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1:00

Hello, Next Picture Show listeners. Here's a friendly

1:02

reminder that if you enjoy the Next Picture Show, you'll

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really enjoy getting more Next Picture Show by subscribing

1:07

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1:14

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1:16

for $5 a month.

1:17

It's prestige movie season, and we're seeing a lot

1:19

of big movies this week. So stay

1:22

tuned for a barrage of bonus episodes as we look

1:24

at some of the films designed to be in the awards

1:26

conversation this year. To subscribe

1:28

to our Patreon, please visit patreon.com

1:30

slash next picture show.

1:32

That's patreon.com slash next

1:34

picture show.

1:36

It's very difficult to keep the

1:38

line between the past and the present. Do

1:41

you believe that someone out of the past can

1:44

enter and take possession of a

1:46

living being? We may be through with the past, but

1:49

the past is not through with us. Welcome

1:51

to the Next Picture Show, a Movie of the Week podcast

1:53

devoted to a classic film and how

1:55

it's shaped our thoughts on the world. in

2:00

a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson here

2:02

with Genevieve Koski, Scott

2:04

Tobias, and Keith Phipps. Now

2:07

normally I don't advise podcast hosts to

2:09

pre-game by altering themselves before a podcast.

2:12

Not everyone can be Doug Love's movies.

2:14

But this week I'm hoping everybody's cranked up on

2:16

pixie sticks and their favorite delicate fruit

2:18

flavor of macaron because that

2:20

is certainly what seems most appropriate for the first

2:22

half of our pastel pop pairing. Am

2:24

I wrong? Did everybody else

2:26

eat cake and just possibly a lot of sugar?

2:29

I was told to eat cake,

2:30

so I ate cake. I

2:34

am currently ingesting

2:36

snuff as we record this. I

2:39

just have to finish applying my beauty mark

2:41

real quick and then I'll be ready.

2:43

Scott's not saying anything because he's literally

2:45

just got a

2:45

straw stuck into a bottle

2:47

of champagne right now. I am

2:50

living off the natural buzz

2:52

of this being our 400th episode,

2:55

yes? Right? That doesn't

2:57

make you feel old and decrepit. It

2:59

makes you feel young and buzzy. I'm

3:01

energized. I am coming

3:03

into the 400th episode with more

3:06

excitement and vigor than the first. Maybe.

3:08

I don't know. That's fine. That's

3:10

totally true. We were all kind of still a little beaten down. We

3:13

were a little bummed. The collapse of our

3:15

last enterprise. That's true.

3:17

Wow. I mean, it's been eight

3:17

years at this point and 400 episodes, which is

3:24

rather a lot. We're just going to go on

3:26

and add to that total. Genevieve, if you

3:28

want to tell us what we're talking about with this pairing,

3:30

which will be 400 and 401. Sure.

3:34

That pastel pop pairing Tasha

3:36

mentioned is referring to the overall vibe and

3:38

color palette of Marie Antoinette, Sofia

3:40

Coppola's third film, this one based on Antonia

3:43

Frazier's book, Marie Antoinette, The Journey. The

3:45

movie, released in 2006, drew mixed

3:48

responses from critics and was a box office disappointment

3:50

compared with her previous film, Lost in Translation.

3:53

Many viewers didn't entirely know what to make of its

3:55

impressionistic youth culture take on the life

3:57

of the French queen, laden with modern

4:00

pop and rock music and full of casting

4:02

choices considered odd at the time.

4:04

Maybe it would have been easier to interpret what Coppola

4:06

was reaching for with the film if viewers of

4:08

the time had been able to compare with Coppola's 2023

4:11

movie

4:11

Priscilla, an adaptation of Priscilla

4:13

Presley's memoir Elvis and Me, which

4:16

similarly takes a narratively and musically

4:18

unconventional approach to Priscilla's relationship

4:20

with Elvis Presley. Both of these movies

4:23

look at women living in luxury, in isolation,

4:25

in the spotlight, and in the shadow of their

4:28

far more famous husbands. This week

4:30

we'll talk our way through the unconventional historical

4:32

portrait of Marie Antoinette, and next

4:34

week we'll run down the surprisingly lengthy

4:36

list of connections that make that movie and Priscilla

4:39

almost feel like the same life, lived twice

4:41

but centuries apart. We'll be back after

4:44

this break.

4:52

Music is interesting.

4:55

All eyes will be on you.

4:58

You look like a child. So

5:06

I've heard you make keys as a hobby?

5:09

Who? What

5:11

on earth is going on with that young couple?

5:17

A disaster. Did you think I'd do it? Yes. I

5:20

don't. No problem. I'm

5:22

a legend. What do you want me to do for pleasure? I do not

5:24

understand. Oh. Do

5:26

you mind if I go? No. No.

5:30

He's not a girl. He's not a girl. He's

5:32

not a girl. He's not a girl. He's not

5:34

a girl. He's not a girl. He's not a girl.

5:37

He's not a girl. He's not a girl. He's

5:39

not a girl. What is going on

5:41

with this group right here? Eight

5:50

hours Part interval.

5:52

Don't they ever get tired of these ridiculous

5:54

stories? sounds

6:00

a little bit like the delirious teen dream life

6:02

the main character is experiencing on screen

6:04

during the height of her experiences as the Queen

6:06

of France in the late 1700s.

6:09

In a Vogue oral history published in 2021,

6:12

Coppola describes that production as the

6:14

ultimate party. Fresh off the success

6:17

of her second directorial feature, Lost in Translation,

6:20

Coppola's riding a wave of goodwill, and the sky

6:22

was the limit. She wanted a bigger budget

6:24

and more freedom for her third film, and she found

6:26

a producer that believed in her and was eager to

6:29

reward her ambition. She wanted to

6:31

soundtrack her new film with the post-punk hits

6:33

of her youth, music that she couldn't afford,

6:35

so she appealed directly to the bands and

6:37

got permission to use their music for reduced rates.

6:40

She wanted to shoot at Versailles herself, and

6:42

she got what she's described as unprecedented

6:45

access,

6:45

to the point where her cast and crew

6:47

were allowed to roam the place after hours,

6:49

playing hide and seek with each other.

6:51

She wanted her Virgin Suicides star

6:54

Kirsten Dunst and her cousin Jason Schwartzman

6:56

to play the leads, and though both of them were

6:58

dubious about their own suitability for the roles,

7:01

they both said yes. She wanted

7:03

the cast to work with their natural accents

7:05

rather than pretending to

7:06

French accents or speaking French, and

7:09

while she got some pushback, she ultimately

7:11

carried through with what she wanted to do. She brought

7:13

in Manolo Blahnik to design

7:15

the shoes. Seemingly, no one said

7:17

no, or that isn't practical, or let's

7:20

scale that down to Coppola at any point on

7:22

this project. There's so much enthusiasm

7:25

to work with her that actor Molly Shannon

7:27

had a baby induced in order to be done with

7:29

her pregnancy in time to work on the movie.

7:32

The giddy way Coppola talks about that kid in

7:34

the candy store feeling of all doors being open

7:36

to her, of getting all access permission

7:38

to indulge her ambitious dreams for the movie, is

7:41

mirrored in parts of Marie Antoinette's story

7:43

itself. But in the movie at least, Marie

7:46

herself found indulgence unsatisfying,

7:48

and more a method of compensation than anything else.

7:51

A fourteen-year-old princess of Austria married

7:53

off to a fifteen-year-old prince of France in order

7:56

to seal a fragile peace, Marie

7:58

faced a bigoted

7:58

court that regarded

7:59

Austrians as cold and provincial, a

8:02

family who expected her to use her court training

8:04

and her young body to manipulate France to

8:06

their political goals, and a husband who

8:08

famously refused to have sex with her even

8:11

though her primary purpose was to produce an heir. There's

8:14

a great deal of no in Marie's young life,

8:16

and as she comes to see the limits of her power

8:18

and her popularity, she starts filling

8:20

the empty places in her life with dresses and

8:23

jewels, cakes and puppies, shoes

8:25

and toys. There's a bratty defiance

8:28

to her spending sprees in this movie. Its

8:30

consumerism is a rebellion's defiance against

8:32

her judgmental surroundings. Courtiers

8:35

whispering behind her back that she must be frigid

8:37

or barren? Who cares? She's an

8:39

endless diet of strawberries, whipped cream and cake.

8:41

So she's powerless, caged and both held

8:43

at her husband's whims and blamed for them? Why

8:46

not drink champagne? Gamble? Run

8:48

out to forbidden parties and stay up late? The

8:51

lack of forethought and weighty consideration for the

8:53

future is all part of the youth culture

8:55

giddiness that infects a lot of Coppola's historical

8:57

film, and that infected at least some of

9:00

its making. But Marie Antoinette, like

9:02

the Antonia Fraser History book it's based

9:04

on, is also a deliberate strike back

9:06

against history's image of Marie as a spoiled,

9:08

out-of-touch spendthrift who was told that

9:10

the peasants in France had no bread and cavalierly

9:13

said, let them eat cake. A lie

9:15

stolen from a Jean-Jacques Rousseau book written

9:18

when Marie was nine years old. Coppola's

9:21

version of the queen is a desperately unhappy,

9:23

isolated young woman living in luxury lacking

9:26

the basics of love and satisfaction and

9:28

trying to make self-indulgence work for her instead.

9:31

In talking about the movie, Coppola generally

9:33

focuses on the teen-reveled re-attitude

9:36

and pop sensibilities she wanted to convey in the

9:38

movie. An attitude that extended to

9:40

slipping a pair of lavender converse sneakers

9:42

into one party montage is a reckless

9:44

moment of anachronism. She's talked

9:46

less, though, about why she empathized

9:49

so much with Marie Antoinette and why Marie

9:51

is one of so many women in Coppola's

9:53

films who are contained and constrained,

9:56

looking for ways to act out as they contend with their

9:58

famous fathers or husbands.

9:59

or lovers.

10:01

Given her status as the daughter of Francis Ford

10:03

Coppola, as a woman frequently

10:05

derided as a nepo baby before that term

10:07

existed, as a woman who had felt

10:10

pressured into an acting career she didn't want,

10:12

didn't feel she had the talent for, and then was

10:14

widely derided for trying, it isn't

10:17

too hard to draw a few lines of comparison.

10:19

In fact, it's harder to watch Coppola's movies, particularly

10:23

The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation,

10:25

The Bling Ring, and the new Priscilla, but

10:27

maybe Marie Antoinette above them all, and

10:29

not see what it might feel like to grow up as the

10:32

daughter of a famous director. Appearing

10:34

in The Godfather while she was still an infant, raised

10:37

at a distance from her father that she depicts metaphorically

10:39

in her movie Somewhere. It's hard not

10:41

to see a little bratty defiance in the way Marie

10:44

Antoinette was made, as a kind of joyous party

10:46

of indulgence and excess built around

10:49

personal limits and expectations, but

10:51

with all the freedom and privilege Coppola was

10:53

able to manifest. It's an unexpected

10:55

kind of history, but in a way it's a very personal

10:58

one.

10:58

We'll talk about it after the break.

11:21

The

11:25

French can

11:27

be fickle, and Her Majesty would do

11:30

well to be more attentive. Life is

11:46

getting harder for the people of France. The

11:48

bed shortage is grave. So

11:51

there must be something the king can do to ease their

11:53

suffering.

11:55

Tell the court jeweler to stop sending diamonds.

11:58

You don't need any diamonds. I'm a student. How

12:01

pretty, Madame Royalis. My pete defines me so. Say

12:03

thank you. She is certainly a daughter of France. Oh, I know.

12:06

So Marie Antoinette, it was not like

12:08

despised or anything in its time, but the critical

12:10

response was really, really mixed.

12:13

There were the people that loved what

12:14

Coppola was trying to do, and

12:16

there were the people who found it very

12:18

shallow and surface-y, and they were like, oh, I'm sorry.

12:25

There's a lot of interesting, as you start reading about

12:28

Marie Antoinette and about making this

12:31

film, there are a lot of cases where we

12:33

don't necessarily historically know why Louis

12:37

XVI spent years refusing to have sex with Marie Antoinette.

12:42

There are conflicting historical accounts, and

12:44

because at the time, one thing that I simply

12:49

write down, oh, the king is impotent, or oh, the king

12:52

is afraid of his own genitals or whatever.

12:55

So Sophie Coppola took that as license,

12:57

as permission to interpret history in her own way

13:02

and to take her own directions with it. And

13:04

there were people that hated that, hated

13:07

the music, hated the look, hated the casting, hated

13:10

the fact that everybody used

13:12

their own direction. And nobody's trying to speak

13:15

French or speak with a French accent, hated the anachronisms.

13:20

And these days, it kind of seems like the people

13:22

have come around on the movie, for the most

13:24

part. What do you make of all of

13:26

that? Do you think people just weren't ready

13:28

for this movie in 2006? This is a weird case where the

13:30

classic film actually overlaps with her professional history.

13:34

And I remember, I don't

13:36

remember who reviewed this for the AV Club

13:38

at the time. I don't really like to go back

13:40

and look at my old reviews or whatever if it was mine. I

13:43

remember being a little puzzled by it and disappointed, but I didn't hate

13:45

it. And

13:47

I kind of spent the year since wondering if, well, maybe it was me.

13:51

You know, maybe I just wasn't quite getting what this film was

13:53

going for. And to give you a little bit of a

13:55

sense of what the film was going for, I think it was a

13:58

very interesting film. And I think it was a very interesting film. I

14:00

think we're watching this for the podcast.

14:02

It kind of confirmed, yeah, I had

14:04

a much greater appreciation for what was going on.

14:06

But I guess maybe sort of what, all the things you're pointing out kind

14:09

of dude pointed to like how unusual

14:12

a biopic this is. I mean, like

14:14

apparently one of the inspirations was the film

14:16

List of Mania, which is Ken Russell biopic

14:18

of the composer Franz List, which is, I

14:21

might joke about that movie, it's exactly produced by cocaine,

14:24

but he just certainly, it takes a very free

14:26

willing approach to history. But

14:28

it also kind of gets at the truth

14:31

beneath it, which was, this was kind of the first

14:33

rock star in some ways. So

14:35

I think there's kind of something similar going on here where

14:37

it's like you just kind of throw out the adherence

14:40

to factor or period and kind

14:42

of get at some other deeper

14:44

truth within the story you're telling. The fun

14:46

fact there of course is that Sylvia Coble's

14:49

husband's band Phoenix has maybe their

14:51

biggest hit or one of their biggest hits was the song

14:53

List of Mania. That's true. Yeah.

14:56

Phoenix appear in Marie Antoinette? Aren't

14:58

they the band that is leading

15:00

her in the little house

15:03

that her husband gives her to reward her for

15:05

having a boy? In that Vogue

15:07

oral history I mentioned earlier, one

15:09

of the things you find out is that Phoenix

15:12

was there for like a tiny cameo

15:14

and they ended up like spending six hours

15:16

in fitting in costuming because

15:19

the costume designer was just being so

15:21

rigorous about it. They apparently

15:25

just ended up spending a lot more time than they were expecting

15:27

to spend for like two minutes

15:29

of

15:29

playing her some quiet acoustic music.

15:32

I think that type of rigor being

15:34

applied to the costumes and the cameo

15:36

specifically maybe kind of gets back

15:38

to your question Tasha about the sort

15:40

of the reception of this at

15:43

the time, which of course

15:45

it was coming off of Lost in Translation, which

15:48

was huge. But it was also

15:50

her first biopic or her first

15:52

really historical film, Virgin

15:55

Suicides took place in the 70s, but

15:57

comparatively it was contemporary. And

16:00

this is a movie focused on a

16:03

historical figure, a notorious historical

16:05

figure who,

16:06

looking at it now and looking

16:08

at, you know, Sofia Coppola's sort of thematic

16:10

obsessions with,

16:12

you know, gilded cages and

16:15

teen girls and privilege without

16:17

power and all these things that are, you

16:19

know, embodied in Marie Antoinette, I think

16:22

maybe people were less inclined

16:25

to view this movie as like within those

16:27

interests and more of a very,

16:30

you know, quote unquote surface level superficial

16:33

pretty but not substantive look

16:36

at a divisive historical figure and

16:38

maybe kind of interpreting that

16:40

as trying to maybe absolve

16:43

Marie Antoinette. But I never

16:45

thought that was the case. I

16:47

liked this movie from the beginning. I still like

16:50

it now. If anything, I think like I

16:51

may be a little more critical

16:53

of it than I have

16:55

been on previous viewings just maybe

16:58

it was watching it after Priscilla and

17:00

like there's so much sort of one to

17:03

one that it almost feels a little like

17:05

her repeating herself. And I think maybe

17:07

that colored this viewing

17:10

of Marie Antoinette a little bit for me. We

17:12

can maybe get into some of those things

17:15

in the second half. But generally

17:17

speaking, I still really love this movie. I like

17:19

Sofia Coppola a lot. The style is

17:22

the substance with her and

17:24

I always appreciate and respond to

17:26

sort of her interest in a womanhood,

17:29

especially young womanhood and how

17:32

women express themselves within

17:34

society that constricts them. You

17:37

know, and like I said, privilege without power is

17:39

a really kind of strong uniting theme

17:41

of hers and it really

17:43

plays out strongly in Marie Antoinette. I remember

17:46

back in AV Club days, you being one of the big

17:49

advocates for this movie and that being

17:51

one of the things that kind of solidified my feeling

17:53

that maybe I was already too old for this movie.

17:56

You know, that it was just like speaking to a youth

17:58

culture that, you know.

17:59

know, in my weary, aged 30s, I

18:02

was already too old for. But

18:05

I do regard it very differently watching

18:07

it today and I had an experience very similar

18:09

to Keith's. But I'll get into that in a minute. Scott,

18:12

any thoughts on how the movie plays

18:14

differently now than it does in 2006 or the critical

18:17

response back in 2006? I

18:19

mean, I think anytime you break the rules, people

18:21

are going to be a faction of people that don't

18:23

get it or are upset by it and that's just going to

18:26

happen. It happened with the Marie Antoinette

18:28

and the way in which it breaks rules by making

18:30

it more contemporary, I think

18:32

allowed people to think of it as unserious,

18:36

as sort of facile. That purple converse,

18:39

so much depends on that purple

18:41

converse sitting on the floor. Oh

18:44

wow. Nicely done. Yeah. So

18:46

there's all that. And fortunately,

18:48

people have come around and also just

18:51

Coppola continuing to make movies

18:53

in this vein, sticking to those thematic

18:56

obsessions, running it through a lot of different types of stories.

18:59

I mean, think about it. I mean, if you really think about a movie

19:01

whose reputation was revived, I mean, try Somewhere.

19:04

I mean, some people hate it somewhere when it came out

19:06

and you can't find anybody.

19:09

I wrote a positive review for Somewhere. Somewhere's

19:11

the pick for underrated Sofia

19:13

Coppola. But Marie Antoinette

19:16

has always been my pick. I believe

19:18

I reviewed that one positively at the time

19:20

for the AV club. So I get to

19:23

pat myself on the back for Somewhere. One thing I

19:25

will say about Marie Antoinette, I think, I

19:27

mean, for one, I do think it may be

19:29

her best film. I do think it's

19:31

really rich and exciting. One

19:33

thing I will say is I prefer the first half

19:36

to the second. I think there's a little bit of like,

19:38

it feels a little bit rushed once you get to that

19:40

piece where history is starting to roar

19:43

a bit. A lot bit. But

19:45

I mean, like, there's so much about her as

19:47

she's introduced to this world and adjusting

19:50

to it. All of that stuff is so exciting.

19:53

I just almost don't know if the

19:56

second half quite gets there though. As I say that, I

19:59

think about somebody's... things I really love about

20:01

that part of it too, including the final

20:03

shot which is just freaking amazing. Yeah.

20:06

So yeah, a great movie overall. It's

20:08

also one of those things that runs into that biopic

20:11

problem of just like where do you place

20:13

the emphasis, how long of a period

20:15

of time are you covering, what do you choose to emphasize

20:17

and not. It's a very tricky thing to

20:20

balance and there's something a little bit off

20:22

balance about re-entranet but I

20:24

don't know, there's still so much to like about the film

20:27

all the way through that this is a very nitpicky

20:29

thing. It's a movie I've come to really like.

20:31

I don't think it's nitpicky. I mean I think it's something

20:34

that despairing made me realize

20:36

I think it's kind of a recurring

20:38

thing with her films. This is the third act

20:41

in particular I think often feels

20:43

very rushed. Not even rushed

20:46

but it's like she has more

20:48

interest in kind of showing us these

20:51

women in their states

20:53

of confinement and how they react

20:55

and express themselves within those confinement. She's

20:58

more interested in showing us that than

21:00

how they evolve

21:03

past that or how they find

21:05

agency. It's true in Priscilla

21:08

too which we can get into. It's also I think kind

21:10

of true in the beguile. That's another one that has

21:12

a very rushed third act and

21:14

I don't think that's necessarily that

21:17

strong of a flaw. I think

21:19

it's a characteristic of her films but with

21:21

a filmmaker who's I think so interested

21:24

in kind of putting you in a headspace

21:27

just in an aesthetic and kind

21:29

of making you feel and identify

21:32

with these very young women's emotional

21:34

states in these very rarefied

21:37

conditions is of more interest

21:40

to her than exploring where

21:43

they go next.

21:44

I actually kind of like the

21:47

rushed ending here and we'll

21:49

get into it with Priscilla with theirs as

21:51

well. There's sort of like a sense

21:53

of like you're kind of adrift

21:55

like where are we in history? Where are we

21:57

in these people's lives? I

22:00

mean, if you look up

22:01

the history of Marie Antoinette, I'm

22:03

no expert on that at all, but there's a

22:06

lot of stuff happened in

22:08

that home stretch that's just not addressed at

22:10

all. The whole diamond necklace

22:13

affair is just, very

22:15

briefly nodded to, but as far as what we do or

22:18

don't know about Marie Antoinette, I recently listened

22:21

to an old episode of the podcast You're Wrong

22:23

About devoted to Marie Antoinette to

22:25

sort of fill myself in on

22:27

what the film was aligning.

22:30

There's lots of things that they

22:32

talk about in that episode that appear in the

22:34

movie, like very accurately and historically

22:36

correctly, it's just all in the front half. Like

22:39

how they met in the forest, like

22:42

her having to strip off

22:44

all of her home country and give

22:46

up her dog, like all that's accurate. Even the

22:49

little tiny scene we see later in the movie

22:51

where she's in her, I forget

22:53

what it's called, the little, when she's in her shepherdess

22:56

phase in her little house. Teach

22:59

tree? Yes, yes, her little pastoral

23:01

fantasy and there's a shot where

23:03

some servant cleans off the

23:05

chicken egg before the baby

23:08

reaches in to grab it. That is a

23:10

historically accurate moment that they mentioned

23:13

in that podcast. It's like she's

23:15

really good at these details when

23:17

they are aesthetic, but the details

23:20

of the French Revolution, not

23:22

of interest here. Yeah, I would

23:24

go further than saying when it's aesthetic,

23:27

I think that so often, Sofia

23:29

Coppola just really obviously

23:31

betrays what interests her and what does not interest

23:33

her. And here it's very clear which

23:36

parts of the story interest her. I think it's

23:38

interesting how much of this film is

23:40

devoted to the part of

23:43

Marie and Louis's relationship

23:46

where they weren't having sex. And she was

23:48

getting an immense amount of pressure to produce

23:50

an heir and then probably a series of

23:52

heirs. And he

23:55

wouldn't have sex with her. And once

23:57

we get past that point, It's

24:00

just kind of a blitz of oh, they're

24:02

having sex. Oh, she's had a baby. Oh, she's had another

24:05

baby The movie completely emits

24:07

that she had a fourth child It

24:09

just doesn't care and the third child is covered

24:11

entirely with here's a painting

24:14

Here's another painting and like

24:16

the within the span of those two

24:19

paintings. She had an entire pregnancy

24:21

birth child

24:24

came along for a while child died

24:27

like it's part of the Hyper

24:31

sped up a third act and drift

24:33

away from kind of the moment to moment

24:36

Here's what's important historically

24:38

in terms of what happened, but again, it's

24:40

all just kind of focusing in on Here's

24:43

the part of the story that interests Sophia

24:45

Coppola So with that in mind

24:48

one thing that I did want to say

24:49

before I moved on entirely from the critical response

24:51

was just I

24:52

can't help but wonder if this

24:54

movie was just not what people

24:56

were expecting after virgin suicides

24:59

and Lost in Translation

25:01

which are both pretty serious emotionally

25:04

heavy I would say even kind of dour

25:07

films about isolation

25:10

and lack of control and Emotions

25:14

turning inward and despite the fact that this

25:16

movie covers the same things It

25:18

just doesn't cover them tonally in the same way

25:21

and I wonder if that complaint

25:23

that this movie is, you know Superficial

25:25

or artificial just comes from people

25:27

who are expecting like Lost in Translation 2 instead

25:31

of what they actually got and what

25:33

they got It's just very much a

25:34

Sophia Coppola movie it just you

25:37

know with a different tone

25:43

So normally I would save this

25:45

question for kind

25:46

of the end of the discussion points

25:48

But here it just seems more relevant

25:51

than anything else we could talk about How do you

25:53

see this movie fitting into? Coppola's

25:55

filmography Jenna if you've already kind

25:57

of covered it a bit in terms of

25:59

the themes that she's most obsessed with,

26:02

the themes that she returns to most often.

26:04

I'm going to throw out a sort of a grand theory

26:07

of Sofia Coppola films that doesn't quite

26:09

work, but it'll at least start the conversation.

26:12

So The Virgin Suicides is about people

26:14

on the outside looking in, like,

26:16

what's going on in that room? I wish I could figure

26:18

out, you know, look in there and see what's happening with these

26:21

strange isolated people. And kind of the rest

26:23

of the filmography is like from the inside that

26:25

room looking out. I mean, from lots of translation

26:28

to Marie Antoinette somewhere, sort

26:30

of explicitly that. And The Beguiled

26:32

is sort of a kind of a locked in her enclosed

26:35

space film in some ways as

26:37

well. I think On the Rocks is the one in the bling ring

26:39

of those two that kind of blow my theory. But I think at least

26:41

as sort of a trend in

26:43

her films, it's worth discussing. And Priscilla,

26:46

and I think there's also a key thing with her

26:48

is kind of a narrowness of perspective,

26:51

you know, which kind of can feed into this

26:53

suffocating quality of the sort of gilded cage

26:55

of, you know, of you not being

26:58

able to, of you really experiencing

27:00

the world through the eyes of one person

27:03

and how limiting that can be. I mean, one of

27:05

the things that I think is maybe effective really about

27:08

the last half of Marie Antoinette

27:11

and the film just holy is just how little

27:14

control. She has no control over what happens,

27:17

really. I mean, you know, there are some choices that we

27:19

see her making with regard

27:21

to her expenditures, for example,

27:23

that have some resonance.

27:26

But ultimately, these are characters,

27:28

and we'll see this again with Priscilla, who are just basically

27:31

doomed from the start. They have this kind of limited

27:34

perspective on the world. And when

27:36

the wolves come, the wolves come, and there's

27:38

really nothing that can be done about it. And

27:40

it's a credit to her that she doesn't cut away from

27:42

that, that you don't get her kind

27:45

of giving you this larger perspective

27:47

of what's going on. And,

27:49

you know, she's not cutting to rioters

27:52

in Paris or something like, you

27:54

know, you hear the knocking on the door when

27:56

it comes, you know, but it's all

27:58

from that one, you know, fit. fixed perspective

28:00

and that's something she does exceptionally well.

28:03

Yeah and as far as that fixed

28:05

perspective goes, it kind of plays into

28:08

another element that shows up

28:10

in a way in all of her movies which is celebrity

28:13

of in one form or another, celebrity

28:15

slash notoriety like this is

28:17

not the first time I brought it up nor am I the

28:20

first person to bring up her love of the

28:22

window shot of you know her

28:24

protagonist sort of staring out

28:27

or being reflected in a window and

28:30

that sheet of glass you know it yes

28:32

it keeps our protagonist from the outside

28:34

world but it also allows the outside world to

28:37

see our protagonist like all of even

28:39

the virgin suicides. Keith you talked

28:42

about how we have sort of an outsider

28:44

perspective of them but like to the boys

28:46

in the neighborhood like they are celebrities you know

28:48

they have fame they have notoriety they are

28:50

seen by the outside world

28:53

and I think that applies to

28:56

almost all of her protagonists maybe not

28:58

the beguiled quite so much although

29:00

they are definitely like and what we don't need to

29:02

get into the beguiled right now but it's certainly

29:04

applied. I think there's a certain certainly

29:07

like the idea of somebody coming from from

29:09

the other side of that war there's a sense

29:11

of notoriety and like maybe

29:13

not fame in the same way of like Elvis

29:15

Presley is famous or Louis XVI

29:18

was famous in France at the time but

29:20

there's certainly a sense of like

29:22

this is an exceptionally notable person

29:25

and what is that what is he really like as opposed to

29:27

what other rumors like? Yeah and I think

29:29

like within this interest of celebrity

29:32

she keeps coming back to like kind of

29:34

humanizing them and in the case again

29:37

not necessarily absolving them

29:39

or humbling them even but

29:41

like with Marie Antoinette like she's

29:44

kind of one of history's greatest scapegoats

29:47

you know and one thing that is interesting

29:49

that this movie shows is the

29:51

extent to which Louis is a bumbler

29:54

and responsible for a lot that got put

29:56

on her because she was

29:58

so much more more visible just

30:01

by virtue of being the queen

30:04

and someone who's like literal job,

30:07

like she's a head of state, you know, she's not

30:09

a political figure, you

30:11

know. Her job was to set trends

30:14

and you know, to be a figurehead

30:17

and as someone who was brought up

30:19

from a young, as a young teenager

30:22

in this very cloistered privilege

30:25

bubble, like she knows nothing else.

30:27

This is what she was raised to do and

30:29

then she gets kind of blamed

30:32

by history for starting a

30:34

revolution, you know, because she bought

30:36

too many dresses, you know. It's like, it's very,

30:39

so I think it's complicating the simplified

30:41

notion we have of

30:43

her as someone who brought

30:45

down a monarchy.

30:48

But

30:48

I mean, it also focuses very much on the degree

30:50

to which her job was to produce a child

30:52

and the degree to which she was, you know, being blamed for not producing

30:54

a child. Even

30:58

though she had no means to do so as

31:00

long as her husband was not having sex with her. That's

31:03

part of the process. Which

31:07

is, according to some historians, he didn't actually

31:09

know.

31:10

Maybe that was the issue. I don't know.

31:12

The point being, Keith, I

31:14

really like your theory. I would

31:16

add to it that the idea

31:19

of when you're in the room, when it happens,

31:21

it's not actually a good place to be at all.

31:24

It seems to be kind of a big underlined part of this.

31:27

Like in keeping with the theories of

31:30

celebrity and lack of –

31:32

the lack of power involved

31:34

in access. You know, the

31:36

people who are close to very famous

31:39

people being kind of at their beck and

31:41

call and not having

31:43

any agency of their own seems to

31:45

be a pretty common theme for her. And

31:48

there's certainly a feeling of there

31:50

are a lot of people who would literally die to

31:53

be in this person's shoes,

31:55

but this person's shoes do not fit well and they're not happy

31:57

there. It seems to be like a big – thing

32:00

that she draws over and over. Privilege

32:03

being a limitation and a burden

32:06

as much as a, how do you say

32:08

privilege, is not

32:10

necessarily the most, I

32:12

guess, popular theme of the moment.

32:15

We're in such an eat the rich moment

32:17

for cinema. There is kind of a poor

32:19

little rich girl aspect to this

32:21

story that might be hard in

32:24

some ways for people to relate

32:26

to, but it kind of feels like part of what she's doing

32:29

here is offering people

32:31

a chance to relate to what

32:34

it would be like to be both viscosited and this

32:36

powerless, you know, to be this

32:39

talked about but never in a good

32:41

way and to be so aware

32:43

of all of the things being

32:46

said about you that you have no

32:48

control over and for reasons that you

32:50

have no control over.

32:51

I think it's really good at establishing Versailles

32:54

as a really perilous place. I mean, the

32:56

dialogue explicitly says if you don't, you

32:59

know, if you don't have a child, not only

33:01

are you in trouble, but this whole, the

33:04

alliance between two nations is in trouble. I

33:06

just said explicitly, but just like the whispers

33:09

as she walks down the hallway and the way that

33:11

she has no, she has status

33:13

but no actual, she

33:16

can't do anything with it. We talked about, you know, privilege

33:18

without any kind of power. It's very,

33:20

I think it's illustrated really well and I think, you know,

33:22

I like Dunst's performance

33:25

and whatever the bigger philosophical

33:27

political issues you want to bring into about

33:29

asking us to empathize with, you know, poor little rich girl

33:31

or whatever, it's hard not to

33:33

see the humanity in this character and other Coppola characters

33:36

just because the picture

33:39

of them is so intimate and nuanced. I

33:42

mean, that's kind of the, you know, the effectiveness

33:44

of Coppola in terms of perspective is

33:46

that she puts viewers in a place to

33:49

where they have to ask themselves, what

33:51

would you do? You know, what would you do in her

33:53

situation? I mean, she is, you know, she

33:55

is literally quite literally stripped of everything

33:57

she has and brought in as a

33:59

child. and brought into France

34:02

and what is she supposed to do with

34:04

her time? She has her duties that she has to

34:07

attend to. One major

34:10

duty she can't perform to the disappointment

34:12

of many and in terms of

34:15

indulgences, that's what you would do.

34:19

What else are you going to do but try to

34:21

make the best of the situation, try to make

34:23

the best of what you

34:25

do have which is a certain amount

34:27

of room for parties and

34:29

for gossip and for clothes

34:32

and everything like that, for gambling. There's not a lot

34:34

else for her to do. You understand

34:37

her every step of the way and I think that's something

34:40

that all of her films sort of have

34:42

in common.

34:42

We haven't really talked much about Kirsten

34:45

Dunst yet. Dunst as Marie

34:47

Antoinette and Jason Schwartzman as

34:49

Louis XVI, her new husband. When they

34:51

meet at the beginning of the movie, they're meant to be 14

34:53

and 15 respectively and

34:56

Coppola does just about nothing

34:58

to indicate that. There's no on-screen

35:01

text, there's no context. When

35:04

you know that for a fact, you can see it both

35:06

in their performances. I think Schwartzman

35:10

gives a pretty convincing

35:12

portrayal of a 15-year-old who's

35:14

been trained to diplomacy but kind

35:17

of has no game of his own as an

35:20

actual individual. But you're looking

35:22

at somebody, you're basically looking at a couple

35:24

of people in their mid-20s and Schwartzman like

35:27

just given his big heavy eyebrows

35:30

and the contours of his face, he looks considerably

35:32

older than that here. So I

35:34

spent a chunk of the movie on this rewatch

35:37

wondering how old is this guy supposed

35:39

to be until I finally went and looked it up.

35:42

I'm curious how you take that. Like we can

35:44

see in their performances them

35:47

changing and maturing and playing

35:49

these people as older but Coppola's

35:51

choice to not tell you how old they are and

35:54

to not do anything really with

35:56

you know with makeup or hair or whatever

35:58

to portray

35:59

them as they're pretty young

36:02

teenagers when they meet, really

36:05

kind of makes him in particular look

36:08

a bit addled, a bit mentally

36:10

challenged honestly in

36:12

a way that makes for a very weird

36:15

dynamic. Did this throw any of you off

36:17

the way it threw me off? What do you make of it all? I wouldn't

36:19

say I was thrown by it. If

36:22

I were to speculate about sort

36:24

of like the lack of signposting

36:28

their ages get, I would

36:30

say maybe it's just indication

36:33

of the fact that like that was pretty

36:36

normal at this time for

36:38

like this is kind of how marriages work. Children

36:42

were engaged to each other and

36:44

I think maybe to

36:47

a modern audience like

36:49

highlighting that these are young teenagers

36:52

might add a level of almost

36:54

sinisterness to it regarding

36:57

their ages when I think that's not

36:59

necessarily what was

37:00

weird and odd about

37:02

this pairing. It does like

37:05

knowing their ages kind of

37:07

give a little more context

37:10

to their lack of consummating

37:12

the marriage I guess. So

37:14

I think maybe to your point Tasha,

37:17

it makes that aspect of their relationship

37:20

maybe a little weirder and makes them seem a

37:22

little I don't want to say deviant but

37:24

like bumblers as their brother calls

37:27

them later rather than

37:29

just kind of young and out of their

37:31

depth. But also like I

37:33

don't know, I feel like a 15-year-old

37:34

would probably know how things were even

37:37

back then. I don't know. Well, they

37:39

would have been instructed. Sure. But

37:41

no, I wouldn't say I was especially

37:44

distracted by it. I think if anything,

37:47

I think it adds a level to

37:49

those performances that we do see them

37:52

mature in a very specific

37:54

narrow way. These are two people

37:57

who are stunted and are always going to be stunted

37:59

in a certain way. way

38:00

but the way we see them evolve as characters

38:02

within that narrow definition I think is kind

38:04

of interesting just on a performance level. I

38:07

was I guess a little bit a little bit thrown by

38:09

the age thing but I do think

38:11

that at least in Marie Antoinette's case

38:13

the beginning of the film really establishes

38:16

her youth very well.

38:18

I think particularly her attachment

38:21

to her dog. Mops. Talking

38:23

about mops or mops? I know. This

38:25

is the least mop looking dog. It's

38:27

a beautiful dog, beautiful wonderful dog.

38:30

It's just like you know I mean like that would be a

38:32

kid attached to this animal that's taken

38:34

away and it just the way she reacts is just is

38:37

it felt like a child sobbing

38:39

not not necessarily the way an adult would

38:41

sob. I don't know. It's reads she

38:43

reads very young in that at that moment and

38:46

so and that's such an important moment

38:48

for her to read that young. One

38:50

of the saddest shots in the movie quietly

38:52

I think is when you see that she has gotten another

38:54

pug but it's not mops.

38:57

It was she thinks she never gets mops so

38:59

she has to go for a substitute pug. A

39:01

French dog. She asks at one point

39:03

is is mops or how is like

39:06

she indicates that they have told her that they are getting mops

39:08

for her but I think there's like a diplomatic

39:10

process underway. Yeah but I think

39:12

probably they just gave her a different dog and told her mops.

39:16

Is maybe what was indicated here? It's

39:18

a black pug though. Oh it is okay

39:21

okay. She's not that dumb. I

39:25

love Judy Davis in this movie by the way.

39:26

Yeah let's talk about the rest of the casting

39:29

in this movie. Judy Davis, Isya

39:31

Argento, Rip Torn.

39:33

There are a lot of interesting people

39:35

in this movie. Never

39:37

a huge fan of Molly Shannon personally

39:39

but Steve

39:41

Coogan trying to play it

39:43

on Coogan in like the weirdest

39:46

17th century mullet I've ever

39:48

heard. Just

39:51

this poor ambassador who's just sort of endlessly caught

39:53

between like different demands from

39:56

different directions and trying to

39:58

make things happen with people

39:59

who are much more powerful than him on

40:02

behalf of much more powerful people than

40:04

him, I think is a lot of fun. But

40:07

also Shirley Henderson, just in

40:09

a role, I'm not sure I've ever seen her in before.

40:12

Who stands out for you here? What stands

40:14

out for you?

40:15

Oh, and Marion Faithful.

40:17

I love the casting in this movie. I

40:19

think it's one of those things where you're just...if

40:22

you just open yourself up to it, if

40:25

you just allow some

40:27

people to be in there that are surprising, there's

40:30

so many rewards. Just like Rip Torn seems

40:33

like an odd person to be in this world,

40:35

but

40:36

he is such a kind of robust,

40:38

sort of lusty king

40:41

who contrasts so well with Louis

40:43

XVI. Go ahead, Genevieve,

40:45

you were saying? No, I think I was jumping on

40:48

you noting Rose Byrne, who

40:50

is a pretty big part

40:52

of this movie, is the Duchess of Polignac

40:55

and sort of Marie Antoinette's confidant

40:58

in the later part of her life especially.

41:01

And we're sitting here talking about the cast

41:03

and it made me remember what Tasha said a little

41:06

while

41:06

ago about sort of

41:08

the tone of this movie, maybe also throwing

41:10

people after the kind of more

41:12

quiet drama of Virgin

41:14

Suicides and Lost in Translation. All of these

41:17

names were mentioning Steve

41:19

Coogan, Rip Torn, Molly Shannon, even

41:21

Rose Byrne. Those

41:23

are people with comedic chops and they

41:25

can do drama. They have done

41:28

drama and continue to do drama.

41:31

But just like when you put all the names

41:33

one after another, it's like, oh, yeah, this

41:35

is like

41:36

comedy in a lot of ways

41:38

or at least casting

41:40

people who can bring a sort of comedic

41:43

or sardonic tone to the

41:45

proceedings. That might also have been went

41:47

through people. These are frequently comedic

41:50

actors, but it's not a comedy exactly

41:52

or at all really in a way, but it's

41:55

certainly the frothiness is

41:57

to either serve a fairly

41:59

ultimately dark subject matter in

42:02

a way and the cloth kind of vanishes.

42:04

But you have this cast here that's

42:06

doing the sense of

42:09

expectations of the film doesn't quite match but I think it serves

42:11

the film anyway.

42:12

Well, in a scene that I love that

42:14

kind of encapsulates that

42:16

kind of comedic but not feeling for me

42:18

is Marie Antoinette being dressed

42:21

for the first time, her first kind

42:23

of day at Versailles when she wakes up and

42:26

she's stripped naked and

42:28

different people keep coming in so the privilege

42:31

of dressing the queen keeps passing to the next person

42:33

and she's just sitting there awkwardly like covering herself.

42:36

And it's kind of a funny

42:38

comedic beat

42:39

but it's also like kind of horrifying

42:42

when this 14-year-old girl is sitting

42:44

like literally naked in front

42:46

of a room full of people while they debate

42:48

precedence. Yes, yes, while they debate precedence

42:51

and it's again kind

42:53

of on the surface it's funny just

42:55

like on you know with her so much of her

42:57

movies like what's on the surface seems one way but

43:00

that if you kind of like think about it or sit

43:02

with it for a little while like oh no this

43:04

is uncomfortable and a little wrong and

43:06

dark that scene I felt

43:09

that very strongly.

43:10

If you have the priest in the bedroom on the

43:13

wedding night it's a disturbing.

43:17

They did not bring it they did not yet bring an aphrodisiac by the name

43:19

of Danny Houston into the picture he

43:21

would have unlocked the sensuality.

43:26

Do we read anything into the fact that Danny Houston

43:28

and Ajay Argento are both director's kids

43:31

in this movie? Probably not it's just good casting

43:33

but there are a lot of second generation director's kids

43:37

in this. Yeah.

43:39

I think part of the reason that dressing sequence

43:41

plays as comedically as it does

43:44

I mean you know there's the awkwardness of it there's

43:46

the nakedness of it there's the

43:49

kind of over the topness of

43:51

like coming to understand the court

43:54

privileges and procedures of

43:56

Versailles

43:57

but there's also just the fact

43:59

that she's allowed to.

43:59

face it and comment on it.

44:01

You know, she's able to look them in

44:03

the eyes and say, this is ridiculous. And

44:05

she doesn't have the power to stop it, but

44:08

she does at least have the power

44:10

to speak her mind, to

44:12

say her opinion, which during so

44:14

much of this film is something she

44:17

doesn't have the ability to do. You know, she

44:19

hears people whispering about her behind

44:21

her back, but she doesn't have the

44:23

ability to turn on them and explain

44:26

herself. I just I kept thinking

44:28

about kind of like modern celebrity

44:31

culture, watching this in terms

44:33

of the kind of things that people say

44:35

about celebrities online. And like, there's

44:38

no way to convince somebody who

44:40

makes up a rumor or passes on a rumor that

44:43

it isn't true. And here we just

44:45

have a case of somebody who

44:47

was surrounded

44:49

by people literally the, the let

44:51

the meat

44:51

cake story was stolen

44:55

from an earlier era and

44:58

put in her mouth by people. There was

45:00

no way that they were ever going to be able to be

45:02

convinced that no, she hadn't said that.

45:05

So her ability to

45:08

actually respond in the moment to the

45:10

precedents scene, I think makes it

45:12

a lot lighter than it might be otherwise.

45:14

But so much of the movie doesn't have that. As

45:17

far as what you're saying about the casting,

45:20

setting up expectations that the movie doesn't entirely

45:22

bear out in terms of how

45:25

much of this movie is going to be a comedy, that

45:27

was very intentional. When Coppola talks about the casting

45:29

of the movie, she talks very much about wanting

45:32

a pop sensibility to the entire

45:35

thing. And a lot of the people that she cast,

45:37

Asia Argento in particular, but

45:40

also Molly Shannon, like reaching

45:42

out for

45:42

people who were Saturday Night Live

45:44

veterans or known for their comedic acting

45:47

in particular, was a way

45:50

for her to get to a kind

45:52

of like pop sensibility that

45:54

she just talks about over and over and over when she's talking

45:56

about this film. Reading a bunch of interviews,

45:59

I was just so stressed out. about how she

46:01

never talks about why she

46:04

connects to Marie Antoinette personally.

46:06

And for me, that comes to the surface most

46:09

clearly in both ways,

46:11

both in terms of the pop sensibility and in terms

46:13

of like her own relationship to Marie Antoinette.

46:16

When you look at the soundtrack here, which

46:19

is the Apex Twin and the Cure

46:21

and the Strokes, Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants,

46:24

she describes all of this as like the music

46:27

of her, like teen years

46:29

mix tapes. This is her music

46:31

in particular. But it was one of the things

46:34

that people objected to most in the movie

46:36

because it's so obviously anachronistic.

46:40

What do you make of the music here? The

46:42

either particular specific needle

46:44

drops or just the choice of music

46:47

and how it relates to the

46:49

setting, the style, the

46:51

filmmaking here?

46:52

It's fantastic. And

46:55

I love it. I mean, it

46:57

just immediately causes the audience

46:59

to have to think about this

47:02

historical figure as someone

47:04

they can identify with, you know, of

47:06

this type of character, of the

47:08

sort of gossip that kind of swirls around

47:10

her or her celebrity, of her

47:12

indulgences and parties. You can

47:15

think about all of that as being identifiable

47:18

and something that, and not something

47:20

that is just some ossified history lesson.

47:22

It's just something that feels very present.

47:25

And when you do that, it becomes this very powerful

47:28

way to get, also

47:30

to convince people to rethink

47:33

their assumptions about who

47:35

Marie Antoinette was. So

47:37

it's really quite clever in that respect.

47:40

I think the I Want Candy montage

47:43

with the aforementioned purple converse

47:45

sneakers is probably like the needle

47:48

drop that got a lot of people just

47:51

ruffled, ruffled a lot of feathers

47:53

at the time because of the

47:55

anachronism, not only of the

47:58

song, but also that sneaker. Like

48:00

to me that montage is

48:03

like that is the movie in a lot

48:05

of ways. Like I adore that montage

48:08

and the reason I love

48:10

it and I think it works so well and it kind of goes back

48:12

to one of your earlier questions, Tasha, is

48:14

it just highlights like this is a teenager.

48:16

This is basically share from Clueless right

48:19

we're watching right now. You know

48:21

like it's this is like a sleepover

48:23

part, dress-up party, you know. There's just

48:25

there's treats everywhere. The song

48:28

underlines that especially and

48:30

I think like the kind of the soundtrack as

48:32

a whole is particularly in the

48:35

early going does kind of underline

48:37

the youth culture of the day translated

48:40

to contemporary youth culture via

48:43

music. I think it works

48:45

really well and you know this is

48:47

a thing that is kind of all over

48:50

pop culture now

48:52

like an anachronistic music cues. You

48:54

know Bridgerton does it, Dickinson

48:57

the TV show did it. There's

49:00

a new show The Buccaneers that has

49:02

these kind of music cues. I think it's become

49:05

almost cliche now to do

49:07

this especially in historical stories

49:09

of young women to kind of use these

49:12

more contemporary pop music cues

49:14

to kind of take us away from the

49:17

default assumption

49:17

that you know historical characters are

49:20

old. They're out of date. They're

49:22

not relatable to us. So I think it's just

49:24

a really effective shorthand

49:27

for youth culture. Yeah

49:29

and really smartly deployed to the use

49:32

of naturals not in it by a

49:34

gang of four. This environment

49:36

where there is everything that's been

49:39

turned into a ceremony

49:42

and adornment and

49:46

nothing is or you know it's very much the end

49:48

of the 18th century. Everything

49:51

is orderly. Everything has its place. I hear

49:53

you had that like taken to its extreme because

49:55

there's so much wealth to currently

49:57

anyway really good thought choice. But the one that got me

49:59

was.

49:59

just a snippet of the cure song plain

50:02

song as they descend the staircase up

50:04

for sight just magnificent the

50:07

way that she's there. I think

50:09

I probably had some misgivings about this at the time too

50:11

but it did. It's actually smartly

50:14

done. The other thing too I mean is

50:16

that you know and the fact that it is the way that

50:18

she thinks about it as a personal kind of

50:20

mix mixtape is that is that it marks the

50:22

film as being from a such a strong

50:25

point of view it's like this is my idea this

50:28

is my interpretation of this character

50:30

of this period of history it's what you

50:32

want an artist to do you know you know you don't you don't

50:34

want somebody who's just

50:37

going to kind of give you this slavish

50:40

whatever their idea is of how

50:43

things went down you want to you know

50:45

to for her to have put her so much

50:47

for herself into the movie to give

50:49

to give you her kind of point of view

50:52

her way of looking at things her way of hearing things

50:55

it just makes her a much stronger film

50:58

you know on an auteur level

50:59

that a lot of other historical portraits

51:02

yeah I Roger

51:04

Ebert in his review at the time

51:06

said every criticism I've read of the film

51:08

would alter its fragile magic and reduce its

51:10

romantic and tragic poignancy to

51:12

the level of an instructional film and

51:15

I think that that's really telling

51:17

you know the the idea that people reacted

51:20

to it negatively because it didn't

51:22

feel historical enough

51:25

it didn't feel accurate enough to you know

51:27

their understanding of this time

51:30

period or this character just

51:32

does feel kind of telling and that

51:35

is something that frankly I did not appreciate

51:37

the first time I watched this movie and that I appreciated

51:39

a lot more this time the idea

51:42

the clarity of voice here the clarity

51:45

of concept in terms of what

51:48

she's bringing across on what she's reaching for

51:50

that all said there's one thing

51:53

in the movie that I found very ambiguous

51:55

and I think is going to come up again

51:58

with Priscilla but

51:59

But I want to actually break it out here

52:02

rather than leaving it for connections because I think

52:04

in both of these movies, it deserves

52:06

a little more space than it might get if we blitz

52:09

across it as one of the many, many,

52:11

many connections between these movies. And

52:14

that's the question of by the

52:16

end, what Marie Antoinette

52:18

feels for Louis.

52:19

By the end, as the

52:21

mob is descending, as things are falling

52:24

apart, she keeps insisting like I have to

52:26

stay by my husband's side. This is my place. This

52:28

is where I belong. And

52:30

given the first half of the film, you

52:33

don't have a whole lot of reason to believe that

52:36

true love has blossomed between them,

52:38

that they feel emotionally

52:40

close to each other. They're still both

52:42

playing their part. They're playing roles that

52:44

they were assigned. And her role

52:47

is not to love her husband. Her role

52:49

is to produce heirs and to

52:52

be a certain

52:54

kind of a fashion plate, but not too much of one,

52:57

not in the wrong place at time, and certainly

52:59

not in a way that will get the mob angry at

53:01

a time when France's debts

53:04

are high, taxes are high, and

53:06

there's a shortage of bread. So

53:08

at the end, I keep finding myself

53:10

thinking, what does she feel for him at

53:13

this point? We

53:16

know that one of the things that has become meaningful

53:18

in her life is spending time

53:20

with her children and pretending

53:22

at this much simpler life that she

53:24

never got to have. Do you have a sense

53:27

for how she feels for him at the end of the movie?

53:29

I felt like there was a sense of actual

53:32

affection there, and it did feel like there

53:34

was a strong family bond.

53:36

Obviously, her most passionate

53:39

affair is not with her husband

53:42

that we see in the film, but

53:44

when he shows up on the horse, he's in

53:46

that one scene. She's happy to see him. They're

53:49

two people who like each other. I was going

53:50

to bring up that exact scene when he comes to

53:53

gather her from Petit Trenon. Is

53:55

that how it's pronounced?

53:56

Petit Trenon. Probably not, but

53:58

sure. Yeah, yeah.

53:59

But yeah,

54:02

she seems genuinely happy to

54:04

see him and to join him and I don't

54:08

think it is necessarily about him

54:11

specifically and more just about kind

54:13

of the life that they've built

54:15

together or the life that he has

54:18

kind of allowed her to have

54:20

within this very

54:23

weird overarching circumstance.

54:26

So I think it's more about

54:28

loyalty than love and also

54:30

like where the hell else is she

54:32

going to go and what the hell is she going to do?

54:35

She's the most hated woman in France. It's not

54:37

like, yeah, she could be hidden

54:40

but I think even she realizes

54:42

that this is not something

54:45

she can run away from at this point.

54:48

At least that's how the movie seems to portray her. Well,

54:51

we'll have more space to talk about Marie Antoinette and

54:53

what she feels, what she's experiencing,

54:56

what it's like to be the isolated

55:00

wife of a much more famous person who will

55:02

not have sex with you. Next time

55:04

when we bring Priscilla into the mix and

55:06

compare these two movies, take a moment.

55:08

We're going to take a short break and then

55:10

come back with feedback. A

55:14

lot of people are

55:18

listening with both quiet, inverted, ultra-airbuds and headphones. With

55:22

immersive sound and world-class noise cancellation

55:25

for Unmessed No Silent Night. Visit

55:28

Bose.com slash

55:29

Spotify to check the sound.

55:38

Now it's time for feedback but before we get

55:40

to it, we want to shout out Film Spotting, the next picture

55:42

shows Mothership podcast hosted

55:44

by Adam Kempinar and Josh Larson. As

55:46

we record this, Adam and Josh have just released

55:48

an episode where they also discuss Priscilla where

55:51

they rank Sofia Coppola's movies and they dig

55:53

into the science

55:53

fiction romance movie, Fingernails, starring

55:56

Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed. I also

55:58

want to particularly shout out their previous episode.

55:59

episode, which among other things explores

56:02

the different layers of meaning and interpretation in

56:04

Justine Triet's complicated, she

56:06

said, he did drama, Anatomy of

56:08

the Fall. That episode really helped me come to a better

56:10

understanding of what's very consciously

56:12

a film full of ambiguity and invitation

56:14

to interpretation. But yay,

56:17

Anatomy of the Fall, boo fingernails.

56:19

Did

56:21

you see fingernails? It's bad this weekend. Yes,

56:24

it's not good. It looked bad. Yeah,

56:26

I've heard nothing good about fingernails, honestly. I

56:29

mean, with that, you have to think of that

56:31

wrong, but it goes wrong. No,

56:33

it falls quite good, though.

56:34

It is quite good, but it takes a fair

56:37

bit of unpacking, and I think Adam and

56:39

Josh do an excellent job of parsing

56:41

out

56:41

some fairly complicated

56:44

inner-woman threads in that podcast.

56:46

As

56:47

for feedback, here's an interesting letter

56:49

that looks all the way back to our discussion of the best science

56:51

fiction movies of the 2000s in the feedback

56:54

section for our Under the Skin episode, and then

56:56

even further to our pairing of 2022's After Yang with Steven Spielberg's

57:00

AI. Keith, do you want to take this one?

57:02

Sure. Malcolm writes, I recently watched

57:04

After Yang on Canopy. I've been looking forward

57:07

to it ever since I listened to your pairing with AI.

57:09

It did not disappoint. As you all

57:11

said, it is a very rich text. I appreciate

57:13

your discussion of the way the film takes up the empty

57:16

Asian stereotype. Another intriguing theme

57:18

that I did not hear you explore much is a connection

57:20

with slavery. This idea is common

57:22

in discussions of artificial life and is taken up

57:24

in After Yang. If AI slash technosapiens

57:27

have inner worlds, they cease being objects

57:29

and become subjects, which could make

57:31

them analogous

57:32

to other beings that historically were viewed

57:34

as less than human, i.e.

57:35

slaves. This theme

57:38

is extended further beyond artificial life.

57:40

In After Yang's universe, the social

57:42

status of clones is less than that of natural-born

57:45

humans, and could also be analogous to slaves.

57:48

We see this when Jake interrogates his neighbor's

57:50

George's wife slash babysitter. Obviously,

57:53

a key point of the plot is that Yang comes to

57:56

treasure and record moments with a clone who

57:58

he sought out based on an original movie.

57:59

master-slave relationship with his

58:02

previous owner-slash-family. Jake's

58:04

realization that techs have inner worlds

58:07

and that they are de facto members of the family

58:09

might be analogous to a slaveholder's realization

58:11

of the same. Is Jake's, quote-unquote,

58:13

racism excused by his eventual appreciation

58:16

for Yang's role in the family? Is there more

58:18

to this theme that is worth talking about? So

58:20

I think that's a really interesting question.

58:23

I confess that if Yang had been a

58:25

black character, I would have

58:27

immediately thought of this as more of a question

58:29

about

58:29

slavery, and it certainly did not occur

58:32

to me with an Asian character because

58:34

it seemed like it was playing into completely

58:36

different types. But you're certainly right that

58:39

questions about AI and

58:41

artificial life very often are, in

58:44

some ways, questions about

58:46

how we deal with, quote-unquote,

58:49

lesser people, people that historically

58:52

have been under other people's control.

58:54

And I do think that there is something here

58:57

to the idea. I think the

59:00

writer-director, Koganata, is dealing

59:02

a little more with the stereotypes that

59:04

we discussed, at least, are the ones that

59:07

he officially talked about

59:09

in terms of the movie. But I think exploring

59:11

this from the perspective,

59:13

I certainly think you're right that Jake

59:15

suffers from a form of bigotry

59:18

and that that is foregrounded in the movie.

59:21

You could say it's about slavery, but I think really

59:23

more broadly it's about the other. It's

59:26

about anyone that is

59:29

considered a minority or looked down

59:31

upon or held at a distance from

59:33

yourself. And I think his discovery that

59:36

someone he never thought to examine

59:39

actually has a richer life and has more than

59:42

he thought was going on. In spite

59:44

of the complexities of him being

59:46

in an ownership situation with Yang,

59:49

it does seem to me at least

59:51

like this is just a much broader

59:53

metaphor than that. But

59:55

still, I think looking at it through

59:58

a slavery or ownership. lens. It's

1:00:01

just one of the more interesting ways

1:00:03

you could explore what exactly this dynamic

1:00:05

is meant to mean and what

1:00:08

the emotional impact of realizing

1:00:11

that somebody you didn't see as human is

1:00:13

maybe more human than you eventually

1:00:16

comes down to mean.

1:00:18

Malcolm kind of plays into his

1:00:20

letter that it's

1:00:22

kind of present whenever you have a story

1:00:25

about artificial intelligence and he can see

1:00:27

it in things like both separate wives or AI.

1:00:30

The separate wives is really interesting.

1:00:32

I think one of the – I'm not sure the question

1:00:35

ever really gets addressed as well as it should in the

1:00:37

film but it's like what do you

1:00:39

get

1:00:40

out of this relationship? What

1:00:42

kind of validation from receiving love

1:00:44

or whatever from someone who's

1:00:47

not a human or not – who

1:00:49

is an artificial creation who is just like

1:00:52

follows your will? I mean, that's

1:00:54

kind of the underlying question here and I'm

1:00:57

sure somewhere, you know, stirring

1:00:59

memories of a philosophy class about Hegel and

1:01:01

the master slave dialectic but I could

1:01:03

not do that justice in a person's

1:01:05

podcast. I'll work on that and I'll work up a essay and we'll

1:01:08

read about it. I'll pull you all on Hegel. As

1:01:10

to that last question, is Jake's racism

1:01:12

excused by his eventual appreciation for Yang's

1:01:15

role in his family? I don't think this kind

1:01:17

of awakening

1:01:17

movie is ever about excusing

1:01:20

racism or justifying racism.

1:01:22

I think it's about offering hope,

1:01:25

I guess, that people can –

1:01:27

if they're open, if they work at it, if

1:01:30

they care to, if they're smart enough

1:01:32

to, can come to

1:01:34

a place of empathy and can

1:01:37

learn things that fly

1:01:39

in the face of racism. But I don't think that

1:01:41

excuses the original racism. I

1:01:44

don't think that this movie is about excusing Jake's

1:01:47

ignorance or his – the

1:01:49

way that he sees Yang before

1:01:52

his eyes are opened. I think it's about

1:01:55

offering a possibility for him

1:01:57

and a possibility for, you know, metaphorically

1:01:59

speaking.

1:01:59

speaking through him for other bigots.

1:02:03

So I don't know if that's exactly

1:02:05

what you're getting at, but as far as the wording goes

1:02:07

here. I think it's, I feel like, I mean, maybe

1:02:09

it's been a while since I've seen it after Yang,

1:02:12

but it seems to me that, I don't know,

1:02:14

even in quotes racism isn't quite

1:02:16

what we're dealing with here with Jake. I mean,

1:02:19

I think there is a journey in which he

1:02:21

is able to recognize this

1:02:23

machine is more than just a machine, but keep in mind

1:02:25

how machiny his demise

1:02:28

is. It's like a failure

1:02:30

that he, you know, like they can't

1:02:32

have a proprietary software that can't be

1:02:35

fixed. And it just, so

1:02:37

that the machineness, I mean,

1:02:39

the otherness, not just in terms of race,

1:02:42

but in terms of just being is

1:02:44

emphasized from the beginning. And

1:02:47

so I think there's quite a, I think you

1:02:49

have to appreciate Jake's journey

1:02:51

to be able to continue

1:02:54

to explore the mind

1:02:56

of this machine

1:02:58

and be able to kind of see the

1:03:00

level of kind of dimension

1:03:03

and actual, you know, humanity

1:03:05

or whatever you want to call

1:03:07

it. Artificial being is able

1:03:10

to display and I don't

1:03:12

know, it's kind of, it becomes a kind of a separate issue

1:03:14

for me. But again, it's been a bit since I've

1:03:16

seen the film, so maybe I'm not remembering it

1:03:18

right.

1:03:19

I mean, I think where the invocation of racism

1:03:21

comes from is that Yang is like kind

1:03:24

of specifically there to

1:03:26

help the little girl whose name I don't remember

1:03:29

kind of, you know, get in touch with

1:03:31

her culture, you know, that's

1:03:34

sort of Yang's role. But

1:03:36

to your point, Scott, I think that

1:03:39

is not how Jake

1:03:41

doesn't see him as an Asian

1:03:43

person or not person

1:03:45

for first and foremost. He sees him as a thing.

1:03:49

A little bit more, I think, about objectification than

1:03:52

racism, just in terms

1:03:54

of how Jake's perception

1:03:57

of this being, this entity, evolves.

1:03:59

over the course of the film. Interesting

1:04:02

discussion. I mean, this is,

1:04:04

it's a heavy film with a lot

1:04:06

of big thoughts going on and

1:04:09

I think there's a lot of different ways to

1:04:11

interpret and unpack it. This is why we

1:04:13

always appreciate when our listeners share their thoughts and

1:04:15

their recommendations. If you feel so inclined,

1:04:17

we can feature your response on a future episode.

1:04:20

To reach us, you can leave a short voicemail at 773-234-9730 or email

1:04:22

us at comments at nextpictureshow.net.

1:04:33

That's it for this episode of The Next Picture Show. In

1:04:36

our next episode, we'll talk about another

1:04:37

historical poor little rich girl

1:04:38

and how Coppola's look at Priscilla

1:04:40

Presley's life mirrors Marie Antoinette's

1:04:43

in everything

1:04:43

from spending sprees to treasured pet

1:04:45

dogs.

1:04:46

Look for that episode next Tuesday on your podcatcher

1:04:48

of choice. For ad-free versions of the podcast

1:04:51

and extra content, find us on Patreon

1:04:53

at

1:04:53

patreon.com slash nextpictureshow.

1:04:56

You can find us at nextpictureshow.net, on

1:04:58

Twitter at Next Picture Pod, and at BlueSky

1:05:01

at The Next Picture Show if you want to keep

1:05:03

track of when new episodes drop. Until

1:05:05

next week,

1:05:06

if someone complains they can't afford bread, do

1:05:08

not offer them cake. Pizza isn't much

1:05:10

cheaper.