Hullo,

In common with many other people, I have recently watched and enjoyed The Favourite, and take this as my jumping off point this morning.

Let's start with the historical low-down. It seems like things went down more or less as depicted in the film, which is gratifying:

Sarah used to dominate Anne ruthlessly, and often spoke over her, made fun of her appearance, and once famously told her to ‘shut up’. Tensions came to a head when Sarah demanded her son-in-law, Charles Spencer, the husband of her daughter Anne, be made a Privy Councillor. Spencer was a famous Whig, a cause which Sarah supported, but Anne suspected the Whigs of attempting to usurp royal authority. When Anne refused, Sarah used her connections to force Anne to appoint Spencer, while continuing to lobby her and forcing her to read Whig literature.

https://historicmusings.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-power-behind-two-thrones-sarah.html

(Do not force your friends to read Whig literature!)

One of the best things about the film is how visually stunning it is. Every single outfit that Rachel Weisz as Lady Marlborough wears, I would also wear given half a chance. I mean look:

Here, Sandy Powell, the costume designer, talks about her work. Specifically talking about dressing Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne in the pullquote, and if you click through there's great stuff about the colour palette as well:

“She’s ill, she depressed, she can’t be bothered to get dressed,” Powell explains. “It’s like pulling on your most comfortable, cozy safety blanket.” And how did Powell achieve that? She bought two bedspreads on eBay and sewed them together: “It’s exactly what my grandmother had on her bed.” She lined the result in black velvet.

https://filmmakermagazine.com/106484-costume-designer-sandy-powell-on-dressing-yorgos-lanthimos-the-favourite/

It's not just the costumes that make it look incredible, of course – the production design is also incredible:

Here's the production designer, Fiona Crombie, on her influences and the difficulties of candle-wrangling:

Candida Höfer, I remember looking at some of her photography […] I was very interested in the play of scale. So, you’d have vast spaces, sometimes with enormous elements, like a huge bed, and then you’d have a tiny person or a tiny chair.

https://deadline.com/2018/11/the-favourite-fiona-crombie-production-design-interview-news-1202500507/

This, of course, made me look up Candida Höfer and her beautiful, luminous photographs. Here's one of a library:

And Candida herself writing about her photography:

I wanted to capture how people behave in public buildings, so I started taking photographs of theatres, palaces, opera houses, libraries and the like. After some time, it became apparent to me that what people do in these spaces – and what these spaces do to them – is clearer when no one is present, just as an absent guest is often the subject of a conversation. So I decided to photograph each space without people.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/feb/06/candida-hofer-best-photograph

Happy nearly the weekend!

A xx.