The movie Marie Antoinette was screened and directed by Sofia Coppola. The uniqueness of the movie is that it depicts the early years of Marie Antoinette and her relations with her husband, Louis XVI. The movie portrays that it was a chance that bound Louis, whilst still only half a man, to a girl who at fifteen was already wholly feminine. Marie-Antoinette, graceful, impetuous, and pleasure-loving, had the strength of will that her husband lacked, but not the wisdom.
The king came all the more easily under her influence because he had never been attracted by women, and could not be induced to follow the Bourbon custom of furnishing his drawing-room with a French mistress, whilst leaving the cares of his nursery to a foreign wife. After too many years of misunderstanding, a family and affection came together.
The benefit of the movie is that it realistically portrays the epoch and its values, morals and social principles dominated in society. Unhappily Louis’ new devotion to Marie-Antoinette coincided with a time when the political situation made her influence over him doubly dangerous. She could never have been a political nonentity, like the last queen–the homely daughter of a dethroned prince. Her beauty made an instant appeal, especially to foreign eyes.
Sofia Coppola depicts her as a statue of beauty when standing or sitting; grace itself when she moves. Sofia Coppola creates a unique and realistic character of Marie Antoinette and the court. Coppola portrays that Marie Antoinette could not forget that she was a Habsburg, a princess of the proudest house in Europe. But her birth had been heralded to the world by the disastrous earthquake of Lisbon, when thirty thousand people lost their lives.
Nor was she allowed to forget that she was a pledge of the unpopular Franco-Austrian alliance. Her youth was dogged by the malice of an anti-Austrian cabal, which magnified her least indiscretion into a crime. When she first came to Versailles, Marie Antoinette exclaims: “This is ridiculous” Countresse de Noailles answers: “This, Madame, is Versailles” (Marie Antoinette 2007).
Marie Antoinette was a naïve girl who came to Versailles and became one of the important figures in the history of France. Nor was her conduct such that it was difficult to find occasion for scandal. Made a wife and a queen at an age when she should have been at school, and removed from the staid economical atmosphere of Schönbrunn to the luxurious suppers and card-parties of Versailles, she slipped all too gaily into a life of frivolity and wastefulness.
The movie vividly portrays a great impact of the mother on Marie Antoinette and the life of the court. Her martinet mother, the Empress Maria-Theresa, made matters no better by treating her as a naughty child: her letters, based upon monthly reports from the Austrian ambassador, are full of admonitions to say her prayers, to read pious literature, and to clean her teeth. The Queen of France must pay more attention to her manners, spend less on dress, and correct her spelling. Her brother Joseph, the only one of her family who sees that she has grown up, and surrenders to her charm, cannot forbear to lecture her on the duties of her station, and to urge the use of her influence over the king to maintain the Franco-Austrian alliance, and to forward Habsburg interests in Bavaria and the Netherlands. One of the scene depicts the following:
Ambassador Mercy: Madame du Barry would like to offer you some diamonds.
Marie Antoinette I have enough diamonds.
Ambassador Mercy Snubbing the King’s favorite is publicly criticizing the King’s behavior. All you need do is say a few words to her; because of rank she is not allowed to speak to you first.
Marie Antoinette Well, I certainly have nothing to say to her. And why should I approve of his cavorting with a harlot?” (Marie Antoinette 2007).
The most impressive scenes depict that the salaries of the court, the upkeep of the royal residences, and the varied expenses of food, heating and lighting, hunting, travelling, and the rest, constituted nearly a quarter of the civil expenditure of the country. The Grand Falconer received fifteen thousand pounds a year, the Master of the Royal Wolf-hounds ten thousand pounds, and the Head Equerry twenty thousand pounds. At Versailles everything belonged to the king.
Sofia Coppola skillfully depicts that her supposed immorality, too, was the subject of a hundred scurrilous pamphlets on sale in the arcades of the Palais-Royal. Few people in Paris society, when they heard her name coupled with that of the Duc de Coigny or the Duc de Biron, believed that the charges were untrue. Popular dislike easily added another indictment against her. In the early years of her marriage Paris could not fail to recognize in the new princess a charm which was as French as Louis’ stolidity was German, and would have forgiven all other failings, if she had been the mother of a Dauphin: when the first child came and was a girl, she was beyond forgiveness.
She could be touched by the demonstrations of goodwill that rarely came her way: she was bitterly hurt by the common coldness. ‘”What harm have I done them?’ (Marie Antoinette 2007), she cries, after one of these experiences. She shows little understanding of the common people, and little sympathy with their troubles. The claims of the Commons rouse her to nothing but blind resentment. In a word, no one was more to blame for the fall of the French throne; indeed, the judicious Jefferson always maintained that but for her there would have been no Revolution: but nothing is more distasteful than to indict her.
The only limitation of the movie is that it involves too many bad scenes and revealing sexual scenes. It concentrates on sexual relations (absence of these relations) between the king and the queen. In one of her dialogues, Marie Antoinette remarks: “I shall never forget that you are reponsible for my happiness”. Duc de Choiseul replies: “And that of France”. (Marie Antoinette 2007). The queen’s circle had increasingly and insidiously taken the place of a king’s will, a king’s mistress, and a king’s ministers. Its influence was specially dangerous in an age which knew of no appeal to educated opinion through parliament or the press. It was thus that Louis’ ablest advisers had fallen–Turgot and Malesherbes, because they did not know how to appeal to the nation, and Necker, because he offended the court by attempting to do so.
Sofia Coppola creates a unique image and spirit of society and portrays human values during this period of time. Surrounding the young monarchs, living on them, shielding them, and compromising them, was ranged the vast hierarchy of the court. The main limitation of the movie is a lot of scenes portraying sexual relations and bias concerning sexual relations between the king and Marie Antoinette.
Works Cited
Marie Antoinette dir. by Sofia Coppola. Sony Pictures DVD 2007.