Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Sofia Coppolla's Marie Antionette

Yeah, it was SO good.

I thought it was brilliant. Kirsten Dunst was an excellent choice, and played the role with passion and just the right amount of immaturity and naivete turned into forced maturity that I think the director was going for. The scenery was beautiful, and I can't believe they actually filmed it at Versailles. Beautiful. It is a strange and utterly unique take on history, and I was totally impressed. If so-called "Period Pieces" were more like this, they'd be more relevant to viewers today.

I totally got what she was trying to do, and I felt that Marie Antionette was in the same realm (or at least genre) as Baz Luhrmann's beautifully crafted 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet. Such an interesting idea, and pulled off very nicely. I agree with some of the other reviews I read, that some of the chatting and that the dialog was occasionally hard to hear. I think that was completely on purpose - Sofia Coppola wanted to show these people as "real people" and not like far-off Historical Figures who are hard to relate to and we think they don't have the same problems as people have today. It was almost like watching a Reality TV show at times... just awesome. Well done.

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