Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Quick Impressions:
I can’t remember ever seeing a film shot in fisheye before. I always think of fisheye as an obnoxious setting on phone cameras used primarily for killing time by making your loved ones look like they’re in a funhouse hall of mirrors until it’s your turn in line. I take a staggering number of pictures, and I absolutely never use fisheye. I have occasionally seen professional photographers use it to highlight the importance of an object (particularly a wedding ring) or emphasize the strangeness of a place, the cuteness of a pet. But I always thought of fisheye as necessarily limiting, a gimmick, more an entertainment than a serious tool of photography.
But not only does Yorgos Lanthimos use fisheye, he uses it to great effect. (Perhaps I should credit cinematographer Robbie Ryan for this, as well.) Instead of being distracting and obnoxious, the fisheye here infuses intensity and immediacy into scenes that would be slow and stagey otherwise. The fisheye also gives us the idea that we’re looking through a peep hole into a very private space, a world that we find strange and disorienting.
So The Favourite‘s cinematography alone astonished me. Even though this is a period piece set within the court of England’s Queen Anne, nobody would mistake this dark comedy by Lanthimos for one of those talky BBC productions obviously shot on a soundstage. (To be clear, I love those BBC productions, the adaptations of novels that are four hours long and leave in every word of the book. When I was younger, what I wanted most were movie adaptations identical to their source material, so I could force my family to digest (quickly) what I had just spent hours devouring in print.)
The Favourite is about the farthest thing on earth from your typical Oscar baity costume drama, and I think its captivating and strange cinematography announces that immediately. Lanthimos leads us into a dark, alien world full of intrigue, danger, and wit, where cruelty drives humor and pain is omnipresent.
Actually, this is a film I like more and more with distance. I liked it while I was watching it, too, but I was never completely sure what would ultimately happen, and it all feels so immediate and immersive and overwhelming as it’s going on.
Afterwards, I said to my husband, “You know, that film really did convey what it’s like to be a favourite.” (So forget about asking for your money back if you don’t like it. The Favourite delivers exactly what it promises.)
Honestly, though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie about royalty get that quite right before. Certainly, there’s been no film dedicated to the subject (that readily springs to mind). Game of Thrones definitely explores the concept, but most movies act almost like favourites don’t exist. Historical favourites may show up on the screen, but most movies fully explore neither the implication nor the precariousness of their closeness to the ruler. Most Hollywood movies don’t even seem to get what it means to be a favourite or why it matters. As a royal favourite, you have the monarch’s ear (often because you’re sharing a pillow). You receive tokens, gifts, honors, not uncommonly extending even to members of your family and their friends. You influence policy. But when (not if) you fall from favour, there’s no telling how low you’ll land. One moment, you’re nose to nose with the sovereign, and the next, your head is on a pike. A king’s favour is always changing. (It’s easy to be whimsical with multi-purpose fortresses like the Tower of London at your disposal. “Welcome to the Tower. Time to prepare for your coronation. Just kidding, you’re dead now.”)
I have no idea the degree to which this movie is historically accurate because I know next to nothing about Queen Anne. For a long time, I was obsessed with the Tudors, quite interested in the Plantagenets, and conversant in English history from just before the Conquest until 1603. After that, I really just know the monarchs’ names and broad biographies.
Here’s what I came into this movie knowing about Anne. She was the younger daughter of James II and ascended the throne after the death of William III (who outlived her sister Mary). She was always sitting around in parlors eating food, which is clear from the types of things named after her (chairs, cherries, lace). (Blackbeard’s ship is a clear outlier, I think.) Also named for her is Queen Anne’s War, which included one of the French and Indian Wars in the U.S. if I’m remembering an outline I made in eighth grade correctly. Anne was generally in poor health, had no children, and was rumored to be a lesbian (like most dead people). Alexander Pope mentioned her in a famous example of zeugma. (“Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,/Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.”)
You absolutely do not need to know one single thing about Queen Anne or anyone at her court to enjoy this movie. The Favourite gives you all the information you need, and the historicity is really not the point.
The Good:
I can’t stop thinking about this movie. It definitely has stuck with me. What impresses me is how thoroughly it presents its subject. This movie is truly about what it means to be a favourite. It shows us the ascent of Abigail, the decent of Sarah. Abigail’s beginning is like the pre-figurement of Sarah’s end. This is such a deeply, richly, painfully symbolic movie–so many wounds! so many falls! so many horses! (“So many rabbits!”) (You have to say that last part in a really spooky, deranged whisper.)
If I were still in academia, I’m sure I could write hundreds of papers about this film. I love the richness of the screenplay. I’d love to see Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara rewarded for their writing in some way. The screenplay is definitely better than most. I love its structure even more than its vicious wit.
I’m so tempted to delve into details of the story. I’d truly love to do a close reading of the screenplay, but that’s not what this is supposed to be. I won’t give spoilers here, even though not teasing out the meaning of specific actions and words is torturing me.
What’s strangely wonderful is that getting such a thorough look at the two women who manage to get so close to the queen really reveals a great deal about Anne herself. I think the movie could also work if we never even actually saw Anne, but I’m very glad we do see her because Olivia Colman gives a magnificent performance.
When I heard Colman was being campaigned in Best Actress (after winning Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival), I thought, “Man! That must be some performance!” Best Actress is the most competitive I’ve seen in years, maybe ever. What I mean is, since I personally have been following the Oscars, I can’t remember another year when so many well known actresses were jockeying for a nomination. For a while, I wondered if Colman was placed in lead to increase the chances of Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone (both movie stars) in supporting. Olivia Colman is a talented and seasoned actress for sure, but I suspect most Americans don’t know her (kind of like Lesley Manville or Sally Hawkins). Colman is about to replace Claire Foy on The Crown, a show American audiences do know, but those new episodes have not aired yet. So surely Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are the big selling points to general audiences here.
Colman’s performance here is definitely star-making (or it would be if enough people saw it. I’m not sure American audiences will embrace this movie. I will say the Wednesday night screening we saw was extremely well attended. Emma Stone is popular enough right now that she alone should be a huge draw. Maybe the movie will be a big hit, despite its off-kilter eccentricity.)
What’s amazing is that somehow Yorgos Lanthimos and company have managed to make a movie about Queen Anne sexy, fast-paced, dangerous, dark, and exciting. I feel like this was what Shekhar Khapur was trying to do with Elizabeth, though he failed disastrously (according to me. That crazy, deliberately ahistorical version of Elizabeth I’s life frustrated me so much. Cate Blanchett, however, captured the character better than anyone else ever has or probably can).
If you’re a history student whose life’s passion is the late Stuart monarchs, then you might find this film frustrating, full of inaccuracies and mischaracterizations. I’m not saying it has these problems, merely admitting that I’m not familiar enough with the facts of Anne’s reign to know. But I don’t think The Favourite is trying to teach history. At all. That is very much not the point. It’s more a character study of three women whose lives intersect at a particular moment as well as an examination of what it means to be a favourite. It strikes me as more literary, even psychological than historical in its aims. To be honest, the film could have fabricated its leads entirely and been none the worse for it.
Probably the very unlikeliness of Anne as a subject makes the greatness of the film about her possible. Think what awful, disappointing movies we’ve gotten about rock stars of history like Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc…
But this movie feels more like a fable, a cautionary tale, a character study, a curiosity, really just about anything other than a history lesson. Watching, we care absolutely not one bit at all who wins the war, or why it’s being fought, or how much she should raise taxes, or when England should sue for peace. This is not like Darkest Hour, where we all have deeply ingrained responses of horror when we hear talk of making peace with Germany by appeasing or working with the Nazis. The average American movie goer is not invested in the historical events here. Yet it gives us a sophisticated look at the complexity of a royal court.
Life at Anne’s court is vicious. Political debate is vicious. Wit is vicious. Even pleasurable pastimes are vicious. Cruelty is the cheapest and most easily accessible source of pleasure. Everything is colored by the Queen’s chronic (and unpredictable) pain. Anne’s court is a place of pain. Almost everyone who finds happiness there does so through sadism. Lady Marlborough enjoys demeaning her enemies (and threatening her friends). She also enjoys bloodsport. Her thoughts are constantly occupied with waging war. But she’s far from the only cruel person at court. The scullery staff find it hilarious to burn someone with lye as a practical joke. The noblemen get their cheap thrills by hurling fruit at a naked jester who capers with an almost demoniacally antic grin in a posture of debased humiliation. After spending a few months at this torturous court, one character decides it’s a good idea to crush a rabbit.
Probably the only person at court who does not delight in causing others pain is Anne herself. She actually wildly enjoys showing kindness to people because it makes her feel empowered. Ordinarily she is stripped of her agency by her inability to take ownership of her own body and life. She can’t effectively rule because she is subject to the whims of her own pain. So her pain rules in her stead. (It’s kind of like her Pain is one more favourite, someone else the queen relinquishes rule to, allows herself to be governed by. And she can’t get rid of this Pain because she also loves it. The Pain is always there for her when she needs it, when she feels helpless or out of her depth, when she must surrender to something, hide behind something.)
When you view the film this way, it seems that for a time, Anne manages to stay somewhat healthy and borderline functional through her ongoing “secret” love affair. Even when she is in pain, she knows that someone cares for her. But of course, this makes her life largely unpleasant. The pain never goes away. Continually, she fights it back, suffers through it without letting it completely overtake her. This is hard.
As I see it, as the story goes on, Anne’s thinking shifts. Instead of relying on someone who can help her face the pain, she begins to turn to someone who allows her to forget her pain. (She’s not unlike someone who finds drug addiction more palatable than therapy). From this point on, Anne begins to conflate and confuse pain and pleasure, until ultimately, the only pleasure is pain. She is left with only pain.
Of course, the movie is not just a paean to pain. (I’m so delighted to use that phrase. I’m such a child!) The Favourite also has much to say about control, agency, abuse, passion, scheming. And it’s also a genuinely funny comedy!
The film is absolutely replete with visual symbolism and bizarre foreshadowing. It also really loves to draw parallels, especially symbolically. In fact, ordinarily a film this strange and this ambitious would be absolutely insufferable to watch. But the three female stars give performances so riveting that you never want to take your eyes off the screen. Nicholas Hoult is also unusually good as the relentless schemer Harley. It’s funny. Harley comes across as a schemer, yet what he’s scheming for is an end to the war and lower taxes for the people. Surely what he actually wants is power for himself, though. That’s what everyone wants.
Maybe I should say that power is what everyone male wants. That’s not really a huge motivation for any of the three women in this story. For all of them, the power is a by-product. Abigail wants to be safe. Anne wants to be comfortable. Sarah wants to keep what she has. (Granted, for much of the film, what she has is power. But she’s taking that for granted. She wants to keep England (as she conceptualizes it) secure. She wants to keep Anne safe. She has a whole mental check list of things she’s protecting (by controlling them totally).)
Women’s stories in history are often overlooked or ignored because their desires baffle men. There’s this prevailing assumption that because women do not always have the same motivations and goals as men, their stories are not interesting (to men). But these women certainly create quite a fascinating, lurid spectacle as they work through their varying agendas. Lord Godolphin (James Smith) has this line about not presuming to understand ladies’ friendships, and these homosocial (and in this case homosexual) bonds are incredibly intricate and just as complex as one of Harley’s power plays.
The costuming in this movie is also somewhat elaborate, though not as distracting as in some period pieces. And I actually really liked the score. Its awful chords of creepiness helped punctuate the action and drive the plot forward.
Best Scene:
My favorite is the moment when Anne prepares to give a speech, then must quickly think up some way to get out of it when everything starts going wrong. This is so amusing and relatable. (I mean, you really feel for Anne here. You feel sorry for her, of course, but you’re also kind of appreciative of her efforts, like, “Yes, well really that was your only move.”)
Best Action Sequence:
There’s a wonderful scene in which Anne escapes from Abigail who is initially pushing her in a kind of wheel chair through a corridor. I whispered to my husband, “And this is what happens when they make me queen.”
Sarah often rebukes Anne for being childish and melodramatic, but here we see that perhaps something more is wrong with her than mere character flaws. She comes across as deeply disturbed and certainly incredibly physically vulnerable. For Olivia Colman, this sequence must have been taxing and tricky, but she makes it all look completely natural.
Best Scene Visually:
The scene that keeps coming back to haunt me is Abigail’s wedding night. This is not a typical cinematic sex scene, and it gives us such a window of insight into Abigail’s character.
If you want a more heavy-handed visual, there’s the bird blood spattered all over Sarah’s face, which rather like the bandage on Abigail’s hand is a grim suggestion at things to come.
Most Oscar Worthy Scene, Olivia Colman:
To appreciate Colman’s performance fully, you have to watch the entire thing. It begins as an amusing portrayal of a quirky character and builds to a cumulative greatness. Colman’s Anne is such a multifaceted character. She has such depth, and doing her justice demands extraordinary versatility.
Just a few reviews ago, I remember talking up Melissa McCarthy’s dedication to physical comedy. Well Colman matches her here (at least). Queen Anne is a very physical role that demands what must have been exhausting amounts of falling, floundering, flopping, and flailing. She’s a woman who swoons as frequently as she stands and staggers more often than not.
What’s really tricky about this is that Anne’s falling isn’t a joke. It’s not supposed to be funny…to Anne and to the other people in the room with her. But sometimes it is (intentionally) funny to the audience. Pulling that off has got to be tricky.
Once when I was in a play in high school, I accidentally fell in the most clumsy, awkward, ridiculous way imaginable while making an entrance. The director immediately said, “That’s perfect! Keep that! Come in that way every time!” For someone who is genuinely clumsy (me), attempting to replicate that ungainly fall time and time again was definitely not easy. It is actually quite hard to fall on cue and make it look like an accident.
But Queen Anne isn’t just about falling. She also screams and yells erratically (and I swear sounds just like my three-year-old accusing us of being unfair to him, e.g., “I wanted to play outside, but Daddy said, ‘NO!'” The way he screams, “NO!” sounds just like Anne’s sudden outbursts in this film). And she always makes this funny for the audience (even when it’s genuinely disturbing to the other characters in the room with her).
But there’s more than that, too. She basically does everything in this movie. One minute she’s bingeing and purging, the next she’s flirting and trying to cajole someone into bed.
Colman shows us Anne’s sensuous, overtly sexual side quite often in this film, and we always buy it, which is amazing given some of her other behavior.
She also shows us Anne’s depression, her misery, her torment, her pain. There’s a monologue on rabbits in which the mood shifts so suddenly. It’s in this moment that we first gain staggering and heartbreaking insight into some of Anne’s more perplexing behavior.
But I mean, Colman does it all here. She shows off every side of this woman, and from all sorts of uncomfortable positions, too.
She fully deserves to win Best Actress at the Oscars. The catch is, all of the names being consistently floated by pundits would also make deserving winners. I’d clap hard for Colman, Close, Gaga, McCarthy, even Toni Colette. And there are performances I haven’t seen that I’m sure I’d clap for, too. (For instance, I’ve been a huge fan of Emily Blunt since The Devil Wears Prada.)
But Colman’s performance here is one for the ages. If she doesn’t get at least an Oscar nomination for her nuanced and demanding portrayal of Anne, it will be an outrageous injustice.
Most Oscar Worthy Scene, Rachel Weisz:
The moment when Sarah wanders in and out of the Queen’s bed chamber holding a candle is amazing. It’s just so good.
Weisz completely won me over here. She manages to convey so much nonverbally. I could definitely imagine her winning another Oscar for work like this.
At this point, Sarah won my heart. I thought, “Yes, it’s true that she can be cruel, controlling, haughty, abusive, manipulative, and prickly, buuuut…everybody has their faults.” Truly I didn’t care anymore what her failings were. Her pain deeply resonated with me.
If forced to choose between Weisz and Stone for a Supporting Actress nod, I’d pick Weisz because of how sympathetic Sarah ultimately becomes. (Also, Emma Stone just won an Oscar, and it’s been a while since The Constant Gardener.)
The thought also occurred to me that Rachel Weisz is exceptional at bringing emotional honesty and a feeling of real intimacy to onscreen sex scenes. She was quite good in Disobendience earlier this year, and a long time ago, I remember marveling over a steamy encounter she shares with Jude Law in Enemy at the Gates. At the time, I kept raving to friends, “That’s the most graphic sex scene I’ve ever seen in a movie.” I felt like nobody understood what I meant, so I had to keep explaining and explaining. Their encounter just felt unusually erotic for a movie sex scene. It’s not a question of how much skin is shown or how much moaning is going on. Instead, it feels real. I think part of it is that Weisz has a gift for telegraphing emotional intimacy to the audience.
As a result, Sarah’s intimate moments with Anne read as very genuine and the only time the character ever allows herself to be vulnerable.
I like the way the film shows us the opposite trajectories (with a common center) of Sarah and Abigail. As the film goes on, Sarah becomes increasingly vulnerable, threatened, and sincere while Abigail loses her vulnerability, becomes a threat, and loses the need for (almost) any pretense of sincerity.
All three of these women deserve Oscar nominations, but if only one of them ends up making it in supporting, I’d choose Weisz mainly because I find her character the most sympathetic at the end of the story.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Emma Stone:
That doesn’t mean I don’t think Emma Stone deserves an Oscar nomination. This is perhaps the best role of her career, playing to her strengths with comedy, yet requiring her to dig deep into a very dark and ugly place.
I’m not convinced that any working actor right now has better comedic timing than Emma Stone. She’s not just funny. She’s funny exactly when she wants to be. Her control, poise, and ability to assess her audience are without peer.
I love people who are funny, so I love Emma Stone. I loved her when I first saw her in Superbad. I could tell that she had a bright future ahead of her, and I was thrilled when her excellent work in Birdman opened the door to more Oscary type roles. She’s great, and I expect her to win another Oscar in the future. I’m just not sure that this is her year.
There’s tremendous physicality to Stone’s role, too. Just like Colman, she’s always falling down. But unlike Anne, Abigail usually falls because she’s pushed.
Her scene in the woods with Masham (Joe Alwyn) is incredibly weird, though it does suggest that perhaps the only way for an attractive servant girl to avoid being raped is if she’s been raped before and, therefore, developed a strategy for keeping men at bay. This could not have been an easy scene. Trying to learn this crazy blocking would have killed me.
Stone’s character is definitely the hardest to understand. Well, maybe hardest to forgive is more accurate. By the end, she’s become so treacherous. Yet she is like that for a reason. She is a monster, but her very environment has created.
She does, however, have the funniest part, I think. I laughed at Emma Stone probably more than any other character. She has some truly wonderful lines, and they’re always easy to understand. (I mean literally. She speaks slowly and clearly.) I’m hoping that all three of these actresses get Academy Awards nominations, though I can just as easily envision a scenario in which they are all shut out.
The Negatives:
The Favourite is very strange by most people’s standards. For a Yorgos Lanthimos film, it’s pretty normal and unusually accessible. But he’s not exactly a household name like Steven Spielberg. I could totally understand why someone might dislike this movie. It’s full of sadistic cruelty and shows people behaving in ways that are downright unpleasant.
Whether are not you like it will largely depend on your expectations going in. If for some reason, you expect an uplifting Christmas movie for the whole family, for example….
Also, I don’t want to be spoilery, but though history may be somewhat ambiguous, Queen Anne in this movie is depicted as a lesbian. (I mean, there’s a possibility she’s bisexual. She has definitely had intercourse with her late husband at least seventeen times. But that’s not my point.) Don’t go expecting Anne’s “flirtations” with women to consist of passing notes, giggling, and exchanging pressed flowers and locks of hair. In this film, her relationship with Sarah Churchill is unmistakably, unambiguously sexual.
I mention this because maybe you’ve studied Anne extensively and don’t find sufficient evidence to prove a carnal love affair. If so, then boy will you get annoyed with this movie because that’s literally what it’s about.
The movie is not really graphic, but it still manages to be explicit. (For example, the reason Anne gives Sarah for not letting Abigail go has precisely zero other interpretations.)
Now that I’ve gone on and on about this, if you see The Favourite for the lesbian sex because you’re expecting lurid erotica of some sort, you may be disappointed. Don’t forget, I said it’s not graphic. This isn’t Blue is the Warmest Color, and it’s definitely not pornography (though I’m sure some people will go to see Emma Stone’s breasts. And see them, you will. They should advertise that widely because it should help to sell tickets). But the sexual content in the film is explicit and overt. (That said, if you are a lesbian, then the thorough and frank exploration of these women’s complex relationships should be a huge draw.)