Farewell, My Queen, Benoit Jacquot's beautiful film about the last days at Versailles before the Revolution, opened the San Francisco International Film Festival last night. I have always been fascinated to near obsession with that moment in history, so I loved Jacquot's adaptation of Chantal Thomas' novel about the last four days before the shit went down.
Jacquot said something really interesting during the Q&A which explained the realism that was so palpable in that most surreal setting of Versailles. He insists that his film crew be as loyal to the period as possible, making the set and costumes correct down to smallest detail, but he instructs the actors simply to act, to be present in their characters and the drama at hand. Not to worry about the period.
Jacquot thus achieves this amazing feeling that 1789 is not very long ago at all. That the styles then were just styles, not so different from the crazy shit that we might wear in 2012. You feel like you are there, behind the scenes, during those last four days when the Revolution is on, when people in Court are deciding whether to flee or remain and risk being beheaded. When it begins to dawn on people that it might be better not to be a member of the aristocracy, that people are actually just people.
The unbelievable disconnect as Marie Antoinette is facing the truth about the future, yet still, protected by her anxious servants, some of whom are beginning to assert their autonomy, she is ordering them to pack the household for her anticipated journey--as if to accommodate the annoying revolution she were just going to change venues and set up in another palace. She is worried about her jewelery and whether to bring chocolate makers and a spinning wheel to help mitigate her imagined boredom once they arrive in Metz. (Of course, she never makes it there.) The absurdity of her concerns while people outside the gates are starving, rioting, looting...and making lists for the guillotine with her name at the top.
The effect of Jacquot's film for me was the remembrance that revolutions do happen, and that shit can actually change. That the people at the very top living in their glass houses think they are immune to the will of the people, but they are not. When things get bad enough, even a fortress such as Versailles and centuries of class systems and social orders, and all treasures from the from the rape and pillage of continents: nothing can protect you.
Farewell, My Queen made me think that a revolution is coming in this country. About the shocking inequality and poverty in America. Have you heard the recent reports about the effects of the 1996 "welfare reform act"? People at the bottom are truly suffering and pushed to do outrageous things to feed their children. Right here. Right in our own cities. I see it outside my window right now.
It's not surprising that people at the bottom are sucked into the prison industrial complex. It's a hungry, out of control machine that is enslaving over two million people in America today, over 700 per 100,000 adult residents, mostly African American men. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world and in the history of human kind. And yet presidential candidate Romney, who lives at the very top of the pyramid and who pays a lower tax rate than I do, wants to decrease the safety-net in this country for those at the very bottom. He and people like him at the top need a slave class to feed their investments that keep them where they are. Poverty feeds that machine.
My kids have been telling me that revolution is nigh. I've thought in the past, Yeah, right. But Farewell, My Queen reminded me that the revolution in France was inspired by the American revolution. When people get hungry enough, shit goes down.
May 1 General Strike.
Jacquot said something really interesting during the Q&A which explained the realism that was so palpable in that most surreal setting of Versailles. He insists that his film crew be as loyal to the period as possible, making the set and costumes correct down to smallest detail, but he instructs the actors simply to act, to be present in their characters and the drama at hand. Not to worry about the period.
Jacquot thus achieves this amazing feeling that 1789 is not very long ago at all. That the styles then were just styles, not so different from the crazy shit that we might wear in 2012. You feel like you are there, behind the scenes, during those last four days when the Revolution is on, when people in Court are deciding whether to flee or remain and risk being beheaded. When it begins to dawn on people that it might be better not to be a member of the aristocracy, that people are actually just people.
The unbelievable disconnect as Marie Antoinette is facing the truth about the future, yet still, protected by her anxious servants, some of whom are beginning to assert their autonomy, she is ordering them to pack the household for her anticipated journey--as if to accommodate the annoying revolution she were just going to change venues and set up in another palace. She is worried about her jewelery and whether to bring chocolate makers and a spinning wheel to help mitigate her imagined boredom once they arrive in Metz. (Of course, she never makes it there.) The absurdity of her concerns while people outside the gates are starving, rioting, looting...and making lists for the guillotine with her name at the top.
The effect of Jacquot's film for me was the remembrance that revolutions do happen, and that shit can actually change. That the people at the very top living in their glass houses think they are immune to the will of the people, but they are not. When things get bad enough, even a fortress such as Versailles and centuries of class systems and social orders, and all treasures from the from the rape and pillage of continents: nothing can protect you.
Farewell, My Queen made me think that a revolution is coming in this country. About the shocking inequality and poverty in America. Have you heard the recent reports about the effects of the 1996 "welfare reform act"? People at the bottom are truly suffering and pushed to do outrageous things to feed their children. Right here. Right in our own cities. I see it outside my window right now.
It's not surprising that people at the bottom are sucked into the prison industrial complex. It's a hungry, out of control machine that is enslaving over two million people in America today, over 700 per 100,000 adult residents, mostly African American men. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world and in the history of human kind. And yet presidential candidate Romney, who lives at the very top of the pyramid and who pays a lower tax rate than I do, wants to decrease the safety-net in this country for those at the very bottom. He and people like him at the top need a slave class to feed their investments that keep them where they are. Poverty feeds that machine.
My kids have been telling me that revolution is nigh. I've thought in the past, Yeah, right. But Farewell, My Queen reminded me that the revolution in France was inspired by the American revolution. When people get hungry enough, shit goes down.
May 1 General Strike.
I sense a true revolution nears. It might be good to elect Romney so that blame & catastrophe may fall where it originates.
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