Versailles Hasn't Looked This Hip In Centuries

For all of its flamboyance, its sequins, silk, and ruffles, its candy-store color palette and many shots of decadent French desserts set to a harpsichord and ‘80s pop-rock soundtrack, “Marie Antoinette” is superficiality made startlingly human. Director Sophia Coppola does not look back at Marie Antoinette’s reign through the veil of historical documentation. She tells her story through the eyes of Marie Antoinette herself. It is not the story of a queen who turned her back when the country needed her the most. It is the story of a young girl, used as a pawn in the sticky workings of monarchy. It’s the story of a naïve teenager who is forced into the lap of luxury and who behaves like, well, a teenager.
Coppola’s rendition of the now familiar tale of Marie Antoinette’s premature betrothal and grisly finale is not what you’d expect in a period piece. Rather than time-porting us back into the 18th century, she pulls the notorious queen up a few years. Her lavish wardrobe would make Lady Gaga blush with envy, the courtiers’ discourse is anything but antiquated, and guests at a Parisian masquerade dance the Viennese waltz to the tunes of Siouxsie & the Banshees. The ambience is so overblown that “Marie Antoinette” can and has been accused of being merely a novelty. But, like the queen herself, there is something more lurking beneath that towering, powdered wig.
Historical biopics tend to take their own grandeur too seriously. Wanting to do justice to the time period, the historical details, and most importantly the characters themselves, they attempt to recreate the mood of a bygone era for a contemporary audience. In doing so, they inevitably date themselves. When historical figures are so esteemed that we should make a movie of them, filmmakers will try to emanate that opulence by placing them on a pedestal so high that the modern public can only stare up.
In “Marie Antoinette,” we have a young lady full of elegance and beauty, forced to do what is the downfall of all teenagers- grow up too quickly. She winds up wallowing in a pool of champagne, bonbons, drugs, taffeta, and scandal. Kirsten Dunst is perfectly balanced in the role of the stately-yet-ignorant, poised-yet-naughty queen who unknowingly finds herself in a dreadful state of unbalance.
Though she lived a life that the average moviegoer could only dream of (or fear), Marie Antoinette was still simply a human. The Queen of France was a kid in a candy store; the King correlating to today’s male who finds recluse in his hobbies, much to the chagrin of his overlooked wife. They were raised overprotected and reigned the country clueless of the world outside Versailles. Lavishing in her posh lifestyle, you can’t help guessing that Marie Antoinette wants something that her extravagant exterior won’t permit in. She questions her position but is too sheltered to find an answer before it’s too late. Perhaps if Antoinette had been elected, things would have turned out differently.