i don’t care that Marie Antoinette (2006) is historically inaccurate!

hello my lovely little pheasants welcome back so today i'm going to do a requested video a long requested video this is probably the most highly requested video i've ever received for one particular movie ever so i'm here to deliver because who is a queen if she does not listen to her people [Applause] yes today we're going to be talking about marie antoinette the 2006 film directed by sofia coppola and starring none other than kirsten dunst so let's shimmy on to it after this commercial break are your eyes tired of reading do you feel like you don't have the time to pick up a book are you an auditory learner if you answered yes to any of those questions then try audible audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment if you join audible you'll get full access to the popular plus catalog that has thousands of selections as well as one credit every month good for any title in the premium selection my name is mina and i downloaded audible last week my job requires me to read tons of research papers and textbooks every single day and sometimes i just want a break i wear contact lenses my eyes get dry so i downloaded audible what am i listening to you ask marie antoinette the journey by antonia frazier this is the book that sophia coppola took the most references from when she did her movie boy antoinette so i wanted to dive into it to learn more about marie's actual life and see what sofia kapolei decided to adapt if you want to try out audible go to audible.com mina or text mina to 500-500 [Applause] as a refresher marie antoinette is a historical drama based on the life of marie antoinette the infamous queen of france who was beheaded by the revolution the time period it covers is from 1770 starting with her marriage to louis xvi to 1789 the year that the royal family had to leave versailles the reason i love this movie is because it's such a good case of historical anachronism for one i love the movie soundtrack this is probably one of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time [Music] so [Music] the music combined with the costumes perfectly capture how marie came to versailles a teenager and how she had no idea what she was doing which is why she was overspending and building this awful public image of herself your majesty you have spent over 50 000 already this month that is nothing left to give to your charities oh and you know on top of that the cinematography is great i do like sophia coppola's directing too despite her very homogeneous casting choices actually can i have five more of these little blonde the costume designer for this movie is melina cannonero and she actually won her third oscar for this movie um she's done other movies like 2001 as space odyssey barry lyndon grand boot pastel great portfolio according to the london times magazine before the start of production kappala actually approached canada with a box of macaroons from the latter a pastry shop as to give her an idea of what she wanted the color palette for the costumes to be for marie antoinette cannon arrow created about 170 costumes 100 of them which were made for kirsten dunst specifically the shoes were also created by manola blanc and your manola blahniks what no give me your blonics cannonero said in an interview with the times that from marie antoinette she wanted to simplify the very heavy look of the 18th century she wanted it to be believable but more stylized kk barrett the production designer also said in an interview with the la times i think what we did in general was that we freshened the whole palette of the french vision of the world at that time to a more of a pastel vision we didn't want to get into the darker somber colors that sophia calls the jewel tones we relegated those to the older king we decided to make sure to overemphasize the fact that she was 14 when she first got there and to make it seem like a fresh new world rather than old and dowdy according to koppler herself she was trying to make the movie seem normal versus a stiff period movie what coppola was doing was creating a period drama with a modern flair to make marie antoinette who was very young herself during the events of the film relatable to audiences young audiences after all i was 10 when this movie came out was i the target audience i don't know but that's besides the point the point is that i know anything about the french revolution at 10 years old no could i understand getting a new pair of shoes to make yourself feel better yes especially those shoes i really wanted a pair of those funny story about the converse in a 2006 interview with ign sofia coppola said that her brother roman coppola purposely included the pair of converse in the scene because he thought it was fun and they just decided to keep it in after the editing process and speaking of creative liberties in an interview with the la times canary said that women of the 18th century actually wore a lot of lace and jewels to indicate their status but she decided to scale down both those things for the costumes in this movie she wanted kirsten to look really youthful and modern rather than lace they dressed her in organza tool and netting frills and made ruffles in the dresses to make them look softer and fresher canon era said that they did actually borrow a lot of jewelry for this movie but the jewelry looked kind of matronly on kirsten dunn's because you know what teenager in the 2000s is bedecked in heavy jewels instead they wrapped a ribbon around her neck as a signature accessory so needless to say this movie is not very historically accurate um i don't want to go through like every single dress and say like what is historically accurate and what isn't just because that would be a huge waste of time but i will quickly go through some general things that i found in the movie maria wears a bunch of different garments now excuse my french she wears a robot francaise robot and glaze robot glazella retrosay peton lierre god shimizu loren possibly a robe alaterk the dress that she wore to the masked ball was really modern this was probably the most modern dress in the movie the sleeves are totally off for the time the fabric is super inaccurate it looks like a silk or ganzo with sequins the mask is also very simple which i'm assuming is purposeful so that the audience can read marie's expressions better a minor detail i noticed is that marie also wears a few zone front gowns throughout the movie this one she wore before louis xv even died in 1774. when i'm talking about the zone front by the way i'm talking about the garment that cuts away like this and it was really popular in the 1780s so murray in this movie is a little bit early to the trend the rio marie antoinette were a lot of heavy face makeup as well especially in the earlier years because it was required under louis xv's court but i can understand them not wanting to put kirsten in a ton of makeup because again sophia was trying to modernize the film and having kirsten wear less makeup emphasizes her youthfulness so again the reason why i didn't care too much about historical inaccuracies was because i feel like all the inaccuracies were chosen for a reason they were purposeful and well calculated now let's analyze the movie i would say that the movies costumes can be broken down into three main parts the first part being the 1770s aka her years struggling to produce an air the second part being the early 1780s aka her scaled-down cottage core look and the third part being the late 1780s aka her morning period leading up to the escape from versailles i just want to make note that the movie timeline is not exactly the real timeline in the movie louis the 16th gives her the trianin after she gives birth to maria therese but in actuality louis xvi gifted her the shannon around the time that he ascended to the throne in 1774 but narratively i get it in the movie it's supposed to be like a reward for marie antoinette after she bears a child in the first couple of scenes where marie antoinette is being transported to france from austria there is a very visual transition sequence where she is disrobed and put into new french clothes this is to represent how her past is literally being stripped away as she's set on a new course it is accustomed that the bride retain nothing longing to a foreign court an etiquette always observed on such an occasion but it also actually happened in real life marie antoinette's mom spent a ton of money on her daughter's trousseau and when marie arrived in france she was wearing a heavy train voluminous skirts a ribbon bedecked bodice and jewels from her hair to her shoes but like in the movie they took away all of her original clothes and marie actually had a meltdown when this was all happening it was just really cold and she was like stripped naked to be changed and she was only 14. i'd be kind of traumatized too for her wedding in the movie marie wears a robot la francaise which has very nice watto pleats in the back and a fitted front for her actual dress they used a white hued cloth of silver and the whole dress was decorated with white diamonds so very expensive obviously but in the movie they used a champagne colored silk which is you know close enough she's not wearing a lot of jewels but we already covered why that's the case an interesting fact about marie's wedding gown though is that it was actually very ill-fitted the dressmakers cut the bodice a little bit too small so you could actually see her undergarments when she was wearing it which is a huge yikes and i wish they added this detail because i feel like not only is it historically accurate but it also foreshadows marie antoinette's unraveling during this new phase of her life and something else i want to bring up is that marie antoinette had to wear a very uncomfortable garment called the grand corp which according to nora juan and her book corsets and crinolines was a bone to court bodice noblewoman would have to wear it only for court but france's great princesses were expected to wear it on a regular basis marie hated this bodice because it was a lot more inflexible than what she was used to wearing in vienna the marquis de la tour dupin who served as a personal attendant to marie antoinette said this about the grand corp it was a specially made corset without shoulder straps laced up in the back but tight enough so that the lacing's four fingers wide on the bottom allowed for a glimpse of the chimneys of such fine batiste that it would be readily apparent to everyone if one's skin underneath was not sufficiently white the front of the corset was laced as it were with a row of diamonds to be fair it was really freaking tight like she wasn't just being spoiled about it the marquis said that it was very exhausting and fatiguing to wear and eliminate a lot of movement especially around the arms marie actually banded it for a time because she hated it so much and by the summer of 1770 it spread around as political gossip that marie was not wearing her corset her mother ended up having to write a letter to her in german telling her that it would look really really bad if her waistline thickened out and she was not pregnant so unfortunately because of the whole lack of baby making which meant that marie antoinette's position was not solidified um she ended up going back to the corset i kind of wish they added this course that drama because it shows how marie antoinette was having difficulties acclimating to french royal customs but i understand there were time constraints for the movie moving on if you notice in the first gossip scenes the ladies all comment on how marie looks and what she's wearing one lady even compares her to a cake i think she's delightful she looks like a little piece of cake it'd be interesting to see how long she lasts i think the whole cake analogy is kind of funny because marie's whole pop culture legacy is the phrase let them eat cake which she never actually said and i'm glad that they said that in the movie that's such nonsense i would never say that but you know despite that marie is definitely dressed kind of like a cake of course the silhouettes of the gowns back then were kind of cake-like in general but also combined with the confectionary colors and ruffles she definitely looks like a little sweet thing and then there's a scene where she's reading a letter from her mother berating her for not producing an air remember nothing is certain about your place there until an air is produced if you notice marie is wearing a very similar fabric to the wallpaper which represents how she's feeding into versailles how she's feeling overwhelmed by the expectations people have for her as the future queen she's basically losing her sense of self to the palace and then of course she has a huge meltdown when louis the 16th brother's wife gives birth to a child the i want candy scene aka one of the best scenes in cinematic history yes you can fight me on that is i think kind of like her acting out she hit that breaking point and now she just wants to have fun it's kind of like when you fail a test or something in college and you just want to go drink and party once again there's a parallel between cakes and clothing when we think of the word indulgent we think of food first usually or at least i do so the best way to really emphasize this crazy amount of indulgence is to display food as well and we see her wear this towering poof in one scene she's out of control and the movie frames her overspending as a coping mechanism to royal pressures she's honestly saying like it i am the dauphine when she finally produces an heir a huge weight is lifted off her shoulders and the costumes depict that she starts wearing a white flowing cotton gown called a gall or a shimizu lorraine she wears her hair loose and natural sometimes decorated with flowers all of this is to emphasize how comfortable and carefree she is now i want something more simple natural this is all pretty historically accurate marie antoinette popularized the gall which was initially copied from crayola and colonialist wives who were living in climates too hot to wear silk it was super unrestricting and worn over flexible cloth bodice again the timeline is a little inaccurate the change marie makes from these restrictive dresses to the gall is very quick in the movie to represent her pre-baby and post-baby life but in actuality it was more of a gradual process french aristocrats in general were moving towards looser and more comfortable clothing due to rousseau's writing jean jacques rousseau was a french philosopher and he started writing about how luxuries were linked with deplorable socioeconomic iniquities and his influence sparked this trend among aristocrats who dress a tad more modestly the chamisa lorraine wasn't the only dress to come about there was also the robot of polynese in 1775 marie and her friends adopted this dress which eliminated the restrictive panniers and long train associated with the robe a la francaise the cut of the overdress was a lot looser and because the skirt was looped up to reveal the ankles it was easier to move in in the final segment of the movie marie has to rejoin the court of versailles to support her husband she transitions from creamy white colors to very dark colors when her mom and son die the dresses are once again more restricting but instead of being bright and pastel like they were in the beginning of the movie the colors are dusty faded and muted to show how versailles is fading into history the fabric material also looks heavier to represent the pressure marie is increasingly under so overall as you can see the most anachronistic aspects of her styling the color the fabric of the dresses the makeup the hair these were all done for artistic and narrative purposes but honestly even if there was no purpose like even if there was no reason i do understand how difficult it is to create like 170 costumes that cover a 20-year time period especially in the 18th century because there were so many different kinds of dresses that were coming up into fashion at the time but it's the fact that the silhouettes were for the most part super spot on and the major inaccuracies in the movie you could totally tell why they chose those things that make marie antoinette just an unbelievable costume film in my humble opinion anyways i hope you enjoy this video and i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 203,159

Rating: 4.9854231 out of 5

Keywords: marie antoinette, fashion history, 18th century, costume design, kirsten dunst, sofia coppola, mina le, video essay, fashion analysis, style analysis, historical accuracy, period drama, period film

Id: 6yRmkAe43EA

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/misteranthropocene]

The costuming was excellent and I love the creative liberties they took in the movie. I just loooove all the pastels. So luscious you could eat them.

[u/Ordinary-Vermicelli6]

Costumes were excellent. Literally everything else in this movie blows tho