The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, January 17, 2018 — 5A

“Marie Antoinette” is Sofia 
Coppola’s 
masterpiece. 
“The 
Virgin Suicides” is the cult classic 
of the “Donnie Darko” crowd, 
“Lost in Translation” gets all the 
critical attention, but it’s “Marie 
Antoinette” that best showcases 
the ineffability of her visual wit. It’s 
a lush, pastel coming-of-age story 
that sees one of the most infamous 
figures in Western history as a 
person — not wholly good or bad, 
but young and unprepared. It’s 
about glut and greed, but it’s also 
about the loneliness of teenage 
years. All that and the soundtrack 
slaps.
Coppola crafts — by pairing 
the dying days of the French 
monarchy with the restless sounds 
of post-punk and new wave — a 
tension between sound and image 
that perfectly mirrors the inner 
turmoil of adolescence. Marie 
Antoinette the person stands 
in the face of everything these 
music movements are. “Marie 
Antoinette” the movie puts them 
in tandem, pairing the material 
excess of Versailles with the sonic 
exactitude of The Strokes and New 
Order.
We can draw a distinction 
between the character and her 
historical 
counterpart 
because 
Coppola isn’t making a factual 
biopic, she’s making an emotional 
one. 
In 
“Marie 
Antoinette,” 
she builds a Versailles that is 
at once suffocatingly full and 
excruciatingly lonely, and then 
sits in it. For two hours, she tracks 
her protagonist (a tour de force 
performance from Kirsten Dunst) 
as she roams the grounds, pushing 
the boundaries of what the Queen 
of France can do and be.
This unlikely union is most 
in sync at the heart of the film in 
which Marie suggests she and 
her entourage sneak away from 
Versailles to attend a masked ball 
in Paris. As she enters the ball — 
looking decadently goth in an all-
black ensemble — strings pluck 

softly. You think, “Wait I know 
this … is this …?” And it is. A string 
intro to “Hong Kong Garden” by 
Siouxsie and the Banshees that 
explodes into its original form as 
Marie enters the swirling mass of 
dancers. For a second, as bodies 
whirl around each other, it looks 
like a pit.
The restless joy of the night 
mirrors the song Coppola chooses 
to score it. “Hong Kong Garden” 
has been called the most important 
early post-punk hit. The song was 
born out Siouxsie Sioux and John 

McKay’s love of a restaurant — the 
Hong Kong Garden — and hatred 
for the “skinheads” who populated 
it. Marie finds herself at the 
crossroads of the same emotional 
extremes in this scene. She loves 
being at the ball, but hates being 
there with her husband and the 
boring company he keeps.
This is, perhaps, why Marie 
emerges as sympathetic despite 
her wasteful and careless lifestyle. 
She is lonely and her yearning is 
palpable. She wants what everyone 
wants: to understand and be 
understood. Late in the film, she 
drifts through a quiet boring 
party. Tired of feigning interest, 
she excuses herself and bursts into 
the cold, endless halls of Versailles. 
The opening chords of “What Ever 
Happened?” burst with her.
The opening track on The 
Strokes’s sophomore (and best) 
album Room on Fire, the song 
begins with the declaration: “I 
want to be forgotten.” Which 

she does, at this moment. Marie 
longs — like all good teens — to be 
outside her life. For the Queen of 
France, that means to disappear 
from the public consciousness, to 
be freed by anonymity. The tension 
between wanting to be forgotten 
and admired, to be free but also 
seen are exemplified by the song.
This party is presented in 
contrast to Marie’s birthday, a few 
scenes earlier. This party —scored 
by New Order’s “Ceremony” — is 
characteristically youthful and 
bursting at the seams with energy 
and joy.
The soundtrack is the perfect 
representation 
of 
Marie’s 
subjectivity. Her emotional core 
is made manifest in the music 
Coppola uses to score her. To 
pick songs that can be loosely 
tied by this nondescript label 
of post-punk is genius. Part of 
what made this thing I’m calling 
post-punk 
different 
from 
the 
punk that preceded it is a self-
aware recognition of the joy that 
can come out of anger. It’s the 
thrill of being young and mad 
and confused. The frustration of 
pushing against the boundaries of 
a world that can feel terribly small, 
and the rush of excitement that 
comes from pushing.
“Marie Antoinette” is Coppola’s 
masterpiece because she manages 
to operate in two eras at once, a feat 
that is more complex than pairing 
incongruent music and images. 
Coppola imagines Marie as a 
teenage girl in 2006 with an early 
generation iPod. She feels trapped 
by the suburban life her parents 
chose for her. She hates them, but 
she gravitates towards the music 
they grew up on (New Order, The 
Cure) and artists who take after 
them (The Strokes). She’s a roiling, 
volatile, confused teenage girl who 
can’t understand why she was born 
into the body she’s in. Teenage 
emotions, Coppola discovers, exist 
even within the hedge mazes and 
Baroque ballrooms of Versailles.

‘Marie Antoinette’ has 
the perfect soundtrack

DAILY FILM COLUMN

MADELEINE 
GAUDIN

‘Search Party’ & ‘The End’ convey despair via music

I spent a good half of this past 
weekend 
binge-watching 
the 
latest season of TBS’s “Search 
Party” 
and 
Netflix’s 
newest 
series “The End of the F***ing 
World.” The former is a witty 
murder 
mystery 
about 
four 
Manhattan 20-somethings, led 
by the anxiety-riddled Dory (Alia 
Shawkat, “Transparent”), who 
struggle to cope after having 
accidentally killed an innocent 
private investigator in search of 
their missing friend. The latter 
is a twisted British comedy that 
follows two teenagers — one a 
self-identified psychopath (Alex 
Lawther, “Black Mirror”) and 
the other a coarse misanthrope 
(Jessica Barden, “The Lobster”) 
— who decide to embark on a 
road trip to escape their boring 
hometown.
Having 
engrossed 
myself 
in both shows in such a short 
span of time, I couldn’t help but 
notice that “Search Party” and 
“The End of the F***ing World” 
share more than just a sick sense 
of humor and young, conflicted 
protagonists fed up with life’s 
mediocrity. Like any good TV 
soundtrack, the music curated 
on each show plays a hugely 
influential role in informing 

us about the inner turmoil of 
the 
characters, 
articulating 
the motivations behind their 
actions and the emotions buried 
underneath. More specifically, 
the particular type of music used 
in “Search Party” and “The End 
of the F***ing World” illuminates 
the humanity of the ostensibly 
irredeemable protagonists, each 
of whom are, coincidentally, 
guilty of committing murder.
For a program like “The End of 
the F***ing World,” you’d expect 
the soundtrack to be filled with 
venomous punk rock in the style 
of The White Stripes, The Clash 
or even Green Day to match the 
rebellious angst of its central 
couple, James (Lawther) and 
Alyssa 
(Barden). 
Surprisingly, 
however, the show takes a much 
more unconventional approach in 
regards to music genre. Over the 
course of the first season, each 
episode is peppered with a diverse 
musical palette — sweeping doo-
wop ballads, romantic acoustic 
rock and dreamy French pop. 
It’s a bit jarring, especially 
for a show where the two main 
characters are criminally insane, 
dangerous 
and 
frequently 
insufferable — think “Moonrise 
Kingdom” meets “Natural Born 
Killers.” But underneath the 
surface of the show’s cynicism, 
the 
light-hearted 
soundtrack 
benefits 
James 
and 
Alyssa’s 

cause for acting out. “The End of 
the F***ing World” establishes 
this right from the start: In the 
first episode, James explains 
his psychopathy as Bernadette 
Carroll’s 
“Laughing 
on 
the 
Outside” plays in the background, 
and later, Alyssa explains her 
misanthropy over the sorrowful 
tune “Where is the Love” by the 
Monzas. Both songs sonically and 
lyrically ache with such forlorn 
tenderness that it’s impossible not 
to feel sympathy for these two and 
how they grew to be so alienated 
from the world around them. 
The music offers a more tangible 
understanding of James and 
Alyssa’s shared suffering — absent 
parents, 
loneliness, 
childhood 
trauma — that would otherwise 
seem dull or trite if the music was 
edgier and more on-the-nose.
Other 
important 
scenes 
are made only more poignant, 
romantic and clever with the 
undercurrent 
of 
music 
cues. 
When James and Alyssa break and 
enter into a stranger’s mansion in 
episode three, they dance to Hank 
Williams’s “Settin’ the Woods on 
Fire,” having just blown up their 
car in the previous episode. Later 
on, James stabs the stranger, who 
attempts to strangle Alyssa after 
catching her in his bed, while 
singer Brenda Lee croons her 
1960 single “I’m Sorry.” The two 
frame the murder in the next 

SAM ROSENBERG
Senior Arts Editor

NETFLIX

episode to the tune of Timi Yuro’s 
cover of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.”
Perhaps these jingles are only 
meant to soften the blow of the 
show’s disturbing, grisly violence. 
I’d argue it serves a greater 
emotional purpose: The music 
not only literalizes the shock 
and despair James and Alyssa 
experience in these situations, but 
it also excavates the innocence 
concealed beneath the darkness 
of their actions. Their love for one 
another intensifies, even as they 
stray further away from sanity. 
This idea continues onto episode 
four, 
where 
James’s 
woeful 
monologue about the loudness of 
silence feels all the more potent 
with the sound of Ricky Nelson’s 
“Lonesome Town.” The scene 
marks the first time James and 
Alyssa are separated, and we can 
actually start to feel heartbreak 
for both characters as Nelson 
sings, “There’s a place where 
lovers go / To cry their troubles 
away / And they call it lonesome 
town 
/ 
Where 
the 
broken 
hearts stay.” Being a confused, 
frustrated teenager often does 
feel like the end of the world, but 
the soundtrack for this off-kilter 
coming-of-age story offers hope 
and guidance for lost souls like 
James and Alyssa. 
As for “Search Party,” the music 
choices are a bit more subtle, 
but still just as effective. Like 

“The End of the F***ing World,” 
one would guess that “Search 
Party” would incorporate a more 
indie rock-based soundtrack to 
reflect the stylings of its hipster-
millennial characters. Instead, 
the show opts for a more ambient 
electronica sound, using songs 
by obscure chillwave musicians 
Boga, Tender, Little Ashes and 
Roosevelt. Sometimes, the music 
is used as a tool for comedic 
irony — Beat Club’s “Something 
Better” provokes an impromptu 
dance party in the season two 
opener, as Dory and her friends 
mask the guilt and shame of 
killing the private investigator 
Keith Powell (Ron Livingston, 
“Loudermilk”) just hours before. 
Other 
times, 
“Search 
Party” 
relies on the glum, melancholy 
synths of its soundtrack to evoke 
the fear stirring within the four 
friends as they suppress the truth. 
In the last shot of episode two, 
Dory and her friends contemplate 
the repercussions of lying about 
murdering Keith, sitting solemnly 
in the car as Fear of Men’s “Sane” 
lingers in the background. The 
title of the song pretty much says 
it all.
These music choices affect 
Dory in particular, who, since 
season one, has experienced a 
quarter-life crisis of listlessness 
and anhedonia, heightened even 
more by the trauma of killing 

Keith and subsequently burying 
him with her friends to cover 
up their tracks. The dirty regret 
bubbling inside Dory culminates 
into an all-time low in the seventh 
episode 
when 
she 
envisions 
jumping off a rooftop to Tender’s 
“Belong” — a song that mirrors 
her terror of being found out, 
especially with lyrics like, “No 
I don’t belong, to anyone / But I 
wish I did / Then maybe I won’t 
feel the shame.”
Strangely enough, the music 
in “Search Party” and “The 
End 
of 
the 
F***ing 
World” 
ruminates on very similar ideas 
about how scared people in this 
generation are to confront their 
own existence. Dory, James and 
Alyssa repress not only the truth 
about the mistakes they made, 
but also who they are as people. 
None of them feel like they can 
live up to societal expectations, 
and instead of reckoning with 
the issue upfront, they do their 
best to bottle everything up as 
much as possible, often leading to 
disastrous consequences. But the 
soundtracks in both shows do their 
best to validate the remorse these 
characters face. Music itself can 
often be a cushion for characters 
like these, just as it can be a source 
of solace for people who feel just 
as lost, angry, misunderstood 
and burdened with a need to do 
everything right.

TBS

TV NOTEBOOK

‘Post’ is a timely thrill

Steven Spielberg (“Bridge of 
Lies”) is the de facto storyteller 
for inspirational American tales, 
ranging from the life of Abraham 
Lincoln to the European invasion 
of World War II. “The Post,” his 
recent recount of the publishing 
of The Pentagon Papers, is no 
different. With a star-studded 
cast, larger-than-life characters 
and the typical Spielberg-esque 
flair, “The Post” recaptures the 
bravery necessary to confront a 
corrupt government and expose its 
shameful secrets.
Richard 
Nixon’s 
tenure 
as 
president is only increasingly 
relevant today as we trudge 
through the daily drudgery of a 
Donald Trump presidency loaded 
with bigotry, lies and distrust of 
the media. History repeats itself, 
and Spielberg’s efforts to retell past 
dilemmas to teach us about the 
present are not fruitless. Someone 
of such influence and talent — 
Spielberg, that is — is the perfect 
person to educate those born 
before the early ’70s about such 
paranoia and hatred toward a free 
press. 
Beyond the movie’s timeliness, it 
boasts a thrilling yet slow-burning 
story that, despite a rather dull 
beginning, displays the virtues 
of doing what is right rather than 

what is easy. After The New York 
Times publishes an article exposing 
government cover-ups and lies 
regarding the Vietnam War, The 
Washington Post rushes to match 
their competitor’s content. Ben 

Bradlee (Tom Hanks, “Bridge of 
Spies”), editor-in-chief for The 
Post, fights to publish government 
documents revealing a reluctance 
to withdraw from Vietnam despite 
clear signs of imminent failure. 
Alongside Bradlee is the paper’s 
new publisher Kay Graham (Meryl 
Streep, “Florence Foster Jenkins”) 
— the first woman to hold such a 
position — who refuses to appease 
her disobedient board filled with 
multiple men breathing down her 
neck. 
Liz Hannah and Josh Singer’s 
(“Spotlight”) screenplay is the 
ideal 
match 
for 
Spielberg’s 
grand directorial style. It avoids 
complexity in favor of a more 
straightforward 
storytelling 
approach. The script’s good versus 
evil trope is different from the 
more typical “America is good” 
and others are “bad” approach 
some of the director’s other films 

follow. Here, the government is the 
antagonist, while the reporters are 
the protagonists. Regardless, “The 
Post” is as pro-American as a movie 
could possibly be, highlighting the 
fundamental role the press plays in 
preserving democracy. 
“The Post” would not be as 
strong of a movie without standout 
performances from Streep and 
Sarah Paulson (“American Crime 
Story”), who, in limited screen 
time, takes over in some of the 
movie’s essential moments. Bob 
Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”) 
comes alive as Ben Bagdikian, a 
reporter who played an integral 
role in receiving and publishing 
The 
Pentagon 
Papers. 
As 
a 
movie that heavily relies on the 
performances rather than large-
scale CGI and special effects, all 
actors do their part in ensuring 
success. Even Hanks, who I don’t 
always find to be that talented, does 
his job with passion and ease. He 
portrays Bradlee as the cowboy of 
the beltway — the journalist with a 
growling voice eager to go against 
the establishment. 
For a movie that everyone 
already knows the ending to, “The 
Post” manages to fully engulf 
us into the world of early ’70s 
journalism. Despite a somewhat 
unnecessary final moment, we feel 
comfort in knowing that corrupt 
administrations filled with secrets 
will finally be brought down. To 
me, that’s reassuring for our future.

WILL STEWART
Daily Arts Writer

20th Century Fox

“The Post”

20th Century Fox

Michigan Theater, 
Quality 16, Rave

FILM REVIEW

