I think Sofia Coppola is a gift from the Goddess. Her films are love letters to everyone. They awaken hope, love, optimism, and are a revival of subtlety, subtext, lightness, delight, tragedy, longing, and beauty. I’ve read some pretty scathing things about Ms. Coppola, and listened to people drag her over the coals over tables, bars, and coffee cups. In truth, I’ve even protested that she single handedly demolished the Godfather III (being a baby, and unwilling to accept that her father had lost the plot somewhere between razor blade and the cutting room floor.) I met her once, and while our eye contact was charming, the conversation which ensued was unpleasant, and I brooded over it for at least a month. Whoever she is personally, and however we relate to one another is irrelevant, because I love her, and I am so grateful for her art.
In quite a state last night, I made a pile of toast, and poured myself some cherry juice and climbed into the bottom bunk of my bed, and watched Marie Antoinette… twice..
Sofia Coppola really gets this story, and the interconnectivity between the youth of the ill fated rulers of France, and fear, shyness, doubt, love, idealism, as well as exploration, experimentation, youth culture, and oblivion are like beams of light with little stars on the ends of them. The BowWowWow subtext, the almost New Romantic influence (the look was perfect, and though the music was wrong for the style, it was perfect for the film,) and her beautiful cinematography, lazy pans, and stillness were like a box of chocolates to my aching heart and head.
It’s no accident that I’d spent the previous night weeping over Lost In Translation. Maybe it’s time for me to break out the Virgin Suicides again.
I loved that film so much I haven’t wanted to see it again. It really spoke to me, about me, it sang directly into the ear of my overweight, and frowning little boy of a heart. It was the second of a very short series of films which actually spoke to me, for the first time in my life, as an adult man and about my experience… about my generation.
Rare indeed is a gift like Sofia Coppola.
Thank you!
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Loved Lost In Translation. I told Michael about the film before he went to Japan. I’m not sure he ever saw it.
Never saw Virgin Suicides. It came out after I’d left Astralwerks (they released the soundtrack) and I think I was still harboring uneasy feelings about the label. I might need to check it out now after your glowing prose.
Marie Antoinette just seemed like an updated period piece, set to 80’s music.
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Stares at Peter sadly… slowly removes the glove from his right hand, pulling at the finger tips one by one, and softly slaps him across the face with a dash of melodrama and a little “humph!” As he turns and clicks away on his elabourate heels, Guilty by Classix Nouveaux begins to play, and the entire ballroom begins to twirl in priest frocks and cassocks.
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I told you! It’s so totally you, knew you’d just love it. Yay!
You still need to tell me what email your netflix account is under so I can “friend” you and share the movie lurve even more.
Yesterday I mistakenly went to see Ghost Rider, which was as bad as you’d expect. Somehow on top of everything being wrong with the film, Nicholas Cage looks like he’s about 800 years old (complete with fake orange tan and ill-fitting toupee). It made me so sad.
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I’m a strange bird, and while I’d like to think that I was one of many (which is not to say that I am not) I dare say that my taste, and affection for the protracted, pastoral, emotional endurance test of longing, and the halucifuge of dreams in my waking life remain, as yet, unshared by anyone at all. So it stands to reason that I would cry myself to sleep, overcome with emotion at the pastel blue and pink of Marie Antoinette, lay awake for hours, completely haunted, and barely sleep at all after watching the Virgin Suicides, and have no plans to ever see Ghots Rider.
* sigh *
some day my prince will come… I just pray he doesn’t wait until my skin looks like an ikea couch, and my breath smells like an undiscovered corpse.
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My bad. I never finished my post. Damn distractions. What I meant to say was, “Marie Antoinette just seemed like an updated period piece, set to 80’s music. Maybe I should see it.”
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hahahaha