling are maybe why this film is so genius, and exactly why I love this film despite my better judgment. Perhaps my case, or any case, against Marie Antoinette is simply incorrect – a misinterpretation of a misunderstood, complicated and beautiful movie.
Looking back, Dunst’s candy-coated and detached performance perfectly represents the youthful and oblivious queen. Schwartzman’s flaccid performance makes sense, too, as Louis XVI was the impotent, boyish king. And the screenplay ignores its political and emotional responsibilities, and that makes sense – everybody in Versailles did, as well.
What Coppola has created here is a emotional and psychological portrait of feeling that depicts not the lives but the mindsets of those who lived in Versailles, and also of youth in general, of any age or country or class. If that doesn’t sound spectacular to you, just go see The Queen, which might as well be Marie Antoinette’s cinematic foil. But me? I’d rather the candy queen just let me eat cake.
Communication sophomore Bentley Ford is a PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
