Leaving Versailles

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2012)

As Dunst plays Marie Antoinette, the character is not at all Austrian, nor even European. She is distinctly American. This was a conscious choice made by Coppola which the viewer is invited to puzzle out—if, that is, they have the stomach to sit through a lengthy montage while Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" plays almost in its entirety. Equally puzzling, Marie Antoinette ends with the unseen mob (played by really obvious sound effects) carting the royal family away from Versailles and onto Paris. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that most viewers expected the film to end with Marie Antoinette's famous beheading, (I, myself, expected such an ending), because whether one knows very much about the French Revolution or not, they certainly know that Antoinette's life ended under the blade of the guillotine. For some, this was probably why they watched the film in the first place; this is the "ending" that everybody knows, and probably, everybody wants. Andrzej Wajda's Danton has a gruesome and satisfactory ending simply because it ends with the fall of the razor that we all anticipate and desire.
Dunst's blatantly American portrayal, coupled with this particular ending, strongly hints that the film is not at all about Marie Antoinette. I was not enjoying Marie Antoinette very much until I stumbled upon the revelation that the film is actually about modern-day America.
Coppola took a page out of Brecht's book and wrote about the present day by placing it in the past. This is a very intelligent choice (also used by Wajda for his film), because—like Marie Antoinette herself—the American public does not want to be confronted for two hours about their own wasteful extravagance and crippling debt. This would have been every bit as off-putting as a play about WWII would have been in Brecht's time, because people go to theatres to ignore their modern troubles, not revel in them. Both Brecht and Coppola knew they had to diffuse their critique through the means of historical placement (Brecht with his Thirty Years War for Mother Courage and Her Chidren and Coppola with her American Marie Antoinette) in order to make their message more palatable to the public. Unlike Brecht, Coppola is very subtle with her intentions. She's so subtle, in fact, that most comments I've heard and read about Marie Antoinette balk at the American accents and the pop music soundtrack without ever beginning to ask why they were included. Obviously, it would have been very easy for Coppola to create a more accurate movie; these elements of her film have nothing to do with ignorance of historical fact, for she is writing without accuracy in mind. Instead, she's writing toward a specific design that guides her into, through, and from Versailles.
Ultimately, the dramatic question is centred around this locale, Versailles. The entire movie takes place there, excepting for a few short scenes, and the film ends when the royal family is forced to leave its grounds. For the people of France, Versailles and Marie Antoinette, herself, came to symbolise all the wasteful extravagance and debt France would come to know. For us, watching Coppola's film, the palace and the woman can symbolise just the same thing. Jason Schwartzman plays almost too well a dithering and passionless Louis, who could either be seen as a U.S. banker, or, more appropriately, a governmental figure who is appealed to when his "Madame Deficit" is running short of funds. Despite being accurate to the historical record we have, the scene where Antoinette is told that she's spending far outside her budget, and her glib response that she'll just ask her King for more money—money France doesn't even have—is far too reminiscent of the U.S. Government's bloated borrowing record and its numerous, recent bail-outs, which were in the air long before they occurred two years after Coppola's film was released. We ask ourselves, "when will all this gross materialism, buying, and needless formality end?" The answer is, "when it has to." The end of all of it is forced upon Marie Antoinette, and not chosen of her own volition. The same, the film seems to say, is true for America's credit crisis: it will not end because America wants to become fiscally responsible—instead, it will end when America has absolutely no choice in the matter.
When the film is viewed with this parallel in mind, it becomes quite apparent that Marie Antoinette could not possibly have ended with death. For it to do so would run too far afield of its objectives. America's fate is not going to be assassination, but it will, eventually, have to leave Versailles in total disgrace. Right now, the general feel of Coppola's film is that it is a cute, kitschy romp from the mind of a woman who couldn't bother to do proper research. I believe Marie Antoinette will not always be viewed as such. Although I personally dislike much of the film, I cannot deny its important and crucial role as being one of the only artistic critiques of the modern- day problems that few other artists would like to discuss. I'd not be surprised if Marie Antoinette rose in prominence a few decades from now, after our woes have been traded for new ones, and we can start laughing at the old ones.