NYFF Review: Making Marie Antoinette Is a Celebration of Creative Collaboration

Wrapped inside the visual splendor, luxurious elegance, and ornate decoration of Sofia Coppola’s resplendent and anachronistic Marie Antoinette is the story of a young woman leaving her family behind to help lead another country—an unknown journey and simultaneous document of wealth, excess, and its depressive isolation. Yet despite Coppola tapping into her short filmography’s recurring themes, at least on set, she never contended with the same separation and loneliness of her ill-fated heroine. That’s largely because her mother, Eleanor Coppola, was always by her side—lurking and observing and recording 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage with her digital camera inside the halls of Versailles. 

Eleanor shelved the footage for 14 years, then dusted it off with Sofia during the pandemic, hoping to turn her personal material into an archival documentary. Now, two years after Eleanor’s passing (and 20 since the release of Marie Antoinette), Sofia has completed her mother’s vision, with editor Aaron Matthews compiling and editing Eleanor’s digital library—captured entirely throughout the movie’s 57-day shoot—and bringing it to vivid life. More ephemeral and narratively considered than an electronic press kit and infused with a mother’s instinctual, appreciative, encouraging eye, Making Marie Antoinette functions as both an engrossing time capsule of a young filmmaker finding her voice and a privileged peek behind the curtain of an initially misunderstood classic that now has a Criterion 4K.

Perhaps fittingly, Eleanor’s decision to hover in the margins of Marie Antoinette was not her natural setting. It had been 15 years since Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the acclaimed 1991 documentary she co-directed about the making of her husband’s Apocalypse Now, but this time she approached the camera with a striking degree of self-consciousness. Woven alongside highlights of her daughter’s filmmaking prowess are Eleanor’s diary entries, narrated by Diane Lane, in which she reflects on her place as a creative and questions whether she even deserves to be holding the camera. “I’m basically a shy person and I hate to intrude,” she says. “It’s counter to my personality to shoot a documentary. And yet, over and over again, I do it.”

That hesitation, and Eleanor’s awareness of her own interference, unexpectedly gives her more intimate access. She quietly courts the affections of Kirsten Dunst prepping for a scene, listens in on side conversations between producers managing logistical concerns, and finds herself close enough to capture the small, unguarded moments—like Jason Schwartzman fooling around with a harpsichord—that a more assertive, prescriptive documentarian might have missed. Much like seeing the source material behind a frequently circulated meme, it’s both illuminating and jarring seeing certain iconic behind-the-scenes stills (namely, Dunst and Schwartzman looking intently at a MacBook) recontextualized through Eleanor’s lens, invigorating them with smalltalk, laughter, and background music.

Like the best making-of movies, Making Marie Antoinette takes special aim to highlight the craftsmanship at work. There’s plenty to go around, starting with costume designer Milena Canonero, who designed 72 unique gowns for Dunst. Not to mention the herculean task of adorning every other actor and extra with their own period-specific clothing, makeup, and wigs that are cleaned and powdered every day. At one point an assistant notes that the production loses a whole day each week because of that prep time, and it becomes clear that Sofia isn’t just directing a costume drama, but orchestrating an entire ensemble of department heads and go-betweens whose execution and audibles must align in precise fashion for this operation be successful. It’s a burdensome load, but in chronicling the handmade labor, inflexible budget, and ruthless schedule needed inside a palace that never grants access to cinematic endeavors, Eleanor reminds us how much moviemaking relies on mystical qualities: cooperation and collaboration. 

Still, as much as it feels like a miracle that those disparate parts come together and keep production on pace, Eleanor is also cognizant of the tenuous moments that require Sofia to raise her voice and maintain vision amidst the chaos. “It feels like I was left out of that discussion,” she tells someone who explains why extras aren’t ready for a scene. That might initially seem like a timid, albeit passive-aggressive reaction, but it’s an educational reminder of the male-dominated space Sofia constantly occupies—an ironic juxtaposition considering most of the movie is spent beside women eating fruit and chocolates in candy-coated dresses and skyscraping hairdos. Later into shooting, as though eager to show her daughter’s own growth on set, Eleanor deftly eavesdrops on another mild confrontation between Sofia and her cinematographer. This time, the director takes a firmer stance regarding the camera’s point of view sticking with her protagonist. “It’s not the guy’s story,” she says. 

If those interactions capture some tension Sofia might be feeling on set, there are plenty more that reflect the beauty and levity surrounding the production every day. In many ways, Marie Antoinette was a family affair—starting with Sofia’s brother Roman, who parachutes in to film second-unit scenes and offer Sofia another set of eyes. There’s even a few days with her father, Francis, who effectively grants permission to keep fighting for her vision amidst the crowd of opinions. “Throw a Marie Antoinette party and invite everyone to it,” he advises. “Do it the way you want to.” But those bursts of help pale in comparison to Eleanor’s own omnipresence with Sofia. Near the beginning of production she observes Sofia’s worsening cold and eventually calls a doctor to diagnose her bronchitis. Later, in a scene between Marie and her mother, Eleanor deftly pans her lens to the left to capture Sofia looking through the camera, aware of the relationship parallels at play. 

Careful to consider Eleanor’s feelings and reflections without ever sacrificing the pace and chronological flow of the production it’s capturing, Making Marie Antoinette saves its most insightful charms for its end. The best documentaries about the creative process inspire and breed the desire to create. It’s clear that the filmmaking process alone has reinvigorated Eleanor’s artistic inner life (even while it’s ironically made Sofia reconsider ever making such an expensive movie again). “Shouldn’t I be engaged in my own creative process, not just observing the work of my talented family?” she asks. She would answer that internal question ten years later, becoming the oldest woman to direct her feature debut with 2016’s Paris Can Wait. It’s the kind of full-circle moment that makes this documentary feel like finding a long-lost puzzle piece and snapping it into its colorful, connective place. 

Making Marie Antoinette screened at the 64th New York Film Festival and will arrive in theaters on October 23 and on MUBI on November 6.