Let historical fact wait
Marie Antoinette at the Barbican cinema, 20 October 2006
A war seems to have been raging about the merits of this one in the western press: is it all superficial hogwash, girlie outlandish folly…a moral and artistic-free zone, a profane, sickly-sweet confection- a classic case of a director with too much money and not enough sense? Well maybe.
However, it’s not without its assets. The film is great Friday night fare- not substantial enough to fill you up for the entire weekend, but a good way to wind down and rid your mind of workplace horrors and calamities. Certainly I would say that Jonathan Ross’ castigations on Film 2006 were a bit over the top- ‘not as clever as it thinks it is’ I think he said; or something like that. Well maybe. But I did quite like the Bow Wow Wow ‘I like candy’ video montage which he railed against on his show. If you’ve been jilted in love, the first thing you do (if you’re a girl) is reach for the credit card, gather your mates around you, and go buy shoes…What’s unrealistic about that?
It has got a very modern, 21st century sensibility, and the main subject seemed to me, not to be the titular Marie Antoinette, but rather the three Cs: confectionary, consumerism and celebrity (did she really say ‘Let them eat cake’; answer: does anybody care?). I do generally like to sympathise with my heroines more its true, or at least understand them better through the course of the film, but at the end of this I was looking forward to seeing them all have their heads chopped off (purely on the basis that if you get to live a life of luxury for that long, then it seems only fair that you should have a taste of hardship at the end of it). So by that measure, it did let me down a bit.
But overall I think that Jonathan Ross needs to open his mind to the feminine perspective a bit more- after all, this is a man who thinks that Adam Sandler is a comic genius; enough said. In my view Sofia Coppola is a genuinely gifted director who tried to do something a bit different with her dry and crusty material (although the BBC did a much better job of transforming the idea of historical drama with their Casanova). Did she totally succeed? Maybe she did and maybe she didn't, but one thing's for sure and that's that the film is absolutely beautiful to look at and captures the sumptuosness of the eighteenth century French court if nothing else.
I must confess I do have one major niggle with the film however: if Marie Antoinette (as played by at best size 8 Kirsten Dunst) was really eating that much cake SO consistently for SO many years (and this is important); wouldn’t she be fatter?
A war seems to have been raging about the merits of this one in the western press: is it all superficial hogwash, girlie outlandish folly…a moral and artistic-free zone, a profane, sickly-sweet confection- a classic case of a director with too much money and not enough sense? Well maybe.
However, it’s not without its assets. The film is great Friday night fare- not substantial enough to fill you up for the entire weekend, but a good way to wind down and rid your mind of workplace horrors and calamities. Certainly I would say that Jonathan Ross’ castigations on Film 2006 were a bit over the top- ‘not as clever as it thinks it is’ I think he said; or something like that. Well maybe. But I did quite like the Bow Wow Wow ‘I like candy’ video montage which he railed against on his show. If you’ve been jilted in love, the first thing you do (if you’re a girl) is reach for the credit card, gather your mates around you, and go buy shoes…What’s unrealistic about that?
It has got a very modern, 21st century sensibility, and the main subject seemed to me, not to be the titular Marie Antoinette, but rather the three Cs: confectionary, consumerism and celebrity (did she really say ‘Let them eat cake’; answer: does anybody care?). I do generally like to sympathise with my heroines more its true, or at least understand them better through the course of the film, but at the end of this I was looking forward to seeing them all have their heads chopped off (purely on the basis that if you get to live a life of luxury for that long, then it seems only fair that you should have a taste of hardship at the end of it). So by that measure, it did let me down a bit.
But overall I think that Jonathan Ross needs to open his mind to the feminine perspective a bit more- after all, this is a man who thinks that Adam Sandler is a comic genius; enough said. In my view Sofia Coppola is a genuinely gifted director who tried to do something a bit different with her dry and crusty material (although the BBC did a much better job of transforming the idea of historical drama with their Casanova). Did she totally succeed? Maybe she did and maybe she didn't, but one thing's for sure and that's that the film is absolutely beautiful to look at and captures the sumptuosness of the eighteenth century French court if nothing else.
I must confess I do have one major niggle with the film however: if Marie Antoinette (as played by at best size 8 Kirsten Dunst) was really eating that much cake SO consistently for SO many years (and this is important); wouldn’t she be fatter?
posted by gin soaked girl @ 6:11 PM
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