"The Favourite” irked me. This historical film portrays Queen Anne’s intimate relationship with two women with plenty of graphic content but there’s a problem… it is a very slim chance that this is actually true. I understand taking a historical liberty here and there for dramatic effect, but it is an issue to center your entire plot around a likely historical inaccuracy and pretend that it is fact. At its core, this is a story about two influential women taking advantage of their friendship with the queen in order to control Britain. It’s a fascinating tale of female empowerment but it gets completely muddied by Deborah Davis’ concoction of a love triangle. She conveniently left out any mention of Queen Anne’s close relationship with her husband, not even showing him as a character at any point in the film. I’m actually pretty surprised that a woman wrote this screenplay. The presentation of the story is disrespectful to women from start to finish and the entire film was predicated on shock-value dialogue. Davis was passing out crude language like it’s candy. Despite the shortcomings of the script, Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone all put on masterful performances. Each one brings depth and emotion to their character and it’s no surprise that they all received Oscar nominations. It was also deserving of Oscar nominations for Production Design and Costume Design, but its nominations for Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Editing should have been split amongst the many superior films. Overall, Yorgos Lanthimos’ direction didn’t impress me. I liked the Tarantino-esque chapter stylization but it didn’t add much to the storytelling. The best part of the movie was probably the score, which was a clever series of Baroque classics to transport us to the 1700’s. In my opinion, the content of “The Favourite” makes it unwatchable. I hope that it is somehow shut out at the Oscars so that it doesn’t receive any validation for its crude content. I can’t think of a circumstance when I would ever want to watch this celebration of shock, even with its impressive acting and interesting “The grass is always greener on the other side” message.
[Pictured: Acting, costuming and set designs were great, but it was like putting lipstick on a pig when you consider the horrible screenplay and frustrating historical inaccuracy]
No comments:
Post a Comment