I decided to take in two current movies back-to-back on Saturday. The first was Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role. The second was Stephen Frears’ The Queen with Helen Mirren playing the role of Queen Elizabeth II.
Normally the problem with a double-feature afternoon (matinee and budget theater prices making this about the same price as seeing one evening movie) is that I really need time to digest and fully appreciate a movie after I’ve seen it (granted, this notion goes out the window during a film fest, but usually not all of those selections are new to me).
However, I think my plan for Saturday was a particularly good one because the sum of watching these two movies together was better than watching either alone.
THE SUM OF TWO QUEENS (**STOP READING HERE TO AVOID SPOILERS– LJ cuts were not working for me– I apologize for the length, as well**)
First, to be a queen worthy of a feature film, you must become a monarch at a young age and either rule for a very long time or have your life cut short by tragic/violent circumstances.
You must like dogs, preferably LOTS of dogs, and spend a reasonable amount of time outdoors.
I would have expected Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth II to be about as far apart on the Queen Spectrum as two queens can possibly be. Marie Antoinette has always been described as a fashion diva, the supreme lush– and Coppola’s film, complete with contemporary rock/pop songs, did not neglect this side of her, but embedded it more in the culture at Versailles. Elizabeth II has been characterized as a rather dour and conservative queen, part of the generation that came of age during World War II. While neither film really departs from these characterizations, we discover that queens really do have a lot in common, even if they are ruling different countries in very different eras.
The Marie Antoinette portrayed by Sofia Coppola was not a twit who would have responded to her subjects’ plight with the pronouncement “Let them eat cake.” Rather, she was a queen who probably would have been quite amenable to serving “her people” if it had been a concern of the ruling establishment of the time. As it was, she struck the viewer as a person who tried to please others and do her duty from the cradle. Coppola interpreted her spending, her extravagances, her partying, loving, and indulgences as a reaction to the cold environment Marie Antoinette found herself in at Versailles and to her desire to be a much more carefree and normal woman than birth and circumstance allowed her to be.
Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette is intelligent, charming, and naive. She learns how to be more assertive once she settles into court life. Her charms fail her as politics spin out of control in late 18th C. France and the monarchs are blamed, rather than the advisors who have been making most of the decisions about governing. The fatal flaw of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI is that they are inept rulers caught up in a system of privilege that simply doesn’t work as a government anymore.
Having Louis XVI as a husband probably didn’t help. He comes across as an bumbling husband who has difficulty expressing his emotions, performing in bed, and making political decisions. A companion knocks his hat off in the first scene we see him in, suggesting that he was looked down upon, if not mocked outright, by those closest to him. Although he is willing to learn how to be a better husband and a better king (eventually), it is too little too late and all is lost.
Interestingly, the violence of the Revolution seems to only be focused on the King and Queen in this movie. Advisors and royal relatives are sent away to safety and only Marie Antoinette and Louis stay around for the siege at Versailles and impending doom. We don’t see the massive amounts of violence and bloodshed, beheadings, etc. that lead up to regicide. We do not see the regicide, in fact. This is a movie about the personal life of an individual, not a movie about the French Revolution.
Elizabeth II also became queen of a nation at a young age, but The Queen focuses on a critical time in her reign, the week following the death of Diana, the former Princess of Wales.
If the monarchy of pre-Revolutionary France was abolished (temporarily) with the rolling of heads, the monarchy of early 21st C. England may be abolished by popular will, quietly and constitutionally. Yet the people have held on to this tradition. They deem the monarchy and the monarch to be theirs. Elizabeth II is as much a servant of the people as Marie Antoinette was a servant of the ruling elite in Europe during her era.
Both are also servants of God and of the Church.
The Queen deals with her former daughter-in-law’s death and its impact on her family by personally withdrawing- both physically and emotionally- from England. Despite her many years of steadfast service to her people, this withdrawal creates chaos within days. The people expect the Queen to grieve and respond to Diana’s death publicly. There is public outcry when she doesn’t. During the crisis, Tony Blair informs the Queen that 1/4 of the English people polled are in favor of ending the monarchy. A small personal act suddenly has great political repercussions. Marie Antoinette could have sympathized. No queen can escape this.
Contemporary queens, however, are expected to be particularly responsive to their people. They are figureheads, mostly representatives of their countries, rather than political movers and shakers. Elizabeth II has played the hand she has been dealt particularly well, I think, in being something more than a stick-puppet queen.
In the end, she maintains her independence as a person (or the film struggles to make us believe so), even while taking the suggestion of Blair’s government (backed by Prince Charles) to make a public response and thereby save the monarchy. Did she save the monarchy? That remains to be seen. In the years since Prince Charles’ second marriage, media coverage on the Royals has at least died down and perhaps this is an indication that the monarchy has regained some respectability.
While watching these two movies back-to-back, Diana strikes the viewer as a third “queen”, a ghost queen. She is the queen who never was. We think of her as a modern day Marie Antoinette because of her charm and her strength and assertiveness, as well as her partying, her reckless behavior, her conflicts with the Establishment, and her tragically short life. Unlike Marie Antoinette, Diana’s “people” perceived her to be close- the “People’s Princess” Tony Blair’s speechwriter penned into history. This circumstance seems to have resulted from the perceived role of the modern monarchy, Diana’s background, and the constant involvement of the media in her life until well after her death.
I wonder what Elizabeth II would have done as a leader of France in its revolutionary days. From another perspective, would a young, Marie Antoinette-ish Diana have made a charismatic Queen of England, or would she have been reviled? Would she have damaged the monarchy more than tradition did? Would Marie Antoinette have been remembered more fondly by history if France had undergone a peaceful transition to a Republic, or if the conservative royal establishment had preserved their legacy by responding more to the people?