Thursday, June 20, 2013

Essay: The Films of Sofia Coppola


THE COPPOLA CODE: AN EXPLORATION OF SOFIA COPPOLA’S 
PASSIONS, THEMES, AND MOTIFS AS A DIRECTOR
by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Coppola

In all likelihood, you have heard that in the next few weeks, a film called “The Bling Ring” will be released across the United States.  It will be about a gang of teenagers who robbed Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, Lindsay Lohan, and Rachel Bilson, accruing a total of three million dollars in stolen merchandise.  Since it is based on a true story, it’s a foregone conclusion how it will end—with the kids being dragged off to jail.

Nevertheless, I feel certain that there will be surprises.  “The Bling Ring” will be the fifth film written and directed by the great filmmaker Sofia Coppola and as such it will be particularly fascinating to see how it will relate to her previous movies, which were “The Virgin Suicides,” “Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette,” and “Somewhere.”  Through those films, certain Coppola conventions have been established—favored themes, recurring images, and scenes reminiscent of each other.  I, for one, am interested to see how those motifs will fit into Ms. Coppola’s latest project.

But that will have to wait for another day.  For now, I thought it would be a good time to write up an exploration of this relentlessly, boldly observant director’s work.  For too long, Ms. Coppola has been known as a director who makes movies about hotels and won an Oscar for screenwriting.  Those things are true, but it is time to move beyond those observations and delve into the rich world that she has created in her already masterful career.   
Without a doubt, one of Ms. Coppola’s favorite themes is the search for freedom.  All her screenplays are filled with characters who are either physically or emotionally trapped by their circumstances, which often include personal limitations but also society itself.  As Charlotte, the heroine of Ms. Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” says, “I’m stuck.”  Those words could have been uttered by almost any Coppola character.

            In “The Virgin Suicides,” the sensation of being trapped is quite literal—at the end of the film, the titular girls are imprisoned permanently in their house by their tyrannical mother.  Similarly, in “Marie Antoinette” (which chronicles the infamous reign of the doomed Queen of France), Marie and her friends trapped by strict conventions of the French Royal court, regulations they can only defy by shopping, partying, and frolicking in the country.  It’s the only thing they can do to keep society from stifling them.

            By contrast, society is not the enemy in “Lost in Translation.”  The film is about two characters, the aforementioned Charlotte and Bob Harris, a washed-up movie star.  In the movie, both of them are staying in the Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo, where they form a powerful friendship.  While they never experience any literal imprisonment, they are, pun intended, lost.  Charlotte has no real passion or occupation—she can do nothing except wander through the city’s streets and subways.  Bob, meanwhile, is more active, since he’s an actor.  But he’s filming a whiskey commercial, something which he does not have much passion for (shocker).  It is experiences like these that leave both characters are trapped in a bored, apathetic state. 

            For Marie and the girls of “The Virgin Suicides,” a satisfactory escape from that trapped state never materializes.  While the girls have a chance to flee the house, they abruptly choose to kill themselves instead, an actions which horrifies and confuses everyone around them.  And while Marie gets out of the suffocating and pale palace of Versailles, it’s only because the palace is under attack.  The film ends with her departure but, well, you know what happens next.

            Yet Ms. Coppola is not a pessimistic filmmaker—far from it—and in “Lost in” and “Somewhere,” she revives the hope of freedom.  Bob and Charlotte never leave Tokyo during the film, but they adapt—by being together and going on adventures (they have one especially beautiful night on the town that involves a BB gun, an arcade, and karaoke), they find their freedom within the city.  At first, Tokyo seems like a trap—they don’t speak the language so they can’t really fit in.  Yet because it is packed with so many sights and sounds that are new to them, it becomes a kind of heavenly, sweeping Metropolis, a city that they embrace as their playground.

            A similar transformation takes place in “Somewhere.”  The film begins with an impressively monotonous shot—Z-grade action star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) driving in circles in his black sports car, never going anywhere.  It’s a metaphorical image, one that symbolizes his pointless existence.  Yet over the course of the film, his bond with his daughter gives him a reason to do more than lounge around hotels ogling strippers.  Being with her breaks him out of his routine and so the film ends with him driving not in circles, but straight down the highway, away from the city and towards the next phase of his life. 

            Not every Coppola character finds this kind of freedom.  But even though her films sometimes end on a tragic note, they all have soaring moments of escape.  Think of the flirtingly poetic trip to the prom in “Suicides” and the image of Kirsten Dunst running through gleaming green grasses in “Marie.”  They are transcendent images, the kind I always hope for not only movies, but in life.  And yet I don’t think those scenes are worthwhile only as metaphors for human experiences—watching them is wonderful in and of itself.  The rhythm of Sofia Coppola’s movies is one that evokes life at its most beautiful, and to feel that rhythm is to live, to breathe, to veer away from boredom and cliché. 

            To become unstuck.        

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