Marie Antoinette by reginaroadie

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Marie Antoinette

POSTED BY: REGINAROADIE
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 06:24
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Thursday, October 12, 2006 6:51 PM

Hey All

I'm pretty sure no one is going to respond to this thread, but you never really know about these kind of things.

One movie that's coming out in the next few weeks is Sofia Coppola's latest film MARIE ANTOINETTE with Kirsten Dunst in the title role. I know that this is a kind of prestige film that'll be an Oscar contender and be one a ton of top ten lists of the year, and I will be checking it out, but I can't help but feel conflicted about the whole thing.

Sofia Coppola (whose VIRGIN SUICIDES I dug, but was ambivalent about LOST IN TRANSLATION) has said that she didn't want this to be a normal, boring period piece, and she actually refrenced AMADEUS as an influence, which is good in my books since it's my favorite film of all time. She said that she wanted to have the film about Marie to have sort of a punk aesthetic and to portray her as this overwhelmed teenage girl thrown into an environment where she was in over her head.

That is the problem that I have with the flick that I hope to be proved wrong. The reason why "Let them eat cake" is such a famous quote is because it showed the world how vastly out of touch the royal aristocracy that ruled the European countries were with their people. That these folks were living in oblivious opulence as the country was getting worse and worse to the point of a revolution against them. So I'm not sure if it's a good idea to portray the figurehead of the royal aristocracies that deserved to be usurped as this "poor little rich girl". It would be like making a movie about the Bush twins and how they felt so much pressure when daddy was in office while their country got hit by the worst terrorist attack ever and proceeded to get worse and worse in the following years.

If I were making a movie set during the late 1700's in France, I would have told it from the P.O.V of the fed up masses who got together and threw out the out of touch royals who were screwing with them. Marie would be the clueless twat that she was and have the movie climax with a close up of the axe severing her head with the camera following as the head dropped to the ground, rolled around a bit and a few kids kicking it around like a soccerball.

So while I am as a movie geek and slight history geek slightly excited about seeing a period piece done in an unconventional way to shake up the genre, I am a bit weary of what I perceive to be a glorifying of the out of touch bourgeoisie and the political ideology that it could promote.

Will update once I actually see the movie.

**************************************************
"I have no reason to believe you and every reason not to."
"Why's that?"
"You work in television."

STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP

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Friday, October 13, 2006 1:24 AM

SERYN

But haven't there already been films and plays looking at the revolution from the viewpoint of the masses?

the one that springs to mind is the(longest runnning ever) play Les Miserables. And its film adapt.

from a slightly different stand point, countless versions of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and i'm certain i've seem myriad MGM and older films dealing with The Terror, and not all of the leads were head to toe silk.

The point it that she (Ms Coppola) want to tell Antoinettes story (how accurately is yet to be determined) the way she saw it.

Plus, don't quote me but i'm sure i've read somewhere, that Marie Antoinette was an innocent - she was imported from another country, sold into a mostly loveless marriage, and installed in a court where every other person was plotting to make her absolutely miserable.

Yes, she was living in unadulterated luxury while the country went to wrack and ruin, but it was all she knew, she knew nothing of what was happening, she was kept from all aspects of ruling the country, she was simply a bauble. Even the quote supports this 'let them eat cake' - it was absolutely inconcievable that people could be without, when told they had no bread, it never even occured that this meant they had nothing.

besides, its very unlikely anyway that she even said that - that quote is very likely a peice of propaganda that had been floating around hundreds of years even before her birth.

but regardless of how innocent or guilty she was, the point stands that Sophia Coppola was the one given the production budget, and if she wanted to tell Marie Antoinettes story, then who are we to say no?

http://www.myspace.com/seryndippyt

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Friday, October 13, 2006 3:33 AM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on it, but I can tell you this much. The more and more I read and study history the more and more I’m convinced that the history we know to be true has been distorted much in the way current events are distorted by modern politics today.

Marie Antoinette is another causality of politics. While no one doubts that pre-Republican France was what we would think of today as an oppressive regime (early Republican France wasn’t a whole lot better). There were a lot of people with their paws in that pot, but somehow they’ve escaped popular criticism by hanging it on Antoinette, whom they hated, and the starvation of the French people had as much to do with the cold climate during the Little Ice Age, then with the governments of the time.

Marie Antoinette was a 14 year old girl who knew nothing of France when she became Queen of it. Popular myth makes her out to be a viscous heartless woman, even putting the words “Let them eat cake” in her mouth, all of which is a distortion of old politics. The truth is that she never said such a thing, and her reputation as heartless isn’t a proletariat observation, but rather bourgeois gossip. The court hated Marie Antoinette because she wasn’t familiar, nor appeared to be interested in, French upper class customs. Horrible rumors were spread about her from the day she became queen, most of them untrue, including her having poisoned her own son. This rumor would be a major impetus of the Revolution.

There’s certainly no dismissing that Marie Antoinette ruled during tumultuous times, and like all heads of dictatorial states, she certainly held a lot of the blame for the oppressive nature of her government. But it is also true that it is difficult, if not impossible, to compare 16th century France on the same scale that we would modern Democratic France, since the concept of a liberal democracy had only just been invented in America in 1776, just six years after Antoinette became Queen of France. None of the Medieval and Renaissance governments can be directly compared to modern governments and the “fed up masses” existed long before Antoinette was even born. She didn’t start that fire, but she gets blamed for it because she was Queen when France made the change to Republic. Marie Antoinette became a symbol of a pre-liberal Western world, but she is a product of an older world, and to be fair we should not compare her to liberal Democracies or judge her on the rumors. And plenty of stories have been told about the fed up masses, I personally would like to see a story about Antoinette that doesn’t pine to the old politics and petty etiquette, and instead gets more to the truth about who Antoinette was.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

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Friday, October 13, 2006 2:07 PM

MARINA

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

There’s certainly no dismissing that Marie Antoinette ruled during tumultuous times, and like all heads of dictatorial states, she certainly held a lot of the blame for the oppressive nature of her government.

I agree with everything you said except for that. With the exception of a VERY few (I can think of two), European queens had virtually no responsibility, sway, say, or control over their governments. I doubt she attended council meetings, and if she did I doubt she spoke. Even if she did, the chances of her being taken even slightly seriously seem remote beyond all belief. She was subject to the same oppressive nature of the government - certainly she had food and a roof over her head, but that doesn't mean she held any autonomy over her own life or body, let alone an influence in government.

EDIT: What I forgot to say was: you seem very educated on this subject, and if I'm wrong and she did in fact play a political role in France, please expand upon it. I love history.

Don't make faces.

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Friday, October 13, 2006 4:24 PM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by marina:
I agree with everything you said except for that. With the exception of a VERY few (I can think of two), European queens had virtually no responsibility, sway, say, or control over their governments. I doubt she attended council meetings, and if she did I doubt she spoke. Even if she did, the chances of her being taken even slightly seriously seem remote beyond all belief. She was subject to the same oppressive nature of the government - certainly she had food and a roof over her head, but that doesn't mean she held any autonomy over her own life or body, let alone an influence in government.

EDIT: What I forgot to say was: you seem very educated on this subject, and if I'm wrong and she did in fact play a political role in France, please expand upon it. I love history.

Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I do think, as Queen, she did hold some influence and that translates into responsibility; she did have certain powers and the ear of the King, but certainly, in her day, it would have been very unacceptable for a woman to have demonstrated a strong opinion that differed from the male rulers. More important still, would have been her own confidence in that influence. Women were taught their place in society, particularly wealthy women, and deviating from that was often very harshly criticized. Although there were woman monarchs, Elizabeth I comes to mind, who were independent enough to rule effectively, they often did so only with a certain “tact” that was seen befitting of a women. It is not reasonable or fair to insist that Antoinette necessarily possessed such a personality, and I think that she probably did not.

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Friday, October 13, 2006 7:16 PM

TRAVELER

PBS just did a program about Marie's trial and execution. Probably to compete with the movie.

From what historians were able to sift through she held her own during the trail. She was going to be found guilty no matter what evidence was brought up so she remained poised and answered all accusations calmly. They actually accused her of having incess with her son. So you see what lengths these so-called liberators were capable of to make her look evil.

She went to her death the same way. She refused to be intimidated by the crowd.

History likes to make her a child, but she was not a child when she died. She was the queen.

The leaders of the revolt had to make themselves look rightious, so their history had to make Marie look like a spoiled brat.

I am always careful about historical movies. Their first priority is entertainment and if truth gets dull they tend to right their own.

Traveler

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Saturday, October 14, 2006 7:32 AM

CAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I do think, as Queen, she did hold some influence and that translates into responsibility; she did have certain powers and the ear of the King, but certainly, in her day, it would have been very unacceptable for a woman to have demonstrated a strong opinion that differed from the male rulers.

My understanding was that she was the wife of the man who inherited the throne. I do not see how she would be entitled to any more power than the wife of the President or PM.

Some people could get some power out of that position, if they wanted to. Was she that kind of person?

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Saturday, October 14, 2006 10:17 PM

SERYN

From the accounts that i've read (and they were way back when) she had no power, like you said, no more power than Cherie Blair or Mrs Bush, she could nag, her political power was slight if even existant.

The composure she showed at her triel i suspect would have been a result of her breeding - if English royalty are anything to go by, you could set off a bomb in her knickers and it wouldn't show on her face.

Plus (and this is from a dubious and likely biased source) she was, from almost the moment she arrived in the french court she was powerless as to her own life and even robbed of basic privacy (court life was rigidly controlled by tradition, and noble fought to become attendants, knowing that it brought political power)and subject to those rumors and persecutions. She had a group of friends, with whom she tended to sequester herself, and threw herself into fashion and other concerns but that only served to provide more fodder for rumors, so everywhere she went, a brave face and a certain amount of dignity were absolutely essential - the idea of 'Never let the bastards see that they're getting to you' fits.

Wheather she knew what state the country was in i'm not sure (the court and she especially would have been pretty isolated) and if she would have made an effort to change it is debatable, but no one can argue that she was any more guilty than the king himself and his parliment.

But she's been written and remembered as the villain of the piece, funny that.

But yes, i've seen plenty of things where the revolutionary's were great, where they were just plain revolting, i've seen the aristocrats made fun of, dressed up as pretty puppets, i've seen serious treatments where they attempts to show the grey and not just black and white - i'm hoping this is another grey scale, and a decent study of what she may have been like (albeit with a punk soundtrack)(which i'm actually very excited by after seeing Craig Armstrongs soundtrack work so well in Plunkett & Maclean)

http://www.myspace.com/seryndippyt

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Sunday, October 15, 2006 5:24 AM

CAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by seryn:

But she's been written and remembered as the villain of the piece, funny that.

She was Austrian, and I imagine there was some dislike of that.

I wonder what was said of Nicolas II's wife...

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Sunday, October 15, 2006 5:50 AM

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Quote:
Originally posted by Cavalier:
Some people could get some power out of that position, if they wanted to. Was she that kind of person?

I don’t think so.

I don’t think you can compare her position directly to the wife of modern day president or PM. She was the wife of a man who, in theory, held absolute power, and by her royal standing, also shared in that absolute power. In practice, the King’s power was not absolute, but tempered by the military and the court, which made the King and Queen a political role, to some extent, that had to be played. Antoinette also had certain legal responsibilities as well, such as powers of appointment of certain offices. I’m not sure how extensive her legal powers were, but she was able to order the killings of, maybe, thousands of people.

Her biggest failure as a Queen, I think, was that she never wanted that responsibility. She never used her wealth and her position in a way that would have been befitting of a head of state. It would have been a little bit like making Paris Hilton a head of state. That was the problem with hereditary rule and a royal monarchy. A monarch could be a great leader for a nation, if they wanted to be and were able to be, but hereditary rule chose leaders based on criteria that had nothing to do with a person’s qualification for the office. Now a lot of the problems that France faced, starvation and bourgeois discontent, were not really a product of Antoinette’s rule, or even her husband’s. Still, at a time when a nation faces these kinds of problems, you don’t want Paris Hilton in charge, even in a peripheral capacity.

The problem is not that Antoinette was innocent, but rather that her accusers weren’t innocent either and the way popular history remembers her is distorted by people who wanted to create an example of the flaws in hereditary and monarchial rule. The story that the French Republicans weaved was largely false, because it was completely unsympathetic, nonetheless Antoinette was a pretty good example of those flaws. The problem with the story that popular history tells is that it doesn’t allow that Antoinette was as much a victim of that monarchial type of government, as anyone else. A government that used 14 year old girls as bargaining tools to seal international treaties, where these young girls were shipped off to countries and men they knew nothing of and asked to take a part in the leadership of that country. And when things don’t go the way the people want, you cut off the girl’s head. These are huge burdens to lay on a 14 year old girl.

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Sunday, October 15, 2006 6:37 AM

ZISKER

I recall reading somewhere that she did try to influence the court by curbing the excess and eliminating redundant court positions - this in turn pissed off the aristocracy who wanted those jobs for the influence, presteige and money that came with them. So they began fabricating tales of her personal excess when it came to materialism and partying. I'm not saying she didn't do some of it, just that it wasn't to the extent we think of today.

In addition to that, the "Let them eat cake" comment is a fairy tale that's been passed through the ages just because it sounds good.

If you can't do something smart, do something right.

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Monday, October 16, 2006 11:07 AM

CAVALIER

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

I don’t think you can compare her position directly to the wife of modern day president or PM. She was the wife of a man who, in theory, held absolute power, and by her royal standing, also shared in that absolute power.

I read Simon Schama’s Citizens some time ago, but I do recall that the big issues before the revolution were the “National” debt, reform of the French internal market – especially grain – and a bad harvest. I don’t remember much about the Queen, but I find it hard to believe that anyone expected her to have any significant input into any of these, or that they would have been happy if she had. Spouse-of –the-leader is generally expected to keep-out-the-way.

To be honest, I find it difficult to believe most modern Western governments would have handled things any better. In sixty years of near peace, I doubt if any one of them has managed to balance the budget for even one single year without fiddling the accounts. Louis XVI could at least point to a major fighting-from-America-to-India war as an excuse. Perhaps the war was a mistake, but it was widely supported at the time.

Certainly, it is hard to believe that democratic Weimar Germany was any better run than monarchical pre-Revolutionary France.

Edit: Democracies are pretty good at avoiding really stupid acts like collectivising agriculture (Stalin) or invading Russia (Hitler). But Louis XVI did not do anything like that. The worst he could be accused of was that problems that were genuinely difficult to fix were left a little while, in the hope that they would be easier to solve in the future. And that time never came. A democratic government might have been just as bad, perhaps worse. The classic vice of democracies is to leave difficult problems until after the next election.

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Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:08 PM

SAB39

"I just don't see why everyone's always picking on Marie Antoinette. I can so relate to her. She worked really hard to look that good, and people just don't appreciate that kind of effort. And I know the peasants were all depressed..."
"I think you mean o-pressed."
"Whatever. They were cranky. So they're like, 'Let's lose some heads.' Uhhh! That's fair. And Marie Antoinette cared about them. She was gonna let them have cake!"

Funny how based on this thread, Cordy kinda had a point...

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Tuesday, October 17, 2006 8:53 PM

SERYN

Thats the Scary thing about Cordy - she always kinda had a point.

http://www.myspace.com/seryndippyt

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Wednesday, October 18, 2006 6:24 AM

CAVALIER

Didn’t Cordelia say:

“Tact just means not saying true stuff.”

So true. Sums up her view of things, too.

Returning to topic, I think Marie Antoinette got much of the blame simply because someone had to, so why not pick on the foreigner?

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