Movie Reviews for Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette

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Movie Reviews of Marie Antoinette

Movie Review: Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars

This movie was beautifully made.
The costumery was outstanding, and the directing was exsquisite.

However, I feel as though one must like to think in order to enjoy this movie. There is very little dialog, so one must be open and observant to the characters emotions.

Great movie.

Movie Review: atmospheric New Wave pop video biopic (thumbs up)
Summary: 3 Stars

Just misunderstood? A scapegoat? A pawn in their game? A flibbertigibbet? That's the impression you get of the infamous Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette presented here. Kirsten Dunst, well cast as the queen, actually says she would never say "Let them eat cake" in this movie. There seems to me elements of truth to this but I took it all in very lightly while looking at beautiful and elaborate costumes, the Palace of Versailles, the wigs, the shoes, the food and pastries, all the while listening to that New Wave/"alternative" soundtrack. I think were exploring the personal and subjective here more than the political and historical. And were enjoying playing dress-up. I had a sense of what to expect before seeing it so I enjoyed the show. The film Coppola made wasn't one that many critics wanted and nor for that matter is it a portrayal of Marie Antoinette and the French court that I'd have been most interested in. But it is what it is and it's a good movie and the one the director wanted to make. You got to give some points for originality. Judged based on what seems to be what Sofia Coppola wanted to do here, it works.

I look forward to more from Sofia Coppola. LOST IN TRANSLATION is a favorite. Her films are so moody and atmospheric, at times dreamlike, and I that's what I like most about them.

Maybe check out "Ten things that occurred to me while watching MARIE ANTOINETTE" by Roger Ebert on his website for some nice insight and appreciation. Ebert is a great friend to the movies and I hope he's around for a long time to come. Also, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane's piece "Lost in the Revolution" is excellent. For a different reaction see "Sofia Coppola's MARIE ANTOINETTE: Not even cake?" by Emanuele Saccarelli on World Socialist Web Site. Lol.

Movie Review: An Honorable and Interesting Failure. . .
Summary: 3 Stars

"Marie Antoinette" is utterly ravishing to look at and, at last, peculiarly touching in a way its histrionics and the director's disastrous choices should have precluded. A real woman emerges from the manifestly surreal structure of this film - but that isn't because of Coppola's use of vernacular English and modern pop music in stark contrast to the environment of 18th century Versailles - it's because of Kirsten Dunst's talents.

It is clear that, as others have pointed out, Coppola researched the living daylights out of the era. Scrupulous attention is paid to food, dress, entertainment, hairdos, etc. What that research must also have turned up, and that Coppola chose to ignore in service to her quaint vision, is that Versailles was one of the most formal places ever to exist on the planet. Even in French its denizens would not have used the vernacular to each other, let alone her friends fall all over the French Queen with a familiarity that would never have existed! Louis XVI's court was ruled by a rigid formality that would make the constraints of Victoria's reign look easy-going by comparison. Were it not for the wistful charm brought to her portrayal of Marie Antoinette by the truly gifted young Dunst, this would have been a total, rather than an honorable failure.

In omitting the crushing formality of Louis XVI's court, which served to insulate him and his wife from events taking place just beyond their vast, manicured lawns, Coppola omits a crucial element of the monarchy's downfall. It is rather like making "Nicholas and Alexandra" and leaving out the Romanov's history of absolute rule. In her distrust of her audience's ability to empathize with someone who doesn't talk like them, Coppola ends by sacrificing necessary historical context to support why Marie and Louis are on their way to their deaths in the final frames, and makes insupportable assumptions about how they related to each other and their friends. A few references to Marie's spendthrift ways just aren't enough to support the astonishing downfall of the last of the French kings. Barely any mention is made of the revolution brewing outside the gates until someone runs in with the news that the Bastille has been stormed. To fail to enlighten us about the events leading up to Marie's fate is in some sense to fail to enlighten us about the woman herself - they are inextricably intertwined.

One example of the historical disconnect is the the familiar way in which Marie and her ladies and courtiers lie around together gossiping and eating and shopping - it looks like nothing so much as an episode of "Sex and the City" in 18th century clothing. The fun Marie seems to have with these friends as she wanders through gardens, throws parties, and tries on new clothes, etc., doesn't support her passionate desire to escape to Trianon, her pastoral alternative from Versailles to a place more "natural".

The director's "time warp" gimmick only serves to draw attention to the gimmick itself, and distract from characterization and story. Anything less likely to focus the audience on Marie's amorous state of mind after she meets the handsome Swedish guardsman than a recent (and substandard, in my opinion) cover of "Fools Rush In" can scarecely be imagined - all one thinks is, "Oh, listen, it's "Fools Rush In" right in the middle of a film about Marie Antoinette in the 18th century! How cute!"

Marie's difficulties at the French court have been well recorded by history: the hostility she met there, exacerbated by her failure to bear an heir for so long, her homesickness, her initial isolation, and her young husband's difficulties in the marriage bed. The rest of the cast, especially Jason Schwartzman as the benighted Louis, do as well as they can in the jangled time warp gimmick that robs their story of one of its crucial underpinnings. But essentially they are working against their own interests.

The backdrop of modern English and pop music against 18th century Versailles is interesting for about ten minutes. One gets the point quickly and then it palls just as quickly. This film is worth seeing for Dunst's sweet performance and for the amazing physical production, but, finally, this is yet another film that substitutes gimmick for content. It is as if American filmmakers can't function intellectually on a par with history - they seem to feel compelled to reassure their audiences that this won't be too hard to understand or absorb. A pity.

Movie Review: Beautiful but boring
Summary: 1 Stars

I was expecting the rock music but there is absolutely, positively no story here. Nothing, nada, zilch.

The interiors look great, the clothes look divine, and the food looks luscious but that's all there is to this movie.

I could have enjoyed about 30 minutes of this eyecandy if they had just added the music from the time period - Mozart, Haydn go better with these visuals. The visuals were light and frothy but the soundtrack was aggressively modern, heavy and racing - too aggressive for this light fairytale painting. If you're going to put rock music in a historical drama, you need to put a story with it.

Even as an airheaded delight for the senses, it failed.