Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette: The First Feature-Length Music Video?

I first began to develop an active interest in seeing Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette after seeing the teaser trailer featuring the song "Age of Consent" by New Order. Figuring that any movie that featured one of my favorite songs by my favorite band would be worthwhile, I also knew that it was probably not going to be the kind of movie that actually gets me out of the house and to the theater. So, I decided to wait until Marie Antoinette arrived on DVD.

Even though I already knew it was coming, actually hearing the dialectical rhythms of my second favorite song of all time-"Natural's Not in It" by Gang of Four-served to increase my enthusiasm and expectation. I haven't seen Lost in Translation so my familiarity with Sofia Coppola's work in film is limited to her comically inept performance in The Godfather, Part III. Clearly a woman of some fine taste in music, I still held out hope that her lack of talent as an actress would be lost in the translation to her roles as writer and director. After all, if she is intelligent enough to appreciate the lyrical complexities of Gang of Four, then maybe her role in film would blossom as a creator the way it wilted as an interpreter.

Choosing "Natural's Not in It" to play over the opening credits of a story about Marie Antoinette is not an entirely bad idea. It's not an entirely good one, either. The song is about how capitalist economics survives by creating and reproducing a leisure class that pumps up the economy by consistently looking for new ways in which to be entertained. The ultimate goal is that by keeping the masses entertained, they will be too distracted to notice or care the way in which the prevailing power base is ignoring or exploiting their real needs. You can see how this idea could be effectively utilized in critiquing the story of the French queen.