I wasn't paying close attention to film criticism when Marie Antoinette was released back in 2006. Most of what I remember is that people had strong opinions about it and that it failed to capture the same awards attention as Sofia Coppola's film before it, Lost in Translation. My impression of it was that people were pretty negative about it. No one was ready to look at Kirsten Dunst as more than the Bring It On girl. There were complaints about it being more style than substance. The word "anachronistic" was thrown around a lot as a pejorative.
Now I've watched
it, and my only response to that criticism is "yeah, duh." Normally,
I don't like the critique "you missed the point" because it's one of
those discussion enders - as soon as you say that, you are defining the other
party's argument by a null set - but it's a pretty fitting retort in this case.
Marie Antoinette isn't a period piece in the strictest sense. It isn't aiming for
perfect historical accuracy or a soundtrack fitting of the time. It's
anachronistic by design. The 80s New Wave and pop soundtrack announces that
pretty overtly. The visual style is lively. Dunst's portrayal of Antoinette is
very modern. This isn't a character study on the historical Marie Antoinette.
It's more of an attempt to see things how Marie Antoinette did, and it uses
modern touch points to make the connections more obvious. One of the hardest
things in a period piece is making it feel like the characters are comfortable
in the world. Historical dramas rarely feel like they are stories about real
people in a real world that just happened to take place dozens or hundreds of
years ago. Marie Antoinette side-steps that, trading in authenticity for realism.
That seems pretty obvious to me.
Now, that doesn't
mean people have to love the movie. I got a little exhausted by how stylized it
was. I found it thematically shallow. Beyond the initial points about Marie
Antoinette feeling out of place and living in a world that didn't know what to
do with her, it didn't have a lot to say. It settled on underlining the same
points rather than deepening them. I don't think much of that is an accident
either. Personally, I just didn't get as much out of the empty calories in this
movie. It's a well-done version of the thing that it's trying to be.
I like Kirsten Dunst in this more from a 2018 perspective than I would've in 2006. At this point, she's proven herself as an actress with range, who is willing to take risks. She's very aware of herself. When this came out in 2006, it wasn't clear if Coppola was using Dunst for her bubbliness or if Coppola and Dunst were playing with the public perception of Dunst at the time. At this point, it's clearly the latter case.
A few other scattered thoughts:
-It's nice to
cross another Rose Byrne movie off my list. I've still seen only a little over
half of her movies (23/43). I need to step up my game if I want to movie into
"obsessive fan" territory.
-How old is
Shirley Henderson?
-I can't figure
out if casting Rip Torn as Louis XV is anachronistic or perfectly accurate.
Either way, it fit the movie.
-The same goes for
Molly Shannon.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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