Marie Antoinette

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• kinda
• that's the thing
• left out
• denying

• open-ended
• stunning
• shot
• montage

• depicts
• cute

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Last year, movie-goers caught an interesting glimpse of history. The film Marie Antoinette won the Academy Award for Costume Design. In the movie, Kirsten Dunst plays the Queen of France who was executed in 1793 during the French Revolution.

The film was directed by Sofia Coppola. She also directed Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanssen. Although the two films are very different, her directing style is evident in each film.

Listen to Mason and Marni chat about Marie Antoinette.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Marni

Mason

Marni:  I saw Marie Antoinette.

Mason:  Me too.

Marni:  What did you think?

Mason:  Um, I don’t know what I thought.

Marni:  I kinda left feeling the same way. Visually it was stunning.

Mason:  Absolutely.

Marni:  Beautifully shot. The costumes were incredible.

Mason:  Mm hm.

Marni:  But, I don’t know. That whole montage with the food and the, the shoes… I thought it was really excessive.

Mason:  It was a really bizarre… the sense of time in the film, you know, was really weird. Like, they would just spend a long time on this one moment.

Marni:  Right.

Mason:  And then they’d go through, like, five years in, like, 20 seconds.

Marni:  Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So much time spent on just her rolling around in the bed…

Mason:  Yeah.

Marni:  ... and her looking cute.

Mason:  Well, and I think all that was designed to humanize this character that’s just in an era that we look at now and be, like, how can that have been real? How could people have worn those clothes or…

Marni:  Right.

Mason:  ... obeyed the societal rules?

Marni:  Exactly.

Mason:  Um…

Marni:  What did you think about the ending?

Mason:  I don’t know. That’s, that’s the thing.

Marni:  I mean, they left out the best part, I think, about the whole story.

Mason:  By denying people that, I think she just left it more open-ended, kind of a celebration of the life rather that…

Marni:  But do you think that that falsely depicts history? I mean, do you think that that’s just giving this whole misinterpretation?

Mason:  Storytelling is always about knowing where to find a good ending.

Marni:  It’s true.

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