Sophia's misstep

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2006)

An awkward young girl picks up a camera and captures something extraordinary that stirs the imagination of many and stands in defiance of big budget film-making. Francis Ford Coppola envisioned this future event of cinema as counterpoint to his notoriously traumatic experience making 'Apocalypse Now'. In a strange twist of fate it would be his daughter, Sophia, who fulfills the prophecy. Her second film, 'Lost in Translation', was a note-perfect and affecting work filmed guerrilla-style on the streets of Tokyo. This set the benchmark high for Sophia and perhaps out of a desire to push herself to her creative limits she has since chose to follow-up this minimalist success with something from the other end of the spectrum altogether, a full-on costume drama (in the opulent setting of the Palace of Versailles no less), with her latest feature, 'Marie Antoinette'. The question arises whether she can repeat the success that materialized in her low-budget exercise on this grander scale? In more ways then one 'Marie Antoinette' feels like an act of hubris, an attempt by Sophia to tame the beast of big budget film-making with the lessons learned from her past guerrilla experience that never quite succeeds. Here the historical drama is reinvented, as post-modern flourishes are used to modernize historical events while still partially adhering to some procedural accuracy in the depiction of the court of King Louis XVI, the old and the new sitting side by side in a realm of the impossible made possible by our appreciation of the universal themes they explore. The story of Marie Antoinette is not nearly as interesting as the contemplation of excess that she symbolizes, and Sophia understands this as she gives two-thirds of the film over to the voyeuristic impulse of merely watching the empty riches of aristocracy like a fly on the wall undeterred by narrative constraints. The same convincing conversations that filled the Tokyo clubs in 'Lost in Translation' now fill the halls of Versailles, full of indifference to plot-point storytelling. This two-thirds of the film is a lyrical about-face to the genre, and unfortunately stands out as a blemish due to the remaining third of the film which goes on supposing the tone of historical drama. Perhaps as a feeble attempt to justify the budget and the stature of the subject matter, Sophia half-heartedly fills in the historical context of the story with weakly arranged tangents of drama which by their very presence diminish all that surrounds it, making what could have been a bold revision of our perception of history into a creaky history lesson with frills.
The fault I find with the film is not its radical departure from the genre but rather its lack of conviction. A better approach would have been to focus entirely on the trivial in the court of Versailles with little mention of the world outside of it, and follow this Austrian girl's trajectory into a world of great opulence that would titillate our own sense of materialism and draw us into the story and give us a place to contemplate our superficial tendencies. Certainly this was one motivation for the work, but it gets lost in half-measures, unsure of itself, and tries desperately to hold some vestige of historical biography into the narrative, but this hubris becomes amplified by the world of make-believe Sophia has fitted her story into; the historical talking-points sound like the misplaced voices of adults in the realm of a child's make-believe and have the same sort of nonsensical function.
Part of the problem is the casting, with the choice of comedic actors like Steve Coogan, Rip Torn, and Molly Shannon to play figures in the court of Versailles it becomes problematic when Sophie decides to shift gears and play the story as if it were historical drama when in fact it is pantomime. Similarly Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzmann as the sovereigns Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI could only exist in a sort of hyper-reality fantasy that Sophie has concocted, and when she gives them historical talking-points without the knowing wink it shatters the illusion and forces us to think of the characters as caricatures of history rather than figures worthy of contemplation. Only Judy Davis seems to know her part in the pantomime and plays it up with relish, while everyone else struggles with the disjointed tone Sophia has set.
Despite the riches of visual delight in each frame of this film I was never entirely drawn into the story, I always felt outside of it looking in. The costumes, the music, the make-up, the setting, are of course immensely impressive and there is truly a cinematic vision at the heart of the work to rival any of the greats, however it lacks direction. I admire what Sophia tries to do, and I am deeply fond of her aesthetic tastes but I feel with this film she has made a serious misstep and the film sort of falls apart in the editing process, unsure of where it is supposed to go. Maybe there was some hesitation to follow through on the contemplative route due to the upped ante of filming at Versailles and the specter of big budget film-making. Maybe she lost her nerve. It is really unfortunate, because I do think Sophia represents something important in modern cinema, sort of what Tarrantino did in the nineties, a sort of indie cred that she earned with 'Lost in Translation'. There is something about her, her choice of music, her guerrilla ethos, I don't know, something about her films reminds me of the blogosphere, and the variety of grass root enterprises into art that it has spawned. Maybe I am just enamored with the myth of that awkward young girl picking up a camera and making great art.
Grade: C+ P.S. I am hoping it was just at my screening but I was wondering if anyone else noticed the film to be out of focus and slightly bluish throughout?