Depends what youre looking for...
Added 10/28/2009
If youre looking for a historical re-enactment of Marie Antoinettes life, then this movie is not for you. If youre looking for a movie to enjoy with the family, then this movie is not for you. If youre looking for a movie with good dialogue, a plot, and a good ending, then this movie is not for you. Basically i have no idea why anyone would want to watch this movie because it lacked just about everything a movie should have. This movie does not give credit to Marie Antoinettes life or legacy.
Of course Amazon was amazing at the delivery time and the product pruchased was just as described.
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Empty calorie, shallow movie
Added 10/19/2009
For quite some time, this movie has been on my to-view list. So when I was perusing the library, I checked it out. And then my sister and I watched it. And then I found out why I hadn't viewed it earlier.
The plot (well, what there is of a plot) can be summed up in one sentence: See Marie Antoinette live extravagantly. Marie Antoinette marries into the French Court, goes to Versailles, spends lots of money, and basically lounges around.
Before I swing the axe on this film, let me detail some of the highlights. Beautiful scenery and costumes. I found out it won an Academy Award for costume design, and I believe it was well-earned. The costumes looked accurate (my sister is taking art history and, for the most part, found the film to be fairly accurate in this regard) and appropriate for the time period. The surroundings were, I found out, actually filmed in Versailles. Kudos to whomever was able to procure that, as it looks very gorgeous and realistic.
But other than eye candy, there really isn't anything to this movie. Kirsten Dunst does a so-so performance as the doomed Austrian queen of France. One thing is certain: while she may not look the part of a 18th century French royalty, she can play vacuous well. But then all she had to really do to sell that part is throw dice, try on shoes, sip champagne, or eat pastries. Jason Schwartzmann was very amusing as her husband, and I felt he did okay, but, when he isn't given much to act with (other than riding away or falling asleep), you can't quite get a feeling. Most of the actors (Asia Argento, Rose Byrne, Rip Torn, the woman who played Marie's mother) were okay...but there was so little script, it was hard to hail their performances as anything extraordinary.
A brief glance at Wikipedia showed that the historical accuracy was moderately high for a Hollywood film, but I bemoan the loss of the French Revolution. Where are the political machinations? Where are the destitute people in the streets? Why wasn't more mention made of Marie's village or her increasing interest in politics or on how much money she spent? These are very important parts to Marie's life; parts that are glaringly missing.
And the ending! I might have given this 3 stars, but the conclusion, the blankess you are left with...horrible! No idea is given what happens to Marie Antoinette after leaving Versailles...only an empty palace bedroom. How can you call this a story of Marie Antoinette when you only see a few sparse years of her life, during which all she does is gamble and shop? If you aren't going to end with her on the guillotine, at least give us some idea as to her fate!
Overall, I am not impressed. I do credit the film with generating in me an interest in the real Marie Antoinette's life, but other than that and some pretty surroundings and costumes, there really isn't anything to this film. View only if you're in the mood for some petit fours and be prepared for an upset stomach afterwards.
Brought to you by:
*C.S. Light*
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Unforgivable
Added 10/4/2009
Sofia, honey, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??? It is such a privilege for a filmmaker to have both the financial resources and the access to a World Heritage site like Versailles...to then come up with THIS? Vapid. Frivolous. A spectacularly self-indulgent production that was nothing more than a surreal, girly fantasy.
There was one true thing about this film: Inherited privilege comes to no good. It is true with royal families, and it is true, also, with Hollywood.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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An unworthy, salacious, way-below-par effort.
Added 8/22/2009
"Marie Antoinette" is the name of a film made in 1938 by the great W.S. Van Dyke (Director), the wonderful Norma Shearer (Marie Antoinette), the brilliant Robert Morley (Louis XVI), the talented Tyrone Power, the inimitable John Barrymore, the imposing Joseph Schildkraut, and others whose names will be forever enshrined in film history for this and other grand achievements.
"Marie Antoinette" is also the name of a film made in 2006 by the uncoordinated Sofia Coppola (Director), the ditzy Kirsten Dunst (Marie Antoinette), the ineffectual Jason Schwarzman (Louis XVI), the unfortunate Rip Torn (who must nave been duped, bribed, or blackmailed), and others who will spend much of their later careers trying to live down the fiasco.
This review is of course about the latter. I can understand why some reviewers actually like the thing. It's a pretty puff piece, a big fluffball of empty calories - cinematic junk food. In this case, it's not super-salty potato chips, but packing peanuts soaked the dregs of a deep-fat fryer. It's hard to resist this sort of toothsome slop - else most of the fast-food traps would be out of business.
The story of Marie Antoinette is a sad one, and in the end she suffered the fate that most members of her class richly deserved. This story needs to be told with empathy and dignity. In this film there is some feeble attempt at the former, but absolutely none of the latter.
The banality of the script is almost iconic, leaping like a starved carnivore from cliché to cliché. Amazingly, the script touches effectively on the point that "Let them eat cake" (literally, "brioche") may not have said by Marie Antoinette at all. In fact the script does a fair job of avoiding historical howlers.
We can at least say that the script gets the acting it deserves - as Dorothy Parker once said of Katharine Hepburn, no less - running "the gamut of emotions from A to B". The most important problem with the script is where it stops.
The connection of Marie Antoinette with the great French Revolution is fundamental. In this film, the Revolution takes place with scarcely any intimation that it's brewing. But the Revolution begins on schedule anyway, but is barely under way when the film ends. Marie Antoinette's life in the first years of the Revolution, and her execution particularly, may as well not have happened so far as this film is concerned. This is even more lame than (for instance) ending the story of Cinderella at the point when she arrives home after running away from the ball. (Of course, I'll bet you that most of any modern audience will sit there gaping, saying to themselves, "I wonder what happened to her after that". Such is the state of modern education.)
Indubitably, the lamest part of this "Marie Antoinette" is the musical (if you can call it that) score. It's not merely lame, it's tawdry and terminally stupid. When it's not insipid musak, it's rock. Now, rock music is incapable of any real emotional content whatsoever. It's OK for car chases, fist fights, shoot-outs, tractor pulls, monster trucks, unbridled raunchiness, and other events of more than usual empty mindlessness. It's totally unsuitable for any film that aspires to some degree of quality. The quantity of this stuff is a good indicator of the depths to which the film sinks.
There is a little decent music in the film, every note of it composed during the period of Marie Antoinette's life or before. Even there, the film's penchant for cheap shots shines (if that's the word) through. Recall the several little episodes when Marie Antoinette is awakened and dressed in the morning. The music is Vivaldi's Concerto for Diverse Instruments. Where have we heard that before? Remember "All That Jazz"? This is the music that plays during Roy Scheider's wake-up ritual. "Marie Antoinette" uses some good music to good purpose and even then it's just a cheap rip-off of another film.
I suppose it can be said that "Marie Antoinette" has its good points. The sets and costumes are very bright, cheery, and not inaccurate. On the other hand, the genuine tawdriness of late 18th-Century French fashion serves admirably to set off the equally genuine tawdriness of the film. The same may be said for the complete absence of Voltaire as a character. After all, why bring out philosophy when you can trot out titillating assertions that Marie Antoinette was a slut.
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Pop Marie Antoinette is a far cry from either the real queen or Norma Shearer
Added 8/13/2009
Do not consider this movie without first seeing Norma Shearer's 1938 version, which was at least closer to the historical truth in interpretation. This version has better costumes and does relate some incidents that were true, but it is so bland and vapid and Kirsten Dunst is so one-dimensional as the queen that one can not understand why the Revolution even happened.
With plenty of actresses that would have done a superb job, such as Cate Blanchett, I don't comprehend this choice that resulted in one of the most limited, dull interpretations possible. The limitation of all the action to Versailles is also incomprehensible because Marie Antoinette spent a lot of time in Paris during her youth.
There is no insight into the queen's personality that would lead you to suspect that she would become the heroine and martyr of the Revolution, an image that still haunts the French Republic today and is the sole driving force in her historical interest.
The whole movie is forgettable and does NOT resemble the Antonia fraser book, "Marie Antoinette: The Journey" which is an excellent, insightful biography on the Queen, and probably the best that is available in English. If anything it takes after "Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution" by Caroline Weber, which just concentrates on the clothes like this movie does.
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