Luxury or decadence? Is there a difference? When the choices for more become overbearing, how is an aristocratic woman supposed to respond?

When it is possible to be self-contained in an isolated world, beyond the wood shoed touches on cobblestone which have constant needs for feeding, there is danger lurking.

So then it is wise to counsel courageousness, for courage is certainly in the direction into danger, to present oneself more capable of handling what luxury is destined to be used for: higher gratitude of being blessed with God’s grace.

This grace is easy to misplace. It can be suffocated in the constant delivery of demands for pleasing experiences or pleasure. Pleasure is focused on the self, and not in the direction of pleasing others. But what about pleasures which are more than the faculties of the body?

What about the pleasure in knowing justice?

Such a demand, of course, is beyond the boundaries of Marie Antoinette. She is positioned to give birth to an heir. Nothing higher.  She must even honor a “natural interlocuter” in the halls of the Liege of France – that of the King’s mistress. With such entrapment in the halls of plenty, we are terrifically given the portrayal of a slow, yet comfortably motioning, walk to the grave.

“And they made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich his tomb…”

–Isaiah 53:9

The Writer and Director Sophia Coppola does a terrific demonstration of what cinema is. And it is in the painting of a natural atmosphere to where dramatic stage is limited by the artifice of the light of human imagination. She wisely chooses frames which provide the proper idea of grandeur, as well as the intimacy of luxuriance of Monarchical splendor: that which everyone serving feels is owed to the King’s family.

The fabricated details, and lusciously superfluous foods, give us a theatrical glimpse into a bygone era of landed incomes, and not manufacturer capital gains; the former which arguably provide superior administration of truth and justice.