Poor Mary Queen of Scots never stood a chance against The Favourite, the period piece power struggle costume drama that can’t be beat. Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent film is easily his most accessible to all types of audiences. He does not have to prime audiences into understanding the rules of this absurdist world because even though his film takes liberties with history, it is a familiar, understandable world, which he did not have to invent or exaggerate too much. It is a delicious brew of office politics, family tension and queen bees, who are not necessarily the queen.
The Favourite stars Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill (yes, THAT Churchill), the Duchess of Marlborough, and Emma Stone as Abigail Hill, cousins vying for Queen Anne’s favor. Imagine All About Eve except Weisz’s character would have ground Bette Davis into the dirt, and Eve’s choices are harlotry and constant physical abuse or making it big in the court. If you wanted proof that I’m a horrible person, watching Stone get tortured actually brought me joy after watching La La Land. I just imagined that everyone in the movie was mean to her because they watched that movie.
The most delicious part of The Favourite is just watching Weisz’s character live her best life. Even at her nadir, she regains her footing without getting shaken for long. When I admonish movies for being afraid to present unlikeable characters for the audience to root for, I can finally point to a movie that proves my point. She is a horrible human being, but I thought she was still incredibly easy to cheer for because she knew herself and what she wanted. A central unspoken question of the movie is why do you want to win the titular title. I kept questioning whether or not she had ulterior motives regarding her policy points. While I did not necessarily like the way that she treated people or what she decided to do with her power, which she clearly relished, she was genuine and to some degree, benevolent. She is stubbornly buoyant in her confidence and abilities. “I will not lie. That is love.”
In contrast, Stone’s character plays at being more affable, and perhaps there was a point when she was, which I would argue based on the soundtrack. In Lanthimos’ movies, music generally signals a mental gearshift, usually not for the better, for a character considering altering his or her current course or to reflect a character’s inner turmoil being stirred up by some external factor. Her motivation is purely personal with no examination of the bigger picture. Ultimately her fears come true, but on a grander scale. She creates a comfortable hell, but a hell nevertheless.
Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, is simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic. Who does not want to sit around all day eating nonstop in your pajamas? A few degrees in one direction or another, you can imagine her finding happiness, but she is another horrible person and inherently dangerous in her aimless power. Her reaction to music is hilarious and horrifying. It signifies and reminds her of everything that she is not: talented, beautiful, mobile, but instead of trying to improve herself, she is satisfied with keeping herself at the gold standard, which seals Sarah’s fate with or without Abigail’s presence. The real gall is when she fails to reciprocate Sarah’s ultimately unconditional acceptance regardless of her looks or temperament. Anne can have bad days, but Sarah cannot.
The Favourite is such a joy to watch because even though the main characters are women, it never feels as if it is trying to make a larger statement about women or solidarity. They are just people, not archetypes, but three-dimensional flawed people with a past, present and future. They have feelings and are not always noble. The main problem with Mary Queen of Scots, which is a better-known story than Queen Anne’s, is that the dueling queens never felt like human beings, but ideals versus imperfections. Mary and Elizabeth are defined by their looks, their relationship to men, their children or lack thereof whereas these women live or die based on their thoughts, their schemes, their actions. The men play a role in sowing discord among the women, but Lady Marlborough was fairly abusive when she liked and decided to help her cousin so there are no false notions that women make better leaders than men or that if men would get out of the way, women would show solidarity to each other. These women are like the men, people who are out for themselves first with varying degrees of benevolence towards the state. A woman holds the reins of even the most effective man in this film, but generally most of the men are easily distracted, vain, casually cruel moppets.
Even though it depicts ugly souls, The Favourite is characteristic of Lanthimos’ films in that it is gorgeous to watch with its disciplined framing and composition, dynamic camera movement and occasionally distorted fisheye perspective. The main appeal of museums is to enter a space and pretend that you have some high station that would enable you to enjoy all the delectable, ornate furnishings, which this film does while simultaneously making the viewer painfully aware that most of the past is not so spacious or perfectly furnished, but could be uncomfortable, compact and crowded. Also characteristic of Lanthimos’ films is the claustrophobic, psychological distortion caused by these artificial systems and how they exacerbate the innate flaws of human beings. There is a cannibalistic aesthetic to court culture, and his absurd touches lie in how power struggles manifest in physical violence. Lanthimos’ focal point in all his films seem to suggest that any system imposed on human behavior ends up distorted and cruel. It brings to mind the discussion of the antebellum South in the book Twelve Years A Slave. Without black people, the people in power would and did turn on each other with very little natural feeling or positive emotions surviving the hegemony of dehumanization.
I am not a fan of Lanthimos’ films, and I regularly watch Lars von Trier’s films, which are more overtly sensational. I find his films psychologically disturbing and ugly. While I believe that The Favourite is suitable for all audiences, I would not consider it a suitable jumping point to explore his other films since this film omits his trademark moment of explicit horror. He teases such a moment in the end, but ultimately pulls back. While I may agree with his assessment of humanity, which is the opposite of Gene Roddenberry’s hope in mankind’s future, it does not mean that I want to spend two hours in a dark room looking through that lens. I don’t have to pay for the honor. I live it for free everyday; however this film encapsulates the horror of humanity in a palatable, riveting way. I highly recommend it.