In order to convey all these ideas, Coppola reasoned, she would have to write Marie Antoinette’s story in a completely different way. Instead of the typical sweeping costume epic, she wanted to tell a more intimate tale, invested with all the energy and angst of a young woman’s coming of age. Her Marie Antoinette was to be a flawed woman, ultimately redeemed by the grace she displays under fire.
“My main objective was to not make a big, historical epic,” says Coppola of her original approach to MARIE ANTOINETTE. “Her life is a huge historical chronicle, and while I was respectful of that, I wanted to tell a much more impressionistic story from Marie Antoinette’s point of view as we watch her grow and mature. Most of the stories we know about her come from other people’s perceptions of her. I was much less interested in the political and historical views of her and more in her personal experience. Rather than a stuffy, formal portrait, I wanted to reveal the way people must have behaved when they were behind closed doors.”
Right from the start, Coppola focused on an iconoclastic approach, not only in the story, but in its presentation, involving a distinctly modern, graphic style, hoping to turn a historical subject into one that was more immediate, emotional and visceral. “The idea was to capture in the design the way in which I imagined the essence of Marie Antoinette’s spirit,” Coppola explains. “So the film’s candy colors, its atmosphere and the teenaged music all reflect and are meant to evoke how I saw that world from Marie Antoinette’s perspective. She was in a total silk and cake world. It was a complete bubble right up until the very end.”
Coppola approached historical biographer Antonia Fraser about adapting her book into a highly stylized film. Fraser was both surprised and pleased by the director’s singular approach toward shattering the myths surrounding Marie Antoinette. “I was very attracted by Sofia’s enthusiasm,” says Fraser. “We come from very different angles but she had her own vision of Marie Antoinette and a wonderful intensity.”
“Sofia understood that the things that happened to Marie Antoinette were absolutely extraordinary,” says Fraser. “First, she was essentially sold into slavery to become a French princess. Then she was supposed to support Austria at the age of 14. Then she’s got into this weird, unconsummated marriage but was supposed to produce a child. Sofia shows very sympathetically how Marie Antoinette tried to cope with this remarkable situation. All the shopping, extravagance and decadence were a reaction to all of the terrible things that happened to her yet were not of her making. I liked that approach very much.”
As she came at the story in her own way, Coppola found inspiration from other modern sources as well – especially the New Romantic pop music movement of the 1980s — which was itself heavily influenced by 18th century ideals of extravagance. New Romantic artists such as Bow Wow Wow and Adam Ant celebrated glamour, luxurious fashion and hedonistic fun during that period as a kind of counterpoint to both the boredom of classic rock and the primal anger of punk music. Coppola saw the music as a modern lens through which to view Marie Antoinette – and songs such as Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” seemed to serve as a perfect, modern expression of Marie Antoinette’s impulses to find fulfillment through pleasure.
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