In A Little Chaos famed actor Alan Rickman has made a directorial “intervention”well worth watching. It is at once subtly charming and engagingly anachronistic. Known for his Snape from the widely successful Harry Potter franchise, Rickman reveals considerable skill in a deceptively complex compositional canvas.
The plot revolves around construction of a vital component of the Palace of Versailles for King Louis the XIV. Rickman is himself the Sun King, around whom all action will ultimately revolve. The story’s core pivots upon the task of building a garden to aesthetic specifications of the King, as envisioned by his landscape architect and principal gardener, André le Nôtre. Assisting in this crucial aspect of the endeavor will be the lone woman candidate for the job, Sabine de Barra, played by Kate Winslet. That le Nôtre existed, and that he did design the park of Versailles palace are true; Mme de Barra, however, is an invention.
The screenplay, co-written by Jeremy Brock, Alison Deegan and Rickman reflects a desire to artfully recreate many trappings of the late 17th century French court. These amount to costumes and relationships, meaning the look and the feel of the time viewers are informed is the year 1682. This part of the film is successful. There is little need to suspend disbelief regarding depictions of court intrigue, assignations and the existence of scheming frequently over the top characters like a flamboyant, flamingly effeminate Philippe I, Duc d’Orléans, outré younger brother of Louis XIV, played expertly by Stanley Tucci. Despite blatant homoerotic preferences and predilections, Philippe married twice, famously fathering progeny and founding the House of Orléans. Contextually, A Little Chaos initially appears grounded in thorough historical research. Appearances may be deceptive; the true le Nôtre, born in 1613, started Versailles in 1661 some two decades prior to the film’s conceit.
Where A Little Chaos diverges from the record is at once most offensive to fact checkers, yet moving and appealing to modern audiences. This is in daring to suggest that Sabine de Barra could carry out this royal brief, in a male-dominated court and society, to be trusted with an architectural centerpiece of the Sun King’s reign. Here viewers must suspend disbelief, acknowledging that in “reality” A Little Chaos reflects far more about the gendered present than the past.
This quality of talking about time out of time is not that unusual. Nor is it entirely strange that one should want to make transportation of a modern minded character into a historic situation in which she or he might seem oddly out of order as far as we understand the rules pertaining in that time and place. This is a trope of time travel, whether in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court or any work of science fiction. It is equally partly the historian’s craft. How else can one living in the present strive to reconstruct past events and personalities but with the act of fertile, active and hopefully informed imagination?
Once I made peace with that “fact” it was much easier to simply enjoy the “fancy” of A Little Chaos, whose disorder begins with the quaint premise that one may learn something by tampering with the sacred shibboleths of a mythically sacrosanct past. With that proviso, I advise you to sit back and watch the movie.
This is David H. Anthony.