Tag: Biopic and Documentary Week

Biopic and Documentary Week: Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ Surprisingly Feminist

Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette
Many chastised Sofia Coppola’s re-imagining of Marie Antoinette. Some critics complained about the addition of modern music while others thought it looked too slick, like an MTV music video (remember those??). But I think most people missed the point. Beyond the confectionary colors, gorgeous shots of lavish costumes and a teen queen munching on decadent treats and sipping champagne is a compelling and heartbreaking film that transcends eye candy. Underneath the exquisite atmosphere exists a very powerful and feminist commentary on gender and women.
Marie Antoinette chronicles the life of Austrian-born Maria Antonia Josephina Joanna (Kirsten Dunst) as she becomes the Dauphine and then Queen of France leading up to the French Revolution. Writer and director Sofia Coppola loosely based the film on Antonia Fraser’s sympathetic biography of the French queen. Coppola injected the dialogue with actual quotes from the queen’s life. Dunst skillfully exhibits the queen’s naïveté, loneliness and charisma. In an outstanding and underrated performance, she adeptly captures the jubilance of a young woman who desperately desires freedom as well as a woman burdened with the knowledge that her only value lies in her ability to bear children.
In the beginning of the film, we see Marie Antoinette travel from her homeland of Austria to France as her mother has arranged for her to be married to the Dauphin, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) in order to unite the two antagonistic kingdoms of Austria and France. In a heartbreaking scene, Judy Dench tells Marie Antoinette she must leave everything she knows behind to make room for her new French identity, including abandoning her adorbs dog Mops. No, not her dog! That scene seriously broke my heart reducing me to tears. Marie Antoinette is upset yet she swallows her pain and obeys. She enters a tent placed on the two countries’ borders, entering on Austrian soil and exiting on French land. In the tent, she must strip off all of her clothes in order to don her new French garb – a symbol of her having to strip away her identity.
Once Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI, we see Versailles’ ridiculous and over the top traditions again and again. Every morning, an entourage of servants and royalty awakens Marie Antoinette, dressing her in garments with outlandish pomp and ceremony.
As she navigates royal society’s mores, we witness Marie Antoinette’s close friendships with the free spirited Duchesse de Polignac (Rose Byrne) and the reserved Princesse de Lamballe (Mary Nighy). When she is told she should choose more appropriate friends, particularly ditching Duchesse de Polignac, Marie Antoinette defends her friend saying she enjoys her fun spirit. Yes, there are moments when Marie Antoinette indulges in vapid, decadent luxuries. But people forget she’s a teenager. Um, that’s what they do! To take her mind off the constant societal pressure, she distracts herself by gambling, singing in plays and shopping. She’s so confined by societal expectations; she’s exploring her identity and experimenting as much as she can.
Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Austrian duchess Maria Theresa warns her, “All eyes will be on you.” After their wedding night, it’s clear that Louis XVI has no sexual interest in his bride. Through her constant letters, Maria Theresa perpetually reminds her daughter that “nothing is certain” about her place until she gives birth to a son. Even after Louis XVI is crowned king and Marie Antoinette becomes queen, her place is still not entirely secure until she has a son. After her sister-in-law gives birth to a son, Marie-Antoinette feels even more pressure to have a child. Her mother condemns her for not being charming enough or patient enough to entice her husband. As Marie Antoinette reads her mother’s letter, the stinging words wound her, we see and feel her solitary pain.
Women were reduced to their vaginas, only valued if they got pregnant so they could produce an heir. No one bothers Louis XVI about this, even though he’s the one who doesn’t want to have sex. Nope, just the woman; of course she’s to blame. Eventually after 7 years with no children, Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, talks to him. But Marie Antoinette is repeatedly blamed for not becoming pregnant. Clearly her body and reproduction are her only salient attributes in the eyes of society. 
Throughout the film, we’re reminded that women aren’t desirable, lesser than men. When her first child a daughter is born, Marie Antoinette says to her:
“Oh, you were not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me. A boy would have been the Son of France, but you, Marie Thérèse, shall be mine.”
In a world where nothing, not even her own body truly belongs to her, it’s touching to see Marie Antoinette, a devoted mother, take such joy in her relationship with her daughter.
Throughout history, people erroneously vilified Marie Antoinette, attributing her with more political influence than she actually possessed. And of course she was demonized after she supposedly told starving peasants, “Let them eat cake.” As civil unrest grows inching ever closer to revolution, the film’s Marie Antoinette says she would never say such a thing. Because of her Austrian heritage and I would also argue her gender, Marie Antoinette was repeatedly used as a scapegoat for France’s financial woes and the public’s strife.
The film divided audiences. At the Cannes Film Festival, critics notoriously booed yet it also received a standing ovation. Some critics dismissed it, saying it was nothing more than a pop video or that “all we learn about Marie Antoinette is her love for Laduree macaroons and Manolo Blahnik shoes.” Sofia Coppola, who consciously chose to omit politics from the film, fully acknowledged Marie Antoinette was not a typical historical biopic:

“It is not a lesson of history, it’s an interpretation carried by my desire for covering the subject differently. 
Would people still complain and moan if a dude was at the center of the film or a dude had directed this?? Nope, I think not. Does anyone else remember that Mozart acts like an immature douchebag in the critically acclaimed Amadeus??
But some delved deeper, understanding its rare beauty. Critic Roger Ebert praised Marie Antoinette astutely pointing out:

“This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how to use you but not how to value and understand you.”
Told almost entirely from the Queen’s perspective, we see the world through Marie Antoinette’s eyes. Her loneliness and the pressure she faces to be everything to everyone is palpable. 
With its commentaries on gender, women’s agency, reproduction and female friendships, Marie Antoinette is surprisingly deeper and more feminist than many realize. Sofia Coppola created a lush and sumptuous indulgence for the eyes. More importantly, by humanizing the doomed queen and adding modern touches, Coppola reminds us of the gender constraints women throughout history and today continually endure.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Poster Girl

This piece on Poster Girl, by Stephanie Rogers and Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on February 17, 2011, as part of their coverage of the Athena Film Festival.

Poster Girl (2010)
Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson. 
[…]
Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Monster

Monster (2003)
This is a guest post from Charlie Shipley.

“Well, I’ve walked these streets / A virtual stage it seemed to me / Makeup on their faces / Actors took their places next to me”
-Natalie Merchant, “Carnival”

We know the mass-culturally-sanctioned narrative about Patty Jenkins’ directorial debut, Monster: Charlize Theron got “ugly” and delivered a tour de force turn as serial killer Aileen Wuornos that was hailed by Roger Ebert in an effective, rare use of Travers-esque hyperbole as “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.” That quote made it to countless one-sheets and adorns the DVD cover of the film, and perhaps rightly so; Theron’s performance (or “embodiment,” as Ebert puts it) so overwhelms the mise-en-scène and soundscape of the film that Christina Ricci’s stern gaze on the DVD packaging seems little more than a futile attempt to market the film visually as a buddy film gone terribly wrong. Thelma & Louise, this is not.
As is so often the case with art films that reach a wide audience, these cultural metanarratives surrounding the film as a consumer object threaten to overwhelm our consideration of the film itself. For that reason, I’m less concerned with the well-documented “bravery” of Theron’s transformation than I am with the question of whether this film does justice to Wuornos, or if that’s even possible.
It’s not difficult to argue against that possibility. Anytime there are agents in positions of relative privilege attempting to dramatize the life of a person at society’s margins, it’s so easy to colonize and reimagine those lives without regard to their complexity. Even with that enormous caveat, though, Jenkins does a remarkable job here of letting Wuornos the character speak for herself using canny structural and sonic devices to centralize her experiences; we can interpret her opening voiceover – “I always wanted to be in the movies” – as both a wish we know will be fulfilled and a bitterly ironic reminder of the aphorism “be careful what you wish for.” This and other voiceovers serve as a latticework within Monster, lending structure and even beauty to the narrative while allowing us to get a glimpse of Wuornos’s inner life.
This distinction between voiceover monologues and spoken dialogue is crucially important because Wuornos speaks in a desultory, often self-contradictory way that conceals a labyrinthine underlying psychology driven by the opportunism of someone in a literal and emotional fugitive state. In a powerful scene late in the film when Selby (Ricci) finds out the extent of Wuornos’s crimes and tries to plead ignorance, Wuornos makes the seemingly contradictory claims within the span of a few minutes that “you don’t know my life” and “you know me.” The first quote is Wuornos’s attempt to claim that her killings were justified, the second an appeal to Selby to trust her. In this dramatic context and in the context of the biopic genre generally, this distinction (knowing the events of a life vs. knowing a person’s “essential self”) is a subtle but important one. In the world of this film, when spoken dialogue resists clear meanings as in this scene, voiceover serves not to explain away the ambiguity but provide the emotional context for it. 
Charlize Theron and Patty Jenkins both gave interviews implicitly confirming that both of these modes of narrative – factual reportage and emotionally honest characterization – were of paramount importance in telling this story about Wuornos. In a way, the titular epithet, “monster,” bridges this gap by taking a label that many undoubtedly applied to Wuornos and giving her the agency within the film to choose the identification for herself in the voiceover at the Fun World carnival. 
Just as voiceover provides a fantastical cinematic refuge for Wuornos to articulate her feelings and meanings without worrying about the judgment of others, so too does pop music provide a visual and temporal escape hatch into the realm of fantasy. There is an instrumental score for the film that is used in a somewhat traditional way to heighten dramatic, dialogue-driven scenes, but these music cues are used more often in the latter part of the film. By contrast, the film’s opening and the first meetings between Aileen and Selby are characterized by a deep sense of naïve wonder, culminating in their first kiss at a roller skating rink set to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Selby (Ricci) and Wuornos (Theron) at the roller rink
This scene subverts the traditional biopic form by supplementing documented events in Wuornos’s life with a scene that would just as easily fit into a more traditionally feminine-identified genre, romance. It’s placed in the narrative before Wuornos has killed anyone, so the dream of class mobility and migration away from small-town life is especially bittersweet in light of what the viewer knows is to come. This is a theme of Aileen’s pledges to Selby throughout the movie; the promises-turned-fantasies of a better life “far, far away” echo the escapism promised by “a midnight train going anywhere.” There are elements that stretch the bounds of plausible reality as well. To give one example, women participating in a couples’ dance in 1980s Florida and openly kissing in an iconically “family-oriented” space such as a skating rink would presumably not be met with the same level of indifference as it is here. Furthermore, while the songs before “Don’t Stop Believing” are 100% diegetic – that is, coming from within the world of the film – “Don’t Stop Believing” begins as a song being played in the skating rink but continues as the film cuts to Selby and Aileen passionately kissing against the outer wall of the building. Just like Wuornos’s voiceovers provide relief from the naturalistic tension of the more narratively straightforward scenes, the pop music that plays here widens the bounds of what is possible. 
These liberties – voiceover and pop music – are often derided as lazy narrative fillers by film critics and screenplay-writing guides alike, but in the case of Monster, they give Wuornos’s character a space within the otherwise relentless film to express herself clearly and put words to her desires. 
A powerful intertext to Monster is the song “Carnival” by Natalie Merchant, which is used to great effect in the documentary Aileen: Portrait Of a Serial Killer and which Wuornos requested to be played at her funeral. (It also, if only by association, brought to my mind Bakhtin’s concept of the “carnivalesque,” which one can find in Monster’s elements of interclass contact and vernacular speech but not in its tone.) Merchant’s lines “Makeup on their faces / actors took their places next to me” eerily and concisely summarize the dilemma we face when asking whether a film like Monster can do justice to its subject. I think it can, and I think it does, for while Charlize Theron has indeed “taken her place” next to Aileen Wuornos in the collective consciousness, her commitment along with that of Patty Jenkins to giving center stage to Wuornos and channeling a conscientiously rendered version of her truth leaves us with a complex characterization – deeply flawed, and deeply human.

Charlie Shipley has a B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies from the College of Charleston. He blogs about mental health, fat acceptance, feminism, and all the things at A Mind Unquiet. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: The September Issue

This review of The September Issue, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 7, 2011.

Anna Wintour has Power. She jokes that her siblings find what she does for a living “peculiar,” because maybe editing a fashion magazine doesn’t affect world politics, or cure diseases, or save the world. But high fashion is art, and art is peculiar. Amid the ads for cosmetics (which probably contain ingredients that no one should be putting on her or his skin) and accessories few of us can afford, there are stunning photographs of beautiful clothes. Most of the clothes aren’t really meant to be worn in Real Life, but they are pieces of art, and the people who make this wearable art fall all over themselves hoping that Wintour will notice them. They cater to her every whim, her every pointed critique.
Perhaps Wintour finds her position a bit peculiar, as well. There’s a drive viewers can see in her, and it seems as if she’s blindly plowing ahead, following success after success with little reflection about the why of it all. Her daughter appears to have no interest in the fashion industry, even though there’s a simple, ready-made path for her there. Like her mother, she doesn’t elaborate on her opinions, but knows that the industry isn’t for her. Wintour herself doesn’t really have much to say about what she’s achieved; she’s not the type to wax philosophically. Instead she states–and shows viewers–very plainly that she works hard and that the magazine has earned her a lot of money.
Grace Coddington and Anna Wintour
Fortunately, the movie also features Wintour’s team at Vogue, one of whom emerges to become the real star of The September Issue.
Grace Coddington is a former model and the creative director at Vogue. She even started working there on the same day as Wintour. She is intelligent, reflective, and an artist to Wintour’s manager persona. Coddington isn’t afraid to stand up to Wintour (whose lack of empathy was famously fictionalized by Meryl Streep in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada) either, and flawlessly uses her every resource, including the documentary film crew, to her advantage. Viewers may see her as being cutthroat, but she’s an artist fighting for her vision, her work, and she’s earned it. She’s 68 and has spent her whole life in this industry, working for British Vogue and Calvin Klein before joining Wintour.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Undesired

This is a guest post from Martyna Przybysz.
It was a simple coincidence that led me to discovering this short film that you are about to watch. I was looking for a powerful story about women, in which their success or status would not be defined by their womanhood or the men in their lives. Instead, I have found exactly that, but in the worst possible scenario – a real life story of how India’s women are facing a slow extermination of the entire sex. Because in some families – especially the ones that cannot afford to pay the old-fashioned, dowry – women’s husbands, and their respective families are driven by the belief that the sole purpose of being a woman is to bring a son into the world. From the moment they are capable of bearing a child, those females are under threat of extreme violence and death if their duty is not fulfilled.

Undesired, with interviews and images shot by Walter Astrada, whom I believe to be a very courageous photojournalist, brings to light this painful and current social issue still faced by many. According to Reuters, modern day India is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women to live, but it seems like it is also one of the most difficult ones for a female life to even begin. Gender inequality and the desire to rectify it, let alone feminism, seem like completely foreign concepts for certain classes. There is also a seeming contradiction in this entire predicament – if a woman is to be perceived as the bearer of life, how can she be made to bring about this life’s actual end? 
Read more about the issue and Astrada’s project. Watch it, share it, spread the awareness. 

In India, all women must confront the cultural pressure to bear a son. The consequences of this preference is a disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until death they face a constant threat of violence. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/undesired

Martyna Przybysz is a Pole who resides in London, UK. She works in film production. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Fat Body (In)Visible

This piece on The Fat Body (In)Visible, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on December 21, 2010.

I was thrilled to run across a fat-positive documentary by Margitte Kristjansson called The Fat Body (In)Visible, in which she interviews Jessica and Keena about the experience of being a fat woman in a society that doesn’t value—and even openly discriminates against—fat women. 
Quotes from the documentary:

Jessica, on Fat Acceptance:  Fat acceptance is just the radical idea that every body is a good body and that regardless of your shape or your size that you deserve just as much respect as the next person.

Keena, on Fat Acceptance:  Fat acceptance is just accepting your body where it is at.  Whether you’re bigger or you’re smaller. Just accepting what it is, your arms, your double chin, your thighs, and just not worrying about how other people may view you.

Click here to read the full piece and to watch The Fat Body (In)Visible. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got To Do With It?
This is a guest post from Candice Frederick.
Angela Bassett is one of those actresses who could breathe life into any role, no matter how flimsy—from her role as the matriarch of the Jackson family in The Jacksons: An American Dream to playing the wife of a slain political leader in Malcolm X. One could attribute that talent to the power in her delivery, the depth she gives to every line, and the gut-wrenching emotion she brings to every character.
But it is her star-making turn as rock and roll superstar Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It? that catapulted her to the A-list. Complete with the rock star wigs, superhero body and slightly timid but ever-so-deliberate snarl in her speech, Bassett embodied the icon during her slow and steady rise to fame, and her tumultuous marriage to late musician Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne).
It was her piercing portrayal of Tina that also contributed to the evolution of women’s roles in cinema, and one which still arrests audiences almost twenty years later. Bassett turned what could have been a whimpering, damsel in distress character in the hands of a lesser actress into a strong, unflinching woman worthy of admiration and one so memorable that it became a model for nuanced female characters for years to come.
Ike (Fishburne) and Tina (Bassett)
Because of Bassett’s performance, a new crop of fans could appreciate how a woman could be seen as more than merely a survivor, but a hero to her generation. And we’re not only talking about the female generation, or the African-American generation.  We’re talking about a star whose undeniable talent and wicked charisma helped shaped the face of rock and roll, regardless of age, color, creed and gender. It wasn’t an easy feat to step into Tina’s studded stilettos, but Bassett was able to humanize the icon. She showed the world some of the lowest points in Tina’s life, and turned them into a promise, a promise to her fans that she was going to overcome all of it to remind us all of how great she is. It was an exceptional cinematic tribute to a woman who touched the lives of many, and showed that even though she might have been victimized by her abusive husband, Tina was never a victim. It’s a fine line to walk, but Bassett’s diligent performance effortlessly revealed a multidimensional woman who was still a role model for many. It was respectful, rather than downtrodden (and it really could have gone either way).
That’s not to say Tina didn’t become a punching bag for Ike in the movie. The fast-talking, egotistical producer and bandleader often battled with drugs, money woes and a failed solo career, so whenever he got really burned up about things, he’d take them out on Tina every chance he had. Struggling with his own demons and crushed dreams, he decided to take out his aggression on his wife, and attempt to dash her ambitions. But regardless of what Ike tried to do to Tina, we never saw her broken afterwards. She got right back into that recording studio and belted out some of the classic tunes we still listen to today. She got back up and perfected that firm “I’m okay” smile for her friends and family, and remained a rock for her children. Because, as Lena Horne once said, “it’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.” She never let Ike or anyone else see her down; she got right back up.
Bassett and Fishburne
It also helped that she had an edge on Ike that he wasn’t willing to admit, one that made them look more like world class fighters in a ring, rather than one champion and one lightweight.  In many films, we often see the female as the victim, the weakling, the one who can’t defend herself, has no mind of her own and is led to believe she is nothing without her abuser. In other words, the abuser is always seen as the dominant figure in the relationship. But in What’s Love Got to Do With It?, we’re watching two very fierce characters, Tina and her husband Ike, fight a very similar fight against each other. Where Ike uses physical force and brutality to control Tina, Tina uses her unyielding emotional strength and supersized talent to ultimately eclipse Ike.
Bassett’s was not only one of the defining performances for women in cinema; it was also one that became a benchmark for actresses of color. Her riveting portrayal role was further punctuated by the remarkable writing. Many lead roles for women of color since then are often subordinate characters. And in many other instances, they’re the tough, ever wise figures, which don’t often allow them inhabit any other emotion. Even in the heavily lauded yet divisive drama, The Help, we saw the stories of two African-American characters glossed over and unrealized, lacking the measure of which they were worthy. Overall, too many roles written for African-American actresses have them simply orbiting around the larger story of the movie without actually being a part of it and making any real impact.
Nearly two decades later, Bassett’s performance still stands as one that turns all of that on its ear by actualizing all the those things a woman (of any color) can be—timid yet fierce, bold yet shy, loud yet subdued, happy yet sad—all at once. It’s a feast of emotions, and one which as a female viewer you crave to watch. We yearn to see it unfold and go through those same emotions along with Bassett in the movie, and she delivers. She takes a celebrated icon and gently peels away her tough outer layer to reveal a vulnerable inner core that so desperately screamed to be unchained. It is heartbreaking story, but one in which few tears are shed, but ultimately turns into a victory dance. You can’t help but to want to dance with her.

Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk.