In a funny scene, Marie wakes up in the morning to a roomful of woman who have been given the privilege (as due their rank) to help her get dressed in the morning. When a woman of higher rank enters the room, she takes over being able to dress Marie. What makes the scene a bit funny is that Marie stands there naked (Coppola tastefully shoots the scene so that you don't see Dunst fully unclothed) shivering in cold while various women of the court continue to outrank each other to gain the right to dress the new dauphine. From Marie's perspective, she simply wants to get dressed but every part of her day is carefully planned and controlled--she's not allowed to give cold meats to her friends, can't get her own glass of water, and even has a ritual for lunch. Sheltered and alienated from the rest of the court, Marie's choices are clear: Find a way to fit into the wild world of Versailles or become an outcast like the King's mistress. Marie chooses to shine as she longs to be loved, liked, and surrounded by friends.
It is not with disdain that she tells her adviser that she no longer needs diamonds once she hears of the people starving in Paris. She doesn't make the grasp between hunger, need, and poverty since her world is so abundant with excess. Another well-handled scene shows Marie uttering the famous "Let them eat cake" but Coppola shows that, in reality, Marie is reading those words in a tabloid like newspaper and says, "I would never say anything like that." The perceived reality of what the people hear of her wildness and of her true self are poles apart. She is vilified by the people, but in the film she does have a tendency to drink/gamble too much, but after having her children she takes to her country village that she had built into Versailles. Having been to Versailles and seen the excess there (to walk the ground itself is an amazing feat in itself), one can see how the hungry people of France wanted blood.
Coppola's Marie longs to stretch back to her Austrian roots and play in the country-side raising her children as any good mother would--with love, laughter, and light. Yet when you're the Queen of France and such huge expectations are thrust upon you by the court, temptation to overindulge simply happens. When Marie orders oak trees to line the garden, she wants tall ones and never for a moment truly understands that her spending of 50,000 Francs in one month is tied into reality. She plays with diamonds and precious stones as we would normal rocks--not because she asks for them, but that is what her playground is made of. Her view on reality is shaped by what is available to her and what she can have--because she is the Queen.
Young, bored, and sexually longing, Marie spirals downward not in a self-destructive way, but simply eats through the wealth of France without knowing there ever was a bottom to the barrel. When the people come to storm Versailles, Marie stands fast with her husband and family. Her courage is apparent and how misunderstood she was comes through clearly in Coppola's smart film. Not the best film by Coppola (I'd vote for "Lost in Translation" is her best), but Marie Antoinette is well worth a view. Rent, buy it, check it out.
Comments