Tea at Trianon: The New Robert Bruce Film

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The New Robert Bruce Film

From The Billings Gazette:

“Robert The Bruce” is not a sequel to "Braveheart." In interviews Macfadyen has described the different tone the new movie has from “Braveheart.” There is violence in “Robert the Bruce,” but Macfadyen told BBC News the movie “does not glorify war.” He went on to say, “The film I wanted to tell was about the consequences of violence and what it does to entire clans and families. It tears them apart. This movie is about the Scots versus Scots. There is not an Englishman in sight.” Director and producer Richard Gray said that “Robert the Bruce in the film is struggling to understand war and the need for war when he’s looking at how many soldiers have been lost.”

Bruce is on the run in the movie, hiding with a widow and her orphaned children. Their father died fighting in Bruce’s war, Gray said. About 80% of the movie was shot around Livingston and the Paradise Valley during the winter of 2017, Gray said. The rest of the movie was shot in Scotland. Gray said before he began “Robert the Bruce” he had been working on making a Western. Anna Hutchison knew Macfadyen and knew that Gray was a huge “Braveheart” fan, so she told him he should read the script, the director said. He got his hands on it in the summer of 2017.

“I read the script and I just fell in love with it,” Gray said. “We had to go quickly because the film had to be in winter, and that’s what forced our hand. We knew that we had to film in November 2017 or we’d have to wait another year.” Gray is originally from Australia but now resides with his wife and children in Livingston. The executive producer on the movie, Carter Boehm, is also from Livingston. “It was the hardest shoot I’ve ever been involved in,” Gray said of filming “Robert the Bruce.” (Read more.)