[noumenal]

I think it is awesome that the only period music is from Rameau.

Traité de l’harmonie fo life, boyee!

[silverfreepress (sdasher)]

I saw this last night in an empty theatre around midnight, new york city.
The best part of this movie were the memories looking backing on it. Very candy. And the Converse thrown in, nice.

[Everyneurotic]

can you say shittiest movie of the month?

if this was 1995, then it would be "edgy" to use an aphex twin song on a hollywood movie.

[screamingskull]

i finally saw it a few nights ago, i wasn't too impressed. Its okay but not as good as 'The virgin suicides' and 'lost in translation'.

[atari 2600]

Most likely the film is a beautiful...dud.

No "The Chauffeur" on the soundtrack kind of sucks.

It was booed at Cannes, but of course, that may have been just the French critical reaction to an American-made movie about their history, sorta like if a film was made with all French actors about, say, George Washington. (repeating someone else's observation)

I've heard that there is little dialogue really (which is becoming a S. Coppola trademark in a sense) and that there are ridiculously long shots on extravagant meals and desserts.

There was a pretty neat article on it in Entertainment Weekly and Sofia mentioned a "punk" influence a bunch of times.

[silverfreepress (sdasher)]

 

this is the opening shot, and every shot that follows is equally arranged and beautiful. i can see how comparing this film to The Departed or Running With Scissors is pointless. Those movies are full of dialogue and wit and in the first case extreme violence. But Sofia makes these movies that seem much more like real life with silence and contemplation allowed, just most directors don't feel comfortable, or for some other reason, adding these elements to film.
Plus on each of her films the sets looks like it would be a blast to hang out on.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Maybe her movies are about silence because she can't direct dialogue.

[gmku]

I'm a fan of her stuff, so I'm looking forward to seeing this.

[static-harmony]

I thought is was a good movie, I like the soundtrack to it.

[Tokolosh]

I still have to see it, bit I'm sure Sofia won't let us down.

[Danny Himself]

My friend saw this and didn't approve. I'm not going to see it.

[trainyard bliss]

i saw it. i loved lost in translation, but i have to agree that marie antoinette is sterile. sterile and confused.

[Everyneurotic]

what the fuck are you talking about?

that idiot coppola tried to "refresh" the marie antoinette story by using "edgy" and "modern" music to have an original take on it; and it seems to me like the moron thinks aphex twin and squarepusher are still innovative and provocative enough that a hollywood movie would use their space age music.

i never said aphex twin wasn't actual music or "a legitimate form of artistic expression", and not only in 2006, but it ALWAYS has been, or was it just "noise" in 1995 and now it's hip to call it music? the fact is that it's great music, but in the context of this movie, it's used as a way to be provocative or creative, which is not.

(and i call sofia coppola an idiot and a moron based on my appreciation of her acting and directorial skills, you can argue, but that's the way she is to me)

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Everyneurotic

...that idiot coppola tried to "refresh" the marie antoinette story by using "edgy" and "modern" music to have an original take on it...

Yeah, in a way it is so Romeo + Juliet, but that movie used a modern-day setting.

The soundtrack makes sense in a way since it is about a more intimate portrait of Antoinette and not really a historical account in the traditional sense. The 1938 version (I actually didn't even look that up...I watched it on AMC last Friday (the night of the wide-release premiere of the new movie and remember the year from the cable guide---(excuse me for tooting my own horn for little to no reason)) is more about history than placing you in a setting contemporary with Marie, which, is another interesting way to tell the story and learn about history in itself. (Thanks noumenal, for mentioning the book on which it's based because that's new information to me).

Sofia says that she wanted the audience to feel the emotion of the modern-day songs to convey what the scenes are about rather than attempting to tell the story with a more classical soundtrack. I can buy into that, but (bearing in mind that I haven't seen it yet) I can't buy into this movie judging by what else I've heard, read and seen so far.

Some reviews have likened Marie's charmed life to that of Sofia's herself and claim that the movie is a bit autobiographical, but then again, critics have a penchant for reading all sorts of things into films for the sake of having something interesting to write about and exaggerrate what's really there in the process.

Lost in Translation was a bit different in its pacing and storytelling than many movies today, but I really do like it. Then again, that one had Bill Murray. Ribisi is a good actor, but he was like a cardboard cut-out in it. Johansson is nice to look at, but she's no great actress. I don't think this movie will be a deserving follow-up really. I just may be completly off-base, but it seems to me that Sofia built up a lot of cred with Lost in Translation and now she's self-importantly abusing the praise with an unwatchable movie, relying on the impressive beauty of the actual setting at Chateau de Versailles to carry the film.

[Alex's Trip]

Originally Posted by static-harmony

I thought is was a good movie, I like the soundtrack to it.

I agree. It wasn't by any means the greatest. And for a 'history' movie, I thought it was pretty good. Generally, I don't like those types of movies, but I watched it because I like Sofia. It kept me entertained, and I really liked the music.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Alex's Trip

...It wasn't by any means the greatest...

A nagging suspicion I have is that people who will say that they really adore this movie are the same people that hang around coffee shops with their copy of James Joyce's "Ulysses" or the like.

[Everyneurotic]

i probably listen to more electronic music nowadays than you.

[atari 2600]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention before that the poster art and the title graphics seem to me to be an homage to two main influences: the cover of "Nevermind the Bullocks...Here's the Sex Pistols" and the poster for David Lynch's Wild At Heart.

[Tokolosh]

Originally Posted by Everyneurotic

(and i call sofia coppola an idiot and a moron based on my appreciation of her acting and directorial skills, you can argue, but that's the way she is to me)

I agree with you in that Sofia isn't good at acting. A perfect example of that is The Godfather Part III. I found her acting skills terrible in that movie. She actually spoilt it in a way, if you compare her to the rest of the cast. But as a director... sublime!

[atari 2600]

Well, as I wrote, I may be completely off-base...

Ebert Rating: ****

BY ROGER EBERT / Oct 20, 2006





Ten things that occurred to me while watching "Marie Antoinette."

1. This is Sofia Coppola's third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you. It shows Coppola once again able to draw notes from actresses who are rarely required to sound them.

2. Kristen Dunst is pitch-perfect in the title role, as a 14-year-old Austrian princess who is essentially purchased and imported to the French court to join with the clueless Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) to produce an heir. She has self-possession, poise and high spirits, and they are contained within a world that gives her no way to usefully express them. So she frolics and indulges herself, within a cocoon of rigid court protocol.

3. No, the picture is not informative and detailed about the actual politics of the period. That is because we are entirely within Marie's world. And it is contained within Versailles, which shuts out all external reality. It is a self-governing architectural island, like Kane's Xanadu, that shuts out politics, reality, poverty, society.

4. Schwartzman, like Bill Murray's character in "Lost in Translation," plays a sexually passive sad sack who would rather commiserate than take an active role. Danny Huston is priceless as Marie's older brother, brought in from Austria to give the young king a few helpful suggestions about the birds and the bees. The old king, randy Louis XV (Rip Torn), would certainly need no inspiration to perform, as his mistress, Madame du Barry, (Asia Argento) immediately observes.

5. All of Coppola's films, and this one most of all, use locations to define the lives of the characters. Allowed complete access to Versailles, she shows a society as single-mindedly devoted to the care and feeding of Marie Antoinette as a beehive centers on its queen.

6. On the border for the "official handover," Marie is stopped, stripped and searched to ascertain, brutally, if she is indeed a virgin and, for that matter, a female. In a deal like this, it pays to kick the tires. I was reminded of the scene in von Sternberg's "The Scarlett Empress" where Catherine arrives at the court of the Czar and the royal physician immediately crawls under her skirt to check her royal plumbing. Every detail is covered by the French authorities; they even confiscate her beloved dogs, but tell her, "You can have as many French dogs as you like."

7. Coppola has been criticized in some circles for her use of a contemporary pop overlay -- hit songs, incongruous dialogue, jarring intrusions of the Now upon the Then. But no one ever lives as Then; it is always Now. Many characters in historical films seem somehow aware that they are living in the past. Marie seems to think she is a teenager living in the present, which of course she is -- and the contemporary pop references invite the audience to share her present with ours. Forman's "Amadeus" had a little of that, with its purple wigs.

8. Everyone in the audience knows Marie Antoinette was beheaded and I fear we anticipate her beheading with an unwholesome curiosity. Coppola brilliantly sidesteps a beheading, and avoids bloated mob scenes by employing light, sound and a balcony to use Marie's death as a curtain call. Hired, essentially, to play a princess, she is a good trouper and faithful to her role. It is impossible to avoid thoughts of Diana, Princess of Wales.

9. Every criticism I have read of this film would alter is fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film.

10. It is not necessary to know anything about Marie Antoinette to enjoy this film. Some of what we think we know is mistaken. According to the Coppola version, she never said, "Let them eat cake." "I would never say that," she says indignantly. What she says is, "Let them eat custard." But, paradoxically, the more you know about her, the more you may learn, because Coppola's oblique and anachronistic point of view shifts the balance away from realism and into an act of empathy for a girl swept up by events that leave her without personal choices. Before she was a queen, before she was a pawn, Marie was a 14-year-old girl taken from her home, stripped bare, and examined like so much horseflesh. It is astonishing with what indifference for her feelings the court aristocracy uses her for its pleasure, and in killing her disposes of its guilt.