Category: Blog Post

Marie Antoinette, 2006. Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Shirley Henderson, Molly Shannon, Steve Coogan, Marianne Faithfull, Asia Argento, Jamie Dornan, and Danny Huston.

Now showing at theaters around town.

Sofia Coppola adores couches. Couches and beds. Also, she seems to enjoy the alluring look of young women draped on the same. Coppola likes shoes and cakes and champagne, pugs and pillows and handsome young men, too. Raised in considerable splendor, by a filmmaker father who turned much of his success into a duchy of fine wines and classic cars, Coppola is about as close to royalty as you’ll find in this country (and not be associated with grim politics). And yet, the girl feels trapped. Like Marie Antoinette, perhaps Coppola senses that she’s a young woman caught in the amber of wealth, waiting for history–or the fickle tastes of Hollywood–to slice her head clean off.

There can be no doubt that Marie Antoinette continues the lonely saga of Sofia Coppola, who is gunning to become perhaps the most autobiographical filmmaker since Orson Welles ended his forty-year examination of his own destructive appetites with his death in the mid-80s. Knowing little about the real Marie Antoinette, I cannot speak to the historical accuracy of this film, except to say that I doubt there’s much interest, either by Coppola or her audience, in replicating Versailles in its exactitude. History, after all, can be a drag.

Marie Antoinette is about Sofia Coppola and young women like her (which is to say, hardly anyone in a literal sense). It is a beautiful film, well acted by some of its principals, horribly by others. Antoinette is a film that is at turns funny and insightful and shallow and tedious. Like a dessert buffet, it manages to please the eye and the palate until the garish colors and the thick frostings begin to wear on the soul, and the body craves water and bread. In the end, it left me feeling odd, confused, with a bit of a headache, and still trying to grasp its deeper meaning… if there is a deeper meaning.

Marie Antoinette is virtually without tension. In an attempt to forge an alliance betwixt Austria and France, Maria Teresa (Marianne Faithfull, doing her best Judi Dench impression), the ruling Empress of the former, weds her youngest daughter, Antonia (later to be dubbed Antoinette by the Frogs) to young Louis (Jason Schwartzmann), who would go on to become Louis XVI. In Austria, young Antoinette lives the life of simple royalty, in dark rooms with happy pugs and good friends to while away the hours. She is all of fourteen years old, and France is going to change her, big-time.

At the border between the two countries, Antoinette is met by the Comtesse de Noailles who will instruct the young girl on etiquette and all things royal (in France). She is portrayed by Judy Davis, who at one time was one of the greatest actresses, a woman of startling range who could be terrifying, hilarious, and melancholy in a few breaths. Here she is an anal-retentive bitch, and the first sign of Coppola’s inability to rein in her actors, or to direct them in any way. The Comtesse is all pinched lips and irritated snuffs blasted through flared nostrils. Soon, Antoinette will be plunged headfirst into the court at Versailles, with the Comtesse at her elbow, trying to get the young girl to eat properly, to wait patiently (and buck naked) while subordinates vie to dress her, and, eventually, to conceive an heir to the throne.

Here, then, is the tension: young Louis, for whatever reason, has no interest in making love to his young wife. How old is he? Is he too young and scared to touch this gorgeous young thing? Perhaps he’s gay. Maybe he’s got a lover on the side? Don’t know–aren’t meant to know. And Jason Schwartzmann, an astoundingly mediocre actor riding his role in Rushmore for yet another picture, plays Louis as if he were nothing more than a suburban teenager. Maybe Louis is just like all those fellows vying for Sofia’s attention as a young girl. Those wine country guys aren’t the most thrilling, I guess.

For whatever reason, Antoinette does not dislike her husband, waiting patiently while he figures out what to do with himself in their wedding bed. In the meantime she shops, goes to parties, bats her eyes at a roguish Swede, and eats piles of cake. Eventually Louis comes around, they consummate their marriage, and she has a girl, who gives our eponymous hero buckets of joy.

For the most part, Marie Antoinette is a blameless creature, a girl who tries to inject some life into the stuffed shirts and just wants to be happy. Coppola is a master at scenes of young girls pining for that elusive something, and the chores they create to fill bored afternoons. But Antoinette seems almost too close to the filmmaker’s heart, for she is sheltered in this film, never challenged, and key plot elements are dropped entirely. There’s never an argument between Louis and Antoinette; she has an affair that provokes no gossip (where up to this point a pair of shrewish aunts clicked their tongues mercilessly); Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson arrive in France, and there’s mention that they’re a crazy pair, but Antoinette never gigs with them. What a story! Instead, we get more and more parties, more and more shoes, and more and more cakes.

Finally, the mob descends on Antoinette, and we all know the story: she’ll lose her head. The final half hour is tedious, its lighthearted characters forced into somber tones delivered with all the authority of a teenager admitting guilt to a hall monitor. Antoinette becomes a dutiful wife, Louis a responsible adult, and the fun drains right out of the picture. Personally, I was desperate for a dark and dirty mob, wide-eyed and full of violence, to purge this motion picture of its silks and sauces. But it was to no avail. Instead of chaos, Antoinette is taken away in a fancy carriage, muttering to herself. The final shot is a blue room, its chandelier busted and on the floor, the bright lights having fallen to darkness.

Perhaps the mob are the critics growling at Sofia Coppola, the wrecked bedroom her own little world collapsing as adulthood (and these critics) begin to assert themselves. Marie Antoinette is close to being a great film, but it suffers for its inability to truly wonder about itself and to be totally honest. Coppola should never have even thought of tackling anything real, like the American revolution, when she’s most real being a sad young girl, surrounded by wealth. Dunst’s Antoinette is a pretty enigma, lacking self-reflection, lacking even anger and frustration, a beautiful zombie that leaves us frustrated and wondering. If she really said “Let them eat cake”, perhaps that’s because that was all that nourished that poor soul.

I have a confession to make. I incessantly channel surf while driving; often to the detriment of other drivers.

I also have this sign in my window because the giant SUV that I inherited when my companies merged is always black and shinny and designed to make other drivers feel inadequate.

Things did not used to be this way. In fact, about a decade ago, before the dawn of polarized politics (so they say) on the airwaves I’d pretty much leave my radio at one channel. Today its nothing but a steady stream of derision and sensationalism from one end of the dial to the next.

But I am not here to carp about radio.

I would instead like to rehabilitate a small nutritional item that does not deserve the vilifaction it receives on radio (right wing in particular). I am talking about granola.

Recently a heard a right-of-the-dial radio announcer comment that she would get back to her listeners after removing “a piece of granola from her throat.”

Surgically, I am not sure what she meant. Sarcastically however this represented yet another attempt at demeaning a certain cereal substance that is nothing but good for you.

(let me get back to this…I am choking on a small piece of bloodless bacon prepared by the Hersuit Monks of Mendota…seriously…bought it at the organic farmers market yester…)

Flags of Our Fathers, 2006. Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Barry Pepper, John Benjamin Hickey, Paul Walker, Jamie Bell, Neal McDonough, Harve Presnell, Judith Ivey, Myra Turley, and Thomas McCarthy.

Now showing at theaters around town.

A long time ago, when I was working in a library, an old gentleman who used to visit frequently noticed a display copy of Stud’s Terkel’s then-bestselling The Good War. The book stopped him in his tracks. For a moment he looked like he was going to throttle someone, hopefully not me. He grabbed the book and said: “‘Good War?’ What ‘good war’? There’s no such thing as a ‘good war’. My God…” Then he slammed it down and walked away.

Veterans are an amazing collection of people, especially those who have experienced combat. Of the many veterans I’ve interviewed (some from my own family and for work I did for a pair of books) the ones who faced actual fighting were always the most open minded and emotional, and often times altogether silent about their experience. If you could get them to talk there were always long moments of tense reflection, as they tried to get past the myriad of emotions that were suddenly called up again, remembering a time of exuberant youth that was altered in the worst of all possible worlds. My own Grandfather was a medic in Normandy, and told his story to only one person, my aunt Mary. I never recall hearing him drone on about how great it is to fight in a war.

On the other hand, there’s a relative who stayed safe on an island during Korea who brags whenever he can about his being a veteran of that war. He also lifted a glass at the beginning of this current conflict and crowed, “I’m happy. I’ve got my war.” This is in contrast to a guy I once worked with who was one of 16 men out of a unit of 200 who survived a Vietnamese assault. He takes the day off on that anniversary, because he cannot bear to face the world. And there’s my own father, who joined the Navy at the height of Vietnam. It occurred to me the other day that I’ve never heard him call himself a veteran. He just shrugged. “I’m not. I joined the Navy to avoid fighting. There’s nothing to be proud of.”

This outlook is so contrary to what the hawks want to hear: a complex weave of emotions and opinions, instead of the necessary saber-rattling needed to keep the propaganda machine hot. Not necessarily peace-mongers, veterans who’ve seen combat typically hope others don’t go through what they endured. They don’t see war as fun, as a game, but see it as perhaps a necessity. Often, during these conversations, I have seen them look toward a picture of their own kids and wish, quietly, that another war would never be fought, to wreck the youth of their own children.

Flags of Our Fathers is specifically the story of the men who raised the iconic World War II flag over the island of Iwo Jima. The flag was raised on the fifth day of fighting (there were thirty more to go) and three of the six survived the onslaught. James Bradley, the son of John “Doc” Bradley (one of the six), decided to interview many of the survivors and their colleagues and piece together their story. The three–his father John (Ryan Phillipe), Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford), and Ira Hayes (Adam Beach)–were brought home as soon as the government realized the appeal of the picture. Immediately, they were pressed into service to get people to buy bonds. Hauled around the country to various stadiums, they would wave or climb a papier-mache mountain and raise another flag (without the other three, of course, as they were killed), in an attempt to get people to participate in the 7th war bond drive. This nearly drove them crazy.

Flags of Our Fathers is an odd film, filled with moments of horror, of black humor, of beautiful mystery, all of which is stitched together with some maudlin schmaltz. I say odd because it comes from the hands of Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and Crash writer Paul Haggis–three filmmmakers who have been known not to be either subtle or complex. But unlike Spielberg’s overrated Private Ryan, Flags is not an exercise in technical verisimilitude: instead, it seeks, through three complex characters, to try and tell us, as best it can, what it means to be a soldier. In this way, it is brilliant.

This lengthy PR tour affects the three men in vastly different ways: John cannot help but be reminded of his friend Iggy’s death, and the tremendous guilt that accompanies that memory; Rene loves the attention, and hopes to parlay his fame into financial success; while Ira is devastated, feeling as if this fame were more of a curse. There are various PR blunders–one of the men in the picture has been misidentified–a fact that disgusts the soldiers–and there’s some startling insensitivities, as when a dessert, molded into the shape of the image, is ladled with blood-red strawberry syrup, sending Ira into fits. A Pima Indian from Arizona, Ira gets run through the wringer here–he’s constantly insulted because he’s Native American, his patriotism questioned because he questions the motives of this publicity campaign, and is ostracized for his grief. The man drinks to forget what he’s seen, drinks to forget what he’s reminded of day after God-damn day, drinks because the pain is too great (and of course this drinking is attributed to his being Native American). All he wanted to do was remain with his unit. At one moment, he breaks down, weeping and holding the mother of one of his fallen comrades. It is a beautiful scene: for the rest of the men, simply crying is a luxury they are not to be afforded. They are heroes, not humans.

Flags of Our Fathers doesn’t seek to damn the Government for making these poor fellows run around the country like trained bears–in fact, the movie makes a case that without the success of this fund drive, the war “would be over in a month” (a fact I personally believe is dubious). And Eastwood isn’t interested in making these men superheroes–they are all flawed, capable men who might be in over their heads. At times the film veers into solemn voice-over, summarizing the ‘point’ of the movie when it should just stop and allow the audience to soak in what we’ve just seen. Mercifully, there are very few of these scenes. Instead, the film captures, almost perfectly, the complexities of being a soldier, and especially a survivor.

My own grandfather was a medic during World War II. I always liked that he was a medic, that he didn’t kill people, instead trying to save them. He landed in Normandy, a hundred and twenty minutes after the first shot was fired. His journals are sad. Grandpa was trying to sound upbeat, talking about the ‘Skipper’ upstairs looking after him, but he must have been scared shitless. I think about how, for a medic, battle is a different experience: while others run ahead firing their guns and ignoring the dead, he had to stop and see the results firsthand and hear what would often be final words. The shouting in pain, the praying, the remember me to so-n-so. When he was done administering triage to the worst casualties, dodging bullets himself, he then beat it back to a trench just before the German planes strafed the beach. And then, as night fell, he would hear the soldiers he had saved scream for help as the tides came in and drowned them, every one. That was a sound that would haunt him the rest of his life.

Eastwood closes this film with a shot, from high up on the same mountain where the flag was raised, of the six men being allowed to swim in the ocean on a secured beach. This was a reward for raising the flag. For a moment, they are able to strip themselves of soldierhood, peeling off the clothes that define them at that time, and return to the land of boyhood. Screaming for joy for a change, they dive into the sea and play.

…

Some brief conversations with veterans I’ve known or had the privilege to meet. In this case, all are real.

While in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan this fall, I came across this picture on a poster titled “Upper Michigan Border Patrol”

I had never thought Brown bears lived in the Midwest, but this photo made me curious if I had been mistaken. In fact, it occurred to me that I had never really known enough about bears to know the range of any of the types of bears in the United States or even how many different types there were.

There are just two types of bears in the 48 contiguous states: Black and Brown. Brown bears live only in the very northwest area of the country and the only types of Brown bear in North America are Grizzly, Kodiak and the Mexican Brown Bear.

That leaves Minnesota and the U.P. with only Black bears. And while Black bears can be different colors including brown, there seems to be another trait that differentiates the two. Brown bears have a hump behind the shoulders, like the bears in this photo. So I think I was right. No way this picture was taken in the U.P. I’d be happy for feedback.