The essence of Rococo

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2013)

This movie, I think, is widely mistaken for some kind of High-school teen movie integrated into a historical setting. It is not.
The movie shows the experience of Marie Antoinette; her naivety, boredom and disregard for the stiff rituals of Versailles. The film is not historically accurate (especially the music), nor is it very politically engaged or does it have an amazing story-line and plot. What it does have though, is an amazing amount of overwhelming atmosphere, throughout which you get to experience the late-baroque decadence very effectively, like no other movie (perhaps along with Amadeus)has captured it. The melancholy is what makes this movie shine, bordering on boring, this movie captures the almost painful, dreamy, romanticist sentiment of Rococo. The story-line is as vague and dreamy as Marie Antoinette herself. It is a follow-up of different atmosphere's, almost like the movie is as desperate for some excitement as Marie Antoinette is. Everything in this movie is perfectly dosed to match this dreary melancholy - Tools like silence, music and the aesthetic cinematography are directed at this one goal: to capture the essence of Rococo- decadence as the unsustainable ending to court-culture in France, all this throughout the life of Marie Antionette, as the personification of this phenomenon. Certain details refer to the philosophy of Rousseau, and "the sublime", all slowly working towards a sense of renewed aesthetic principles, leading towards Romanticism in the decades after. This shift in philosophy is highly sensible throughout this movie.
Another extremely interesting feature to this movie is the music. The decision to leave the Rococo music out of it is in my opinion absolutely genius. Not only because choosing music purely because it's from that particular time is in a way very degenerating; disregarding it's expression and seeing it purely as representing a date or theme, ignoring the fact that the music of that time does not have the same impact now, as it would have had back then. The music chosen for this movie generates exactly the right atmosphere for the scenes it is attached to. I especially loved Aphex twin's 'April 14th' in this movie, it has this dreary melancholy that the movie is all about. Like I said, this movie is not trying to be historically accurate, but rather atmospherically, and aesthetically accurate.
To most people the ending seemed rather sudden. To me it's the most perfect ending imaginable for this movie. Not only does it resemble the end of the totalitarian reign throughout Versailles, but it's also as mysterious, romantic and aesthetic as the entire movie is, creating the perfect dreamy ending to a dreamy movie, leaving you behind contemplating on the beautiful, but also awkward and sometimes painful melancholy of this movie. Yes it is somewhat dreary, but that's the entire point this movie it trying to make. It's a movie that focuses primarily on an atmospheric experience, which is in my opinion superior to script, story, history etc. Are all these concepts not mostly "guidelines" of movies, to generate feelings and emotions among it's audience?
This movie is fantastic for the more introvert, dreamy types, like myself, who enjoy a slow-paced movie to contemplate on. This movie may just overwhelm you with it's aesthetic beauty.