From CRITICISM to RECOGNITION: Sofía Coppola

Sofia Coppola was recruited by her father, Francis Ford Coppola, to play Mary Corleone, one of the important characters in the story of The Godfather III. We thought that nothing could go wrong, but it did for Sofia. The criticism for her performance was not long in coming, it was a barrage of hurtful bullets from the critics that left their mark and are still remembered to this day.

Initially, Winona Ryder was chosen for the role, but for health and schedule reasons, her incorporation was not possible, so Francis Ford Coppola decided to make a controversial decision, which left people indifferent, since the choice of his daughter for this role was the "scapegoat" to point out the film. This is what Francis Coppola had to say about it:

“They wanted to attack the film because, for some, it didn't live up to its promise. And they came after this 18-year-old girl, who had only done it for me. The daughter took the bullet for Michael Corleone, my daughter took the bullet for me”.

And Sofia Coppola also pointed out:

"It was embarrassing to be thrown into the public eye like that. But it wasn't my dream to be an actress, so it didn't destroy me. I had other interests, it didn't destroy me. It taught me that as a creative person, you have to put your work out there. It toughens you up. I know it's a cliché, but it can make you stronger."

And so it was, she became one of the most outstanding directors of recent times with a unique and characteristic style.

Characters staring out the window, lost, introspective, indecisive, trapped, this is a motif we find in the films of Sofia Coppola, a director who masters the art of isolation, but those scenes and sequence are just the beginning, there is much more going on.

When watching Sofia Coppola's work, one often perceives a different mood, the depth and richness of her images, combined with sounds and music, infiltrating under the skin. There is a consistent theme that is reflected in all of them, whether alone or in a group, all these characters face the consequences of isolation.

She doesn't tell us that these characters feel isolated, she does more than just show us this detachment, she makes us feel it ourselves with all the cinematic elements at her disposal, Coppola tailors each film to this goal. But how does it do it?

First the story. This idea of isolation is clearly a focus in the stories Coppola tells.

"I always like characters who are in a moment of transition in their lives and are trying to figure out what the next stage is. So any character who is in a moment of self-discovery."

The Lisbon sisters under house arrest (The Virgin Suicides), a pair of lost souls far from home (Lost in Translation), a newcomer pushed to royalty (Marie Antoinette), a purposeless movie star (Somewhere), students and their teachers on the outskirts of the war (The Beguiled), are characters who are emotionally isolated, geographically or both and in films such as "The Bling Ring" and "On the Rocks", we see how far people go to avoid isolation, pursue friendship at all costs or allow their insecurities to take over.

The solution to his existential crisis is elusive, some manage to get through them and some feel overwhelmed by them, but, no matter the setting or circumstances, Coppola has a unique ability to make his characters and their difficulties relatable.

She admits that "Lost in Translation" is a semi-aubiograph in this sense.

"I spent a lot of time in Tokyo when I was 20 years old and I really wanted to make a film about my experience of just being there. I got married shortly before and felt a little isolated. I was at a stage where I wasn't sure if I had made the right decisions or what I was doing at the beginning of my adult life after college."

Coppola's films eschew goal-oriented plots and focus more on observation-based character studies, but, establishing this isolation on the page is just the beginning. It also builds the worlds surrounding its protagonists with production design.

Many visual narratives can be achieved through production design and few filmmakers understand this potential better than Coppola. To emphasize the loneliness that lies at the center of his films, Coppola tends to alternate between extremes. Maximum and minimum. Some sets are about to explode. "Marie Antoinette" surrounds herself with decadence to relieve the pressures of her royal obligations and disrupt her confinement. At the opposite extreme, the sets are reduced to nothing. Johnny's life at the Chateau Marmont is empty and lifeless. Simple details like off-the-shelf artwork help communicate your unstable and transient state of being.

Costumes are another focal point for indicating characters in isolation. Coppola explains it with an example from "On the Rocks":

"The clothes provide little clues that tell you who the characters are and Laura is trying to figure out who she is right now. He wears a custom-made Paris Review T-shirt, but also old T-shirts from bands from his previous life."

In "The Beguiled", the dresses inform their situation without the need for an expository dialogue. Miss Martha and her students have been abandoned at their school for some time and so the colors of their dresses fade and alterations are made as they grow up.

Coppola adds how his production designer, Anne Ross, continued this idea with the stage decoration:

"She made the house with vines that grew along it and that feeling of abandonment really helped create the setting so that they were isolated from the world."

With production design, Coppola injects context around his characters, who they are, who they're trying to be, where they've been, and where they can go.

Now, let's move on to one of Coppola's strongest elements in production design, color.

Color is a key element in Coppola's visual palette, indulging in feminine pastel worlds and neon-infused cities, as Coppola explains, his preference is for more subdued color schemes:

"I generally like colors that are not very saturated, that's something that happens in my films. I always want a low contrast, but not always, it depends on the subject. Because when we did 'The Bling Ring,' it was really raucous and it was this horrible kind of US Weekly track."

Color is also used to divide the worlds that these characters traverse:

"The contrast between the beige suburban world and the bright night of the city, I thought DP Harris Savides had created a really beautiful look of this world that is not so beautiful."

For "The Virgin Suicides," cinematographer Edward Lachman explains how color helped isolate the characters:

"I knew what the tone was that Coppola was looking for, a difference between the masculine and the feminine world. That's why I tried to create the two worlds visually. One of the girls who are locked in her house with the colors magenta and blue and then one with the boys outside under this more austere sunlight and a stronger saturated color."

In these films, color is used as an emotional measure, marking how these characters see the world and how they feel inside. Coppola's control over color could be attributed to having studied painting and photography, but this background will become even more evident in the next section, cinematography.

It may seem obvious or trite, but Coppola is a highly visual filmmaker, much of his preparation starting with visual references that he shares with his apartment bosses. He will even record these reference images into the script. He often finds inspiration in photography to set the mood and direction of his projects. The look of "The Virgin Suicides" was inspired by the work of Bill Owens. John R. Hamilton's candid photography of Clint Eastwood inspired the spirit of "Somewhere," and Larry Sultan's portrait is directly homaged in "Lost in Translation." The best photograph tells a complete story in a single image.

Coppola brings this practice to his own work with powerful compositions, press pause on almost any frame of a Sofia Coppola film and could be considered amazing photographs on their own. Much of this sense of disconnection of these characters is achieved through framing and composition. Here's "Lost in Translation" cinematographer Lance Acord who explains how this works:

"The solitude that can be created with space, I feel like that was achieved in that film, allowing the shots to be wider, allowing people to be smaller in the frame, like hanging from those shots."

We find this in his extremely open shots or with an intensive use of negative space. We also find slow zooms that inform this idea of isolation, closing to exert pressure or opening up to let the environment overwhelm the character. Through composition, framing, and subtle lens adjustments, Coppola creates powerful images with a clear point of view and a focus on capturing characters disconnected alone with the world around them on all sides. Now let's look at how these images are assembled to enhance this isolation with editing.

With exceptions, Coppola is predominantly a mise-en-scène filmmaker, this means that his images are designed for this complete without much editing. She tends not to do coverage. Lack of editing and coverage naturally creates a slower, deliberate pace. This was done on purpose for "Somewhere" as editor Sara Flack explains:

"Because of the way Sofia and cinematographer Harris Savides designed the shots, there wasn't a lot of coverage in many of the scenes, but the length of the shots brought a wonderful sense of realism."

Coppola explains that this minimalist coverage and editing style also served to align the viewer with Johnny's stasis:

"It was about finding the rhythm to sustain the shot without numbing the audience, but testing their patience to put them in the mental state of this character who is bored with his life."

On the other hand, there are moments constructed with editing, this is especially evident when capturing the unspoken language between the female characters as she explains:

"The way women communicate is very particular, how you communicate so much with a look or the tone and I think men don't see that."

This comes into play in "The Beguiled" when the girls anticipate the poison trap they've set for McBurney.

"The Virgin Suicides" has a more subjective and nostalgic construction, just as the Lisbon girls were isolated from the world the boys were isolated from them, therefore, everything we see comes from the memories of the children what they remember. To capture this, Coppola and his editors employ editing techniques of montage, split screens, overlays, an iris with X-ray vision, as Coppola explains:

"The story is told as a memory, that's why this collage-style event, putting these memories together to try to get these girls back."

Coppola's editing is mostly sober, letting the images speak for themselves, but there are moments when memories and tacit communication are constructed through montage. To delve deeper into the emotional realm of these characters in isolation, let's open our ears to Coppola's sound design.

As we have seen, Coppola prioritizes mood and feeling, one of the most direct ways to do this is through sound. To establish isolation in "The Beguiled," we start with sound. What do you hear? There is a clear juxtaposition between the isolation of the girl surrounded by nature and the wall in the distance. All of this adds up to both the atmosphere and the plot, as Coppola explains:

"He has a lot of awareness of the sounds of nature with the sound design of the cicadas and cannons in the distance and I hope you feel the tension."

Coppola also uses sound to speak directly to the character's emotional state. In some scenes, Johnny (Somewhere) is surrounded by sound, but it's the moments of silence that reveal what's really in his heart, a lonely meal, the tug of a cigarette. Johnny's pain is accompanied by the muffled hum of a helicopter.

By concentrating on quiet sounds like water, we feel the silence and the loneliness, the cry for help, the monotony, even a single drop says a lot.

There are loud and nuanced moments in Coppola's films, but it's his use of minimalist sound design that encapsulates the characters in their isolation. To strip away the artifice so that we can share these private moments with them when watching a movie. Our last element might be what Coppola is best known for, music.

As we've seen, Coppola makes strong visual choices, but his musical choices are equally strong. The musical core of these films is built from the beginning. It's often integral to your writing process. As she says:

"When I write the script I listen to music and that's usually when I find the tone or the atmosphere between the visuals, the colors and then the music. For example, the music of the group "Air" inspired a dreamlike and nostalgic tone for "The Virgin Suicides".

So much so, that he incorporated them to provide original music for the soundtrack with songs such as "Playground Love".

Music supervisor Brian Reitel worked with Coppola to create Tokyo Dream Pop playlists while she worked on the script for "Lost in Translation." These tracks complement the visuals with a surge of gentle distortion and dreamlike introspection, this fits the mood I was looking for.

"I wanted to create this sense of dissociation from being in this kind of unfamiliar and alienating world."

Charlotte's Sojourn is soundtracked by a somber and contemplative track appropriately titled "Alone in Kyoto." When Laura's confidence in her marriage reaches a low point, we have a romantic Chet Baker ballad "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)."

"Marie Antoinette" gets a lot of momentum from its soundtrack, we received anachronistic clues from groups like "New Order" and "Bow Bow Bow" this allowed Coppola to capture the youthful and romantic spirit of "Marie Antoinette" but also reinforced his disconnection from his royal duties, which would become his downfall.

Movies like "Somewhere" and "The Beguiled" show that eliminating music is a flawed way to create isolation. About the minimal soundtrack of this last film, Coppola says that the choice was made because these characters have no escape:

"It's very contained and tonal synth music, very underground, because I wanted to have a lot of tension and not really have songs that relieved the tension."

Coppola's use makes the music go straight to the heart of his characters. Moments of ecstatic youthful energy contrast even more with her distress and detachment.

Few directors are as involved in exploring the inner world of their characters as Sofia Coppola, her stories focus on people facing isolation. She incorporates this idea into the production design with costumes and set design. The color palettes sustain these somber tones and disconnected worlds. His compositions and framing add distance between the characters and their surroundings. She edits with a languid rhythm so that we can share the feelings of isolation, a focus on minimalist sound design takes us into these private moments. And their soundtracks provide a final layer of tone and atmosphere conducive to contemplation.

OTRAS RESEÑAS QUE PUEDES APOYAR ESTE MES

En Español

• Una de las MUJERES que REDEFINIÓ el CINE: Sofía Coppola

En Inglés

• A FUN and EXCITING GENRE-BLENDER: The Gorge
• WE LIVE (to a lesser extent) in SEINFELD
• From CRITICISM to RECOGNITION

En Portugués

• Sem o SEGUINTE não teríamos NOLAN: Following