Removing a Story from its Historic Context Only Partly Successful

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2012)

Yesterday, saw Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" which is an 'old' picture already to many, but not to me -- I've never seen it. I didn't think Kirsten Dunst was bad; didn't think she was great either, but at least she looked the part. If you go back to the many portraits of Madame défécit, Dunst's appearance was more or less dead on. I thought Jason Schwartzman's Louis XVI was a little too good-looking, and I don't think either of them really captured the pair as "flesh and blood" characters, but Dunst at least tried; I'll give her that. About the film as a film, I liked the ambition of it, and found the set dressing and costume very fine, with plenty of accuracy and attention to detail. Wish I could say the same about the music. The choices of period music were good, and I am glad that the living musicians involved were paid for this project; I like all of that stuff, and it appears Sofia Coppola and I share the same tastes in pop music generally. But folks in the 18th century simply did not rock out to The Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees. I see reviews where people "I'm so glad that they didn't use the usual boring classical music" and I wonder "What's wrong with you?" but I guess that's what happens when you take music appreciation out of elementary school education. Period music simply isn't a disposable element in this story that you can replace with music that you think follows the action better, unless that music is of a neutral character. I think Coppola, however, may have found some common ground between the way the 18th century nobility behaved and the conduct of well-heeled Hollywood types, which may have been an initial attraction to this story. Certainly she was not interested in following the fate of Marie Antoinette and her family, despite its intensely dramatic appeal, touching on it only briefly. In drawing this parallel, she assumes that the landed gentry of that time employed similar kind of amorality to the folks living high on the hog in the Hollywood hills and Malibu. This is not so; morality itself had everything to do with this Catholic King and Queen, including their marriage. As this isn't touched upon at all, what remains is only empty ceremony in regard to that.
Taking on an expensive project, and making something that falls short of the mark owing to conceptual deficiencies, establishes that Sofia Coppola's apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. But that's a good, strong tree; one might wonder what Coppola could do with the same budget and a more modest project where there aren't so many balls to keep up in the air.