February 28th, 2007
‘Hong Kong Garden’: The only good thing about Marie Antoinette
Apart from the costumes (which won an Oscar on Sunday night for Milena Canonero), there is very little to recommend Sophia Coppola’s overblown, dull biopic Marie Antoinette. We had to suffer the non-acting talent that is Kirsten Dunst, but there was one ray of light in the film: an updated version of ‘Hong Kong Garden’ by Siouxsie and Banshees. The intro, just shy of a minute, is reworked by an orchestra and the band have put it up on their myspace page. The song, originally featured as a part of late 1970’s Peel Session and made the Top Ten in the UK, eventually turning up on the singles collection Once Upon A Time. Along with ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Christine’, it’s up there with the best singles the band recorded.
Links:
Hong Kong Garden live, 1981
The Marie Antoinette clip
February 28th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I haven’t seen Marie Antoinette, but the things people say about are similar to what I thought about Lost In Translation. All style and no substance is a cliche, but I can’t think of a better short description. (”Wow, hotels are boring. What? You don’t believe me? You’d better watch my INCREDIBLY DULL FILM!)
I think I saw a discussion of LIT’s merits/lack thereof on here before, but, to get to the point:
Does Marie Antoinette’s total rubbishness alter one’s view of Lost In Translation?
February 28th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Hi Brendan, some people blanketly dislike Coppola’s work. Not me, I really liked The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation and I don’t think either are guilty of style over substance. I liked the fact that not much happened, the quiet spaces, the unspoken story between Johannson’s and Murray’s characters. Marie Antoinette, like The Virgin Suicides was lovely to look at, but lacked any real narrative or direction. At leat TVS had this wonderfully eerie family story.
Marie Antoinette seemed to be such a fascinating subject for a film and instead Coppola focused on fluff and froth, rather than the real meat of her story, which was the main reason I was so disappointed.
I think it’s ok to judge a filmmaker’s work on a standalone basis, and I would never retrospectively alter my view of a film I liked because the director’s most recent offering was below par.
February 28th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
PS, Lost in Translation was discussed quite bit in this Bad Film Club post.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
yes — great tune! Unfortunately I wouldn’t say the rest of the soundtrack is up to the same standard though. Still: here’s the MP3 of that remix
February 28th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for your reply Sinead, much appreciated. That thread is indeed the one I read before.
I’d respond by saying: I’d like to think that we are capable of viewing pieces as standalones but I don’t think it’s possible.
It works both ways: later work can reveal things that weren’t obvious, themes can be seen in nascent form, we can see development, hints of talent etc.
But it can also reveal where the viewer has interpolated onto a film a level of meaning or substance that may not have actually been present.
With Coppola/LIT I think the big difference, and the reason it is so divisive, is that some people think she would have been capable of filling the spaces had she wanted to, but that she chose not to. (These people, needless to say, are the ones who like the film).
The “opposition” think that she couldn’t, and was in fact using the spaces to disguise a lack of storytelling/directoring talent. (I’ve written this a bit baldly, no offense is meant to anyone who liked LIT - one or two scenes weren’t bad.).
By way of an example; take an artist who paints in a childlike or basic way (Miro etc.). In order for the effect to work, we have to believe the artist could ‘do’ sophisticated but that he or she is choosing not to. The unsophisticated work is a comment in itself, not a lack of ability being disguised.
Ultimately, to accept that ’standalone’ criticism is truly possible we force art to be more static in its “meaning” (poor word) than it actually is.
Phew, long comment. Apologies. Anyway, that’s why I think Sofia Coppola is a fraud!
Regards,
Brendan
March 1st, 2007 at 12:55 am
I liked Lost In Translation but hated Marie Antoinette. Strangely I liked/hated them respectively for the same reasons - the pace.
That said, Hong Kong Garden is great