SOFIA COPPOLA

BLING MOMENTS CONTRASTED WITH SLOW MOVING BACKSTORY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

W

hat presents on screen is the final cut of a long production often on location away from home. But home still exists and a lot of what goes on away from the camera is not as pretty and glamorous and often sometimes quite boring compared to the final theatrical release.

For Sofia Coppola, a childhood wrapped around blockbuster movies made by one of the great filmmakers of the independent production studio era no doubt shaped her story telling a bit.

Film fantasy and the home life merged for the young daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola when the PBR boat from Apocalypse Now was brought from the Philippines to the river running through the newly acquired family estate in Napa Valley.

Then the French plantation movie set arrived.

Sofia had to pack her bags and go on location when the entire Italian-American family escaped the box office announcements for the opening weekend of Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by finding isolation in Guatemala.

But director Sofia Coppola soon found a niche telling stories about the low octane world behind the scenes.

The day is long, filled with hard work, and often slow grinding moments to will away the hours to the point of exasperation.

But the small details provide a lot of explanation for the bigger story going on somewhere else when only the characters know for how long everything will go on.

In The Virgin Suicides (1998) Coppola shows how the death of young teenage girls is almost a private matter, but everyone else has a lot to say and do about those people. Kirsten Dunst stars as the director explores the world deconstructed around a cluster of teen suicides.

Coppola soon found her point of view behind the camera in drawing a picture on film about the trauma created by a restless childhood culture inevitably merging with an untried adult culture. Behind the camera, the young woman’s personal culture away from the location shoot and studio sets finally definitively merged with her own form of movie art production culture.

In Lost in Translation (2003) Coppola brings two celebrity parties together in Japan. 

Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson star in this story about the reality behind celebrity film shoots.

Coppola earned accolades for her screen writer credits by designing a character for Murray before meeting him and persuading him to sign on to the film project at an impromptu restaurant meeting.

Murray was given a second career as an actor performing in front of the Coppola movie camera after establishing himself as a talented wily actor with a deadpan sense of humor easily accepted by adoring fans.

Murray delivered a carefree easy fun that propelled several blockbusters, including Ghostbusters (1984) as Dr. Peter Venkman, and then reprising the role in Ghostbusters II (1989).

In Tootsie (1982) Murray provided a supporting role with Jeff showing unconditional love despite all the impromptu metaphysical transformations occurring between the Michael, Dorothy, Julie and Sandy characters.

In Stripes (1981), Caddyshack (1980) and Meatballs (1979) Murray created a higher octane of fun after having a recuring role on Saturday Night Live (1977-1980) as one of the first original cast members after joining the original cast of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris who had been cast to start the show in 1975.

Coppola picked up the Best Writing Oscar for the film, as well as Best Picture and Best Director nominations, with Murray being nominated for Best Leading Actor.

In Marie Antoinette (2006) Dunst gets cast again by Coppola, this time playing the decadent French Queen on the eve of the Revolution. Antoinette does not quite understand all the nuances of the French court, but she eventually does find the glam of being queen too alluring to be resisted.

Coppola likes to cast Dunst and Murray in leading roles. The writer director covets the actors by writing roles for them and photographing their performances like one would for good friends invited to stay with the family on the estate during film production.

Dunst is able to transition into Coppola’s interpretation of very famous historical characters by showing Antoinette as so self-focused as to be oblivious to the machinations of real politic that will eventually bring down the French monarchy.

Coppola shot on location in Paris, initially at Millemont, just outside Paris and then at the Versailles Castle.

The film contrasts a young woman from the Austrian culture with the young woman leaving all that behind to learn the unfamiliar culture of the French court of Louis XVI. Coppola then shows the new Queen becoming immersed in the opulence of that inside culture in sharp contrast to the unseen backstory of poverty among the French people.

Coppola’s interpretation of the monarchy is a bit like ‘bling’ ‘bling’ in the 18^th century just before the systemic use of the French guillotine.

The details of the macaroons, inspired by the Paris Pastry shop Laduree, distract the viewer from the well know historical story line. Then the costumes and make up department and the craftsmanship of the recreated Queen’s bedroom send everything in a twirl to modern music, until the music stops.

Marie Antoinette is a bit of a morality tale as Coppola shows the duality of humanity with the gruff and grotesque side by side the prudishly absurd formalities of the French court.

In The Bling Ring (2013) a set of high rolling young adults are shown to have taken up an existential crime of opportunity, breaking into the homes of the rich and famous living in the Hollywood Hills. Coppola takes the inside track on this true to life crime story. 

The narrative explores the under disclosed high rolling hipster culture clashing with the overexposed celebrity culture. Coppola shows how the two cultures are so different and separate that the distinction invites the reckless, unabashed thieving that goes on without a thought to the morality of it all.

The crime ring somehow justifies stealing the posh from the plush Beverley Hills mansions of the filthy rich.

In The Beguiled (2017) an act of kindness is followed by swift justice to restore the balance. In this remake of a classic story of redemption, Coppola shows how the wills of the flesh can turn a good deed into an immorality tale.

Dunst is cast in a supporting role to Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell.

Farrell plays a wounded Confederate soldier hiding in the woods near a school for girls during the American Civil War.

The house mother, Miss Martha played by Kidman, has developed a nurturing teaching environment for the girls inside the Union. But the appearance of a soldier from an opposing culture in need of assistance gradually erodes the stability of the household.

In On the Rocks (2020) Murray plays a doting father who has a bit of recklessness in him. Coppola follows the public life of father and daughter that exists outside the private worlds of people close to them. The private world is not entirely an unknown one riddled in secrets, as the parties maintain relationships throughout the day but the information that is public leads to a lot of misunderstanding.

Murray drives around in a vintage automobile deadpanning his daughter in some kind of intertextual reference to his roles in Caddyshack and Ghostbusters.

Dunst recently rekindled her fame within the popularity of The Power of the Dog (2021), directed by Jane Campion. Campion won the Best Director Oscar, with the film earning 11 nominations in all, including Best Supporting Actor for Dunst, in this film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons as ranchers and lifelong business partners.

Other notable films starring Dunst include Melancholia (2011) directed by Lars von Trier, and the Spider-Man Trilogy (2002-2007) with Dunst performing as Mary Jane Watson, starring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Dunst began her feature film career in earnest as a child star in Interview with the Vampire (1994) costarring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

Coppola of course began as the daughter of the director and then became a member of the cast before taking a distinct place behind the camera with a defining view of the world.

The story telling involves a lot of interpretation with an unseen backstory creating two competing solitudes.

This unknown story lurking backstage creates a bigger mystery about who the characters end up as at the end of the day and whether their little conundrums the director has found them in will all work out afterall. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

Coppola shoots with two cameras while telling a story about the inside world looking out at the much larger outside world.

An event is often occurring. And Coppola provides an interpretation of that event by telling the unseen story about the characters behind the scenes as if being left at home while the world famous father filmed on location and globetrotted another movie media tour had forever changed her world view.

The event is big but perhaps also inconsequential to surviving the unpretentious private moments throughout the day that go on anyway long after the film has been released to the public.

Coppola uses two cameras to tell the story about the incompatibility of the two solitudes.

Notes on a Life, by Eleanor Coppola, New York, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2008.