Marie Antoinette (2006)
Directed by Sofia Coppola
A retelling of the story of France’s iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette - from her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at fifteen to her reign as queen at nineteen and ultimately the fall of Versailles.
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30 films that influenced Marie Antoinette
What critics say influenced Marie Antoinette
For film fans, Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Luchino Visconti's The Leopard will immediately come to mind as visual and overall aesthetic references, but the film shares much more in common with the works of the aforementioned Malick, whose most recent work The New World similarly purported to document a bygone era via atmosphere and emotion rather than historical accuracy.
The cinematography is a perfect balance of unconventionally framed and handheld shots with exquisitely balanced static shots that favourably compare to Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.
Even if many viewers will resist, preferring the kind of safe, secure structure of an important, dusty novel, Coppola has broken new ground here, reaching the same general neighborhood as Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975).
Norma Shearer’s portrayal of the queen in 1938 Oscar-nominee Marie Antoinette inspired power-hungry Eva Perón to dye her hair blonde.
After scoring a major hit with "Apocalypse Now" in 1979, her dad, director Francis Ford Coppola, made the stupendously lavish 1982 musical "One From the Heart," which turned out to be a starry-eyed celebration of superficiality.
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Additionally, the much-discussed soundtrack outwardly recalls the genre-jumping eclecticism of movies like A Knight's Tale or Moulin Rouge, but ultimately Coppola's use of music, imagery, actors, or any part of her assembly of talent feels absolutely appropriate for the story.
Despite the fact that the film is one giant anachronism, the overall tone here lacks the wink-wink of something like Baz Luhrmann�s Moulin Rouge.
The mix of 18th-century costumes and settings with modern dialogue and New Wave music (Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" as Marie shops for shoes with her girlfriends) may be jarring to some, like Baz Luhrmann's use of Top 40 hits in "Moulin Rouge!" or his staging of the "Romeo and Juliet" balcony scene in a swimming pool.
The icing on the cake, though, came when Coppola claimed that Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975) was a major influence on the film.
For the uninitiated, Lisztomania (advertised as "the erotic, exotic, electrifying rock fantasy ? it out-Tommy's Tommy") is a colorful, cheeky, deliberately anachronistic film that portrays Franz Liszt (Roger Daltrey) and Richard Wagner (Paul Nicholas) as 19th century rock stars.
"Marie Antoinette" is like a girlified version of a Ken Russell ("Gothic," "Litzomania") period piece.
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Well, you know, Sally Potter with Orlando, and Jane Campion with The Piano...
Well, you know, Sally Potter with Orlando, and Jane Campion with The Piano...