Marie Antoinette - Film Review

Pop culture film references have grown old, and nothing has sped these annoyances along as quickly as the modern soundtrack. In the right hands, a pop or alternative soundtrack can be a welcome addition to any film. In the wrong hands, you get efforts like Varsity Blues, any modern horror film, or any project that stars teenage divas like that waif of an actress who starred in Lizzy McGuire. In the right hands--in assured, tasteful hands, you can achieve brilliance. Enter Sofia Coppola and her 'Music Supervisor' extraordinaire, Brian Reitzell.

What they have done with Marie Antoinette is added a heretofore unheard of emotional dimension to the tired genre that is the Bio Pic. It is one of the more perfect blends of filmmaking and music that this critic has ever seen, aside from The Graduate and, well... Lost In Translation.

Back in my college days (at film school, of course), one of my professor's teaching assistants banned us from using music for our short films. She said it was an emotional cheat. I always took exception and let the rest of my classmates know my displeasure. Sure, film must stand on its own artistic and creative merits; but, music is such an important aspect of filmmaking (going back to the silent era), that the two artistic forms are joined in ways we really cannot fathom. The emotional power is elusive but profound.

However, none of this talk would amount to anything if Coppola hadn't written and directed such a wonderful film. My use of the word 'wonderful' bears some explanation. I am not essentially elevating this film into a pantheon of objectively great films. For what is art but deciding on subjective grounds what each person finds pleasing, intriguing or repulsive? By wonderful I mean that this film is full of wonder. It is a dream biopic. As if we, the audience, are experiencing the short life of Marie through a dream. And dreams are nothing if they are not wonderful, whether they are beautiful or terrible. Coppola deftly fuses the beautiful with the terrible in Marie Antoinette. She has channeled the spirit and sense of surreal wonder found in a Fellini film. In fact, if Fellini were alive, he would have directed this film. Of that, I am sure.

The politics of pre-Revolutionary France are relagated to the periphery in favor of a more personal, human examination of what it means to be young and royal, and responsible for producing not only a male heir, but a strong, strategic relationship with another country. And the wonder of such a predicament, the beauty and the terror of it all, are lovingly conveyed by Coppola.

And the modern music of Kevin Shields, The Radio Dept, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, and many others, helped this film resonate with audiences who live in the present, not in the past.