Shakespeare once wrote in "A Midsummer Night's Dream": " Woman, gorgeous gold diamonds, shining pearls, have won you the vain imagination of a queen, but you don't know that there are only snobbish poisons and arrogant people around you. Fragrant, sultry and murderous ."
This Shakespeare quote about women couldn't be more appropriate in The Favourite. "The Favourite" tells the story of a palace fight between three women. Olivia Colman plays Queen Anne of the 18th century British dynasty, and Rachel Weisz plays the queen's friend and secret lover-- The Duchess of Marlborough, and Sister Stone (Emma Stone) plays Al Gaby, a maid who strives to be among the upper class.
The three actors play each other in the film, giving the audience a very good performance, and the film also won the American Critics' Choice Film Award for Best Ensemble.
"The Favourite" was previously shortlisted in the main competition unit of the Venice Film Festival last year. Director Yorgos Lanthimos took home the Silver Lion trophy for this, and Olivia Colman was also awarded the title for this film.
In 2019, the popularity of the film has not diminished at all. It is frequently found in the awards season and is regarded as an Oscar seed. It first won four nominations at the Golden Globe Awards, and then led the British "Oscar" with 12 nominations. Known as the Academy of Film Awards, it is currently tied with "Green Book" as the favorite for the best picture at the Oscars.
The Greek director Lanthimos was once known for his genius. His previous "Dog Tooth", "The Lobster" and "Death of the Sacred Deer" won him a certain reputation in the world movie circle, and he established his own image style - bizarre, absurd and cruel, bizarre and extreme, obscure and surprising, Full of religious weirdness.
But this time, "The Favourite" is not very "Lanthi Moss". It changed the director's serious torture of the theme exploration and became more human and entertaining. Lanthi Moss used a black humorous comedy method to show the three The love and hatred of a woman reflects the absurdity of the English court of Great Britain in the 18th century.
1
Illuminate reality with absurdity
Its absurdity is precisely the true portrayal of the corrupt court at that time. In order to commemorate the deceased 17 sons, the queen even kept 17 rabbits in captivity in the palace; in order to vent her desires, the queen kept eating cakes while vomiting, and a group of attendants were "onlookers".
Court ministers threw tomatoes at naked men for fun, elites were keen on duck races, and the male nobles of that period had a tradition of wearing wigs and applying rouge and powder.
What Lanthimos presents to us is not the elegant and noble court splendor and humanistic etiquette. He intends to depict grotesque scenes to show the audience the unknown side of that period, full of despicableness, desolation, viciousness and cruelty.
It is not like Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", which tells the story of the intriguing court in a very calm and objective way, but takes a unique approach and presents this palace fight from an unconventional perspective.
As you can see from the large number of wide-angle and fisheye lenses in the film, what the director presents is the incredible and dark humor of the story.
Queen Anne was the last king of the British Stuart dynasty. During her accession, she suffered from gout, had limited mobility and often used a wheelchair to travel.
She is portrayed in the film as a "fat woman" with a perverse and suspicious personality, a weak body, and an inferiority complex in her bones, but her love affair with the Duchess of Marlborough is known in history.
The Duchess's husband was the British military strategist John Churchill, who was the commander-in-chief of England at the time of the war against France. The great British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, whom we are most familiar with later, are descendants of the Duke. At that time, the duke and his wife held military power outside the palace, and the other led the overall situation in the palace.
All of this is because of Queen Anne's extreme fondness for the Duchess, so much so that she has to question the Duchess for her decision-making power.
In the movie, Queen Anne even has a morbidly distorted attachment to the Duchess, and the Duchess is willing to perform sexual services for her, in order to seize the weakness of Queen Anne's inner emptiness and self-pity and manipulate her. That's why we were stunned to see the Duchess openly mocking the Queen for being "like a badger", and we also saw a very bizarre sex scene between the two.
Until the appearance of the down-and-out woman Al Gaby, she squeezed out the Duchess through a series of means, and finally became Queen Anne's latest "darling". In the battle for favor between the Duchess and Algaby, the director did not focus on their means of competing for favor. After all, the palace fight scenes we have seen in some domestic TV dramas are much more exciting than this one.
What the movie really shows is the lesbian love triangle between Queen Anne, the Duchess and Al Gaby , starting with Queen Anne's crush on the Duchess, and then El Gaby applying herbs to Queen Anne's injured leg by chance. , and then approached Queen Anne step by step, soothing her empty heart.
In the face of Algabe's gradual favor, how could the Duchess let it go? She used her remaining influence over the Queen to regain the Queen's favor. The embarrassed Algaby finally took the step of poisoning the Duchess. Then a little trick made the queen completely lose confidence in the duchess, which eventually led to the exile of the duchess.
2
Three women in one play
More important than the story is how the story is played out. It is precisely because of the excellent performances of these three actors that this film is more "dramatic". This "drama" refers not only to the dramatic drama, but also to the comedy that is dense with laughter.
Olivia Coleman has mediocre facial features and a very happy British face. She has often polished her acting skills on the small screen before, and won the 2017 Golden Globe Award for Best TV in 2017 with "Night Shift Manager" supporting actress.
She also played a small part of a hotel manager in Lanthimos' "The Lobster." This time, playing one of the three heroines in "The Favourite" - the famous Queen of England in history, can be said to be a recognition of her acting skills.
Facts have also proved that Coleman's interpretation of the Queen is easy to do. She is sometimes mad, sometimes distressed, sometimes naive, sometimes despicable, performing the hidden ugliness and loneliness of the Queen's heart, and is a strong contender for this year's Oscar winner.
If Coleman is responsible for the comedy of this film, then Rachel Weisz is responsible for the appearance of the film. As a British actress with great temperament, she has German and Hungarian blood and is a top student at Cambridge University. , the embodiment of beauty and wisdom, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress with "The Immortal Gardener".
Her performance in "The Favourite" is described in four words: calm. Her face gives a resolute and resolute impression. Compared with the Queen's hysteria, her performance of the Duchess is very decent and calm. A strong woman who does not buckle.
Compared with the previous two post-70s actresses, Sister Stone, born in 1988, seems to be the most tender. Although she has won the best actress Oscar for "La La Land", many viewers do not buy it, thinking that this is the most watery Oscar actress.
But in fact, this post-85s actress who made her debut on the "Chicken Movie" has fully proved herself in "The Favourite": she is not only a likable chick, but also can control the "unscrupulous" Bad Woman" image.
Therefore, her performance was even more surprising than the two seniors, because she played a down-and-out woman who climbed up from the bottom, from the dishwashing servant at the beginning to the queen's celebrity at the end. Very layered.
She played the role's "ruthless" (and practiced a British accent for this): at first, it seemed innocent, but it was deliberate, playing tricks, and kept getting deeper and deeper, and by the end, Algaby was long gone. Kindness, full of cruelty and hostility, chilling.
The "uglification" and loss of status of male characters make the film shine with the halo of feminism, but this halo hides haze and treacherousness.
In order to compete for the power in the palace, the women in the movie will do whatever they can to fight for power in the palace.
Just like Al Gaby, she successfully ascended the throne and became a celebrity in the palace. Seemingly beautiful, but irreversibly tragic, in that very impactful ending, Algaby massages the queen's legs, like a sex position, and then the faces of the rabbit and Algaby gradually fade. Fading to the screen, Algabe's expression slowly changed from joy to horror, while Queen Anne's face was full of emptiness, arrogance and cruelty.
At that moment, Algaby suddenly understood the meaninglessness of the fight: she thought she had replaced the Duchess as the new darling, when in fact her status was no different from that of the queen's rabbit.
Fighting back and forth, everything is empty, sad and helpless. As Shakespeare said: Woman, when you salute wealth again, hail fame, and raise your arms to power, please don't ask the thrush that once gave singing, it has nowhere to fly, because its voice has Dry and dull, for truth, honor, and soul-purifying death . "
First released on the public account of Jiaying movie
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