Awww, I liked Marie Antoinette! It was visual porn (is that ... an oxymoron?) for me, as a person who likes history and a person who lurves exquisitely lush costuming. Sure Louis XVI was nowhere NEAR that hot, but there's something in me that just has a soft spot for a historical kook (which is why I always feel sorry for Mary Todd Lincoln). I like to think of MA as the Paris Hilton of her day ... inbred into stupidity, spoiled rotten since birth, and basically unprepared to function as a human being. Oh yeah, and detested by a lot of people.
As for Sofia's direction, I do feel it always leaves me wanting, like she's saying "look, I'm sooooo artsy! If you don't get it, you're dumb, haha!" But MA was the first of her movies I actually enjoyed. Maybe it's a history major thing?
Oh no no - visually, it was stunning. From the first shot, I thought, "Wow, this is worth it just for how much fun it is to watch!" I'm a huge costume drama fan too...but around the halfway point, I was going, "Um...is that really it? You're just going to keep showing me how much this girl eats and shops? Sure, that worked for Sex and the City but guess why - riiiight, because there was DIALOGUE." I was also really irked that she didn't do a wrap-up at the end. This is an historical story - it does not end when your film does. Tell me what actually happened to Marie after she fled Versailles!
I read somewhere that Sofia didn't want to show MA's head being lopped off because the whole movie was so wrapped up in her glitz and glamour that it would have been difficult for viewers to handle seeing her death. I don't know, maybe I made that up in my head.
The ending of the story of that family wouldn't have been nearly as lush, a family in rags, escaping under the cover of darkness, being betrayed and getting caught. I think the movie relied so heavily on it's costuming that for it to have shown the actors in filthy clothes, it would have ... somehow upset the film. I need to re-watch it, I'm getting the movie and "The Secret Diary of Marie Antoinette" mixed up in my head, which is not a good thing.
Yeah, but you know what Sofia - that's the end of the story. You can't have the Big Bad Wolf skip eating Little Red Riding Hood because it's hard on people. Heroes die all the time in films.
And actually, I think that would have been terribly effective - we've had glitz and glam the whole way through...to see what they've been reduced to would have been the most effective thing she could have done.
My real beef is that - I get why she didn't want to do that ending. That's why lots of film makers rely on the verbal summary at the end - just a 3 sentence paragraph that wraps things up. That's all I need.
You know what I noticed about Lost In Translation? Some people really liked it, and some people really didn't. I enjoyed it, but half the people I saw it with thought it was stupid. Isn't it very strange that a film that was not all that interesting (hey, I said I liked it, I didn't say it was all that interesting) could be polarizing in such a way?
As for Marie, I dunno, I didn't see it. But wasn't it 250% ahistorical? I seem to remember my French historian buddies all cringing at the mere mention of it. I think their comment was that it was just a good excuse to put Dunst in vaguely (but not really) period costumes and let her act like a dramatized 21st century nymphomaniac. Eh, I dunno, but it didn't really appeal to me, so I didn't bother. It looked to much like Grey's Anatomy for me to care.
That's definitely true about Lost in Translation - which, to me, means that it probably is a good film, it's just a matter of taste. And I'm with you - I don't think I've ever known of another film that polarized people so much and made them take either one side or the other.
I don't know enough about history to comment on that - you'd have to ask germy_germin about that, she's the history buff. And nymphomaniac? This woman got so little sex, it's not even funny.
Oh, c'mon, Grey's Anatomy is totally ridiculous, and that's ok, because it's apparently why most people like it. Gorgeous blonde doctor falls in love with creepy (and yes! he was CREEPY!) 55-year old half-dead man who is her patient, and when he dies, she lies down on her bathroom floor for a week, catatonic, with the emo-est of emo music playing in the background? There's a bomb in someone's chest, and the protagonist has to hold it so it doesn't go off, while in the middle of some dramatic tale of her and her weird relationships with her boss and her vet? It's like a soap opera, but I don't even think the soap opera people could come up with things that are this patently ridiculous. This emo-glory (I really think this show is the absolute pinnacle of today's emo culture) is entirely appealing to some people, and stomach-turning schmaltz to others
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It's ok sis. You can tak on poor ms. Coppola onto your list of "Bad Directors, Soulless Folk Doomed to Walk the Earth Forever" and sing it out for the whole wide interweb to see. That's fine
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That's interesting, that take on bored being the state of mine and evocation and that stuff. I'm going to take that home with me.
I didn't intentionally watch all those Coppola movies, btw. Virgin Suicides was her first, so I didn't know. When I went to see Lost in Translation (which I swear to God, one day, I'm going to sit and watch with you to see what you see), I didn't put two and two together. And it wasn't until I was halfway through Marie that I looked at the box and thought "ohhhhhh...her again!"
"I hate movies that make me think." Wow. That's all I have to say. Wow. But hey, I like throw-away films too. Yay Snakes on a Plane.
I liked Lost in Translation, but since I saw it in theatres there have been probably a thousand times that I've passed up opportunities to watch it again. It's not the kind of movie you need to watch a second time, which I guess doesn't make it all that successful.
As for Marie Antoinette, agreed and agreed. Being artsy and obscure does not in and of itself make a movie good, and that was Marie Antoinette's primary shortcoming. It was as if someone suggested at the production meeting that if we make the dresses beautiful enough and touch on drug addiction a little bit then we won't even need a script.
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As for Sofia's direction, I do feel it always leaves me wanting, like she's saying "look, I'm sooooo artsy! If you don't get it, you're dumb, haha!" But MA was the first of her movies I actually enjoyed. Maybe it's a history major thing?
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I was also really irked that she didn't do a wrap-up at the end. This is an historical story - it does not end when your film does. Tell me what actually happened to Marie after she fled Versailles!
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The ending of the story of that family wouldn't have been nearly as lush, a family in rags, escaping under the cover of darkness, being betrayed and getting caught. I think the movie relied so heavily on it's costuming that for it to have shown the actors in filthy clothes, it would have ... somehow upset the film. I need to re-watch it, I'm getting the movie and "The Secret Diary of Marie Antoinette" mixed up in my head, which is not a good thing.
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And actually, I think that would have been terribly effective - we've had glitz and glam the whole way through...to see what they've been reduced to would have been the most effective thing she could have done.
My real beef is that - I get why she didn't want to do that ending. That's why lots of film makers rely on the verbal summary at the end - just a 3 sentence paragraph that wraps things up. That's all I need.
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As for Marie, I dunno, I didn't see it. But wasn't it 250% ahistorical? I seem to remember my French historian buddies all cringing at the mere mention of it. I think their comment was that it was just a good excuse to put Dunst in vaguely (but not really) period costumes and let her act like a dramatized 21st century nymphomaniac. Eh, I dunno, but it didn't really appeal to me, so I didn't bother. It looked to much like Grey's Anatomy for me to care.
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I don't know enough about history to comment on that - you'd have to ask germy_germin about that, she's the history buff. And nymphomaniac? This woman got so little sex, it's not even funny.
And hey! No getting down on Grey's Anatomy!
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I didn't intentionally watch all those Coppola movies, btw. Virgin Suicides was her first, so I didn't know. When I went to see Lost in Translation (which I swear to God, one day, I'm going to sit and watch with you to see what you see), I didn't put two and two together. And it wasn't until I was halfway through Marie that I looked at the box and thought "ohhhhhh...her again!"
"I hate movies that make me think." Wow. That's all I have to say. Wow. But hey, I like throw-away films too. Yay Snakes on a Plane.
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As for Marie Antoinette, agreed and agreed. Being artsy and obscure does not in and of itself make a movie good, and that was Marie Antoinette's primary shortcoming. It was as if someone suggested at the production meeting that if we make the dresses beautiful enough and touch on drug addiction a little bit then we won't even need a script.
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