Summary:
The frail Queen Anne takes advice from her confidant and secret lover Lady Sarah, whom effectively runs the kingdom, until an outsider named Abigail challenges the relationship of the Queen and Lady Sarah, testing it’s strength for her own benefit.
My Thoughts:
“The Favourite” and Damien Chazelle’s “First Man” were the two films I anticipated the most during the year 2018, and, as we dive into Oscar season, thus far, “First Man” and “The Favourite” have been my favorite films. First Man I was more interested in because of the subject matter (and of course Chazelle’s directing), but “The Favourite” I looked forward to because of the last few films we’ve seen from Lanthimos.
Lanthimos’s films are unique in that they’re often uncomfortable, but also darkly humorous, but also, the four leads: Colman (“The Lobster”), Weisz (“Disobedience”), Stone (“Battle of the Sexes”), and Nicolas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) are all actors I respect. As far as tone, this movie was no different from Lanthimos’s other films: the script and story were viciously written and executed, the performances were utterly captivating, and the world itself was exquisitely imagined. The characters we get to know are indeed based on real people, though, I admit my knowledge of the history of this time period is vague. Do not look to me on questions of its accuracy; I’ve read a touch from wiki just now to brush up a bit, but I couldn’t give you history lesson. What I can tell you is that this film is remarkably entertaining and venomously devious. It’s like reading Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, only with a pinch of deadly nightshade sprinkled in.
“Sometimes it’s fun to be queen.”
Queen Anne (Colman) is a sick and frail ruler who often relies on her friend and confidant, Lady Sarah (Weisz) to take care of her political responsibilities. Sarah and Anne have a fast friendship, but Sarah is the only one who will tell the Queen when she’s in the wrong; the rest of the Queen’s servants seem to only bend beneath her will. One day, Sarah’s distant cousin Abigail (Stone) arrives at the palace seeking a job, which, Sarah arranges for her. Abigail uses this opening to her advantage, and slowly tries to win favor with the queen. As Sarah tries to use her influence over the queen to steer the country in the direction she wants, an opposing party member named Harley (Hoult) tries to convince Abigail to influence the queen in his parties’ direction.
So really what I like most about this film is that it feels as intricate as an Elizabethan novel, only, as I’ve said above, it has a bit more bite. The characters in this film are absolutely vicious (save the Queen), and they go to any extreme to get exactly what they want, no matter what it takes. In the process, we get to deconstruct each of the characters based on what they want, and we really get a look inside their heads.
Sarah, Weisz’s character, really does seem to care about Britain as a whole and winning the war against France, but she could care less about the people she’s representing; taxation, to her, seems to be nothing more than a means to an end. Her relationship with the queen becomes more strained the more duties she takes on.
The Queen herself is sickly and bordering on mentally unsound. We learn quickly that she’s lost seventeen children to miscarriages or stillbirths (that part was true) and that has clearly had an affect on her. She cares about the pleasures of life more than anything else; her duty is nothing more than a responsibility she tries to skirt around or push off onto someone else. She spends her days lounging in bed, nursing the gout in her leg, playing with her rabbits, having sex with Sarah, or binge-eating sweets before vomiting them into a vase held by a servant. Her life is lived in a state of perpetual-haze; she seems never fully conscious unless she’s screaming at someone for something. She is, at heart, a spoiled child who’s being kept in the dark about the matters that she should be deciding by her inferiors.
Abigail, Emma Stone’s character, is almost definitely the most devious of the bunch; she’s willing to go to any ends necessary to get her way. The thing that I found most compelling about Abigail is that she really showed no loyalties to anyone at all: she played to win and she played for keeps, but she played for her own team. It’s impossible to not be captivated by the diligence Abigail puts into trying to elevate herself above her position. She works all sides of the field, pitting people against one another in an attempt to climb the social ladder, and she does so with reckless abandon. Her goal is to climb towards the top, where she’s witnessed time and again the men and women of the British court enjoy days of politics or leisure and nights of hedonism. As she grows closer to the queen however, we begin to wonder how many freedoms she’s giving up in order to win the queen’s favor.
The characters and writing were far and away the best parts of this film. The writing was sharp and funny and gave great insights into characters while constantly highlighting little circumstantial ironies. It’s one of the better-written period pieces I’ve seen. I have a buddy who said he usually hates period pieces because he finds them slow and boring, but this one was different, he said. I agree. While the writing does follow the dialect one might expect, the way that the characters speak to each other is almost always snappy and entertaining.
The cinematography was another thing that really surprised me. There were a lot of shots that looked like they used a fisheye lens. Other shots that were wide and the landscape seemed extremely defined, almost like an HDR effect on a photo. There were lots of shots that used a sudden pivot in the middle of scene, and as a result we see an entire room, many of which are richly ornamented. A lot of the scenes (if not all) looked like they used primarily natural light; lots of night scenes were lit with flames or candles and that was about it. The contrast of light and darkness was a huge symbol for Queen Anne’s knowledge of her own kingdom’s affairs. Sarah constantly wheels Anne around in a wheel chair through dark hallways (keeping Anne in the dark about the affairs), and there are many other times when Anne’s mental state seems a touch more frayed than usual, and she wanders the darkened halls as if in a fever dream. The production design is something I should at least mention. Costumes were amazing; set designs and locations were utterly gorgeous. This is one of the better looking period films I’ve seen- right up there with “Barry Lyndon” and “Tess”.
Verdict:
This is a fantastic movie. It might be my favourite of the year, but I’d have to watch it once more to be sure. It’s certainly one of the most meticulously crafted films of the year, and undeniably one of the most entertaining. I would not at all be surprised if this film ends up with multiple Oscars, in fact, I’m hoping for it. Colman, Stone, Weisz, heck, even Hoult did good enough to garner a nomination. The script deserves to win for best original screenplay; Lanthimos at least deserves a nomination for directing. Cinematography, production design, costume design, maybe editing… this film impressed me enough that I’m expecting it to take home some gold. The Oscars are a few months away, so we’ll have to see.
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