Beyond judgment.

Rating: 10/10 (21 October 2006)

Marie Antoinette is probably the first film about this subject to START with the Revolution, as we see a voyeuristic shot of Kirsten Dunst bathing to Gang of Four's "Natural is Not In It," a song with some very pointed lyrics: "The problem of leisure / What to do for pleasure / I do love a new purchase / A market of the senses." It's as if we are in the mind of a peasant who, his fantasies inflamed by the gutter press, the rumors of wantonness and high living at Versailles, looks at his own life and, boiling over with sexual and economic jealousy, picks up an electric guitar and invents punk just to show his hatred for the rich bi--h who ruined his life. How did Coppola resist using "God Save The Queen?"
That burst of staged anger having passed, the rest of Marie Antoinette devotes itself to showing how the lower classes' hostility was or was not warranted. In a film full of Kubrick references, Marie herself is perhaps most like the corpulent recruit with the aristocratic name of "Leonard Lawrence" in Full Metal Jacket, chewing a jelly donut mechanistically while his fellow soldiers do push-ups. "They're paying for it it -- YOU eat it!" screams the drill sergeant. Marie Antoinette is a two-hour slo-mo of that jelly donut scene. She "enjoys" herself because that's what a queen is expected to do; and then she pays with her life for fulfilling those expectations, just for playing her part. The point: Enjoyment, la jouissance, doesn't exist.
Marie Antoinette seems like a poor little rich girl story. But that wouldn't explain the most touching scene in the film, when Rip Torn's Louis XV calls for his mistress on his deathbed, and we see his face crumple into pure grief when reminded that he'd already sent her away. Coppola's sign of maturity is that she extends her sympathy to everyone else in the story -- everyone except the peasants, that is, whose appearance in the final minutes is demonic enough to make you wonder how anyone could have ever thought a murderous mob was a triumphant expression of human liberty. Besides, Coppola tacitly suggests, if they had imagination, they could have wormed their way inside Versailles too ( Coppola's court is stocked with pop-culture royalty, after all, people who, like Asia Argento, may have been born into famous families but still had to prove their mettle. )
Jason Schwartzman as King Louis XVI and Marie have a strange relationship. They never fall in love, but there is something exhilarating about the way, in each others' presence, they can let the masks drop and be the kids they are. Schwartzman subtly gains confidence and there are some moments towards the end, calling on Marie at Le Petit Trianon, where you get a brief glimpse of something special, something truly royal, waiting to emerge. Heartbreakingly, it never does; the mob arrives. But when at the end they go to prison, you flash back to the cardinals and priests at their wedding and think, maybe there is something to all this "ridiculous" ceremony; maybe it was a heavenly and not an earthly marriage that was being arranged. And then you flash to the other scene where Marie and her friends are playing a guessing game with papers attached to their heads, each paper bearing a name -- one of the ladies-in-waiting has the name "Jesus Christ" on her head and asks, "Am I at this table?" and someone replies, "You're always with us." And then you realize just how many dimensions this film is working on.
If this review seems scattershot and impressionistic, well, so is the film. I could probably write a little experimental essay for each individual scene. I'll spare you that, but Sophia ( and Roman, her brother, who I feel had a large hand in this production ) has proved that she has a soul after all. With soul, you can raise other souls from the dead, restore them to their original truth, to their innermost dreams and longings... And that's exactly what she's done here. Despite my utter hatred for Sophia's two previous films, I'll admit I think this is the best period piece ever, and that includes Barry Lyndon. Marie Antoinette is literally to die for, a glorious, melancholy poem about unborn angels on the edge of an endless dawn.