The Rose of Versailles 26-40
What a
starkly different show this is in contrast to the earlier episodes of the series. Under a new director
Versailles undergoes a transformation, pulling itself away from the minutia, political backstabbing, and love stories to embrace its historical side in an appropriately fictitious manner. Still, accurate dates of the French Revolution are thrown around and act in a formative manner to bring the series to its close. As France's monarchy finds itself facing its mortality so to do Oscar and Andre. Even with the story under a more intense structural adherence to a romanticized portrayal of history the personal elements are still the piece that shines through. While this last arc of Versailles that focuses on retelling the Revolution is something that stirs up interest in the event, its presentation lacks personality as the show likely bites off a bigger chunk than it can really chew. The side of the Revolutionists is personalized through the army unit that Oscar takes control of, but without the leaders getting much screen time the continued higher level focus on historical events feels more like a faux-educational video, with drab and abstracted narration controlling the spot light.
Worse off than the radicals the noble inhabitants of Versailles itself lose pretty much all representation in the story. There is nobody to really carry their plight as even Antoinette is pushed away almost entirely. With neither faction particularly humanized the show loses its true core: that of rivalries. Almost the entire show is underlined by characters sparring against one another, be it for romantic interests (Fersen is too dreamy), wealth, positions of power, control, cooperation, people are constantly set at competitive ends with one another. Past the surface level existence of this theme with dueling identical Black Knights, Oscar's inner self is split between feminine and masculine desires. As the camera pulls out in its last act to capture the upheaval of a nation's social structure it loses sight of many of these rivalries. The conclusion of Oscar's love life doesn't particularly help, with little romantic build up, and an attempted rape seemingly swept under the rug to never be acknowledged again.
In spite of some of these shortcomings
Versailles is still a show of tremendous worth. Stirring historical interest with webbed plots and fascinating characters I found myself engaged with the show the entire way through. While Dezaki was able to bring the show to its highest highs immediately after he took over as the director, I can't help but wonder if some of the more abstract cuts and perspectives that Nagahama brought would have better captured the larger scenes depicting the crowds of the French Revolution.
