The Web Film Database, or IMDb, shut down its message forums in 2017, lamenting that they had been “not offering a constructive, helpful expertise for the overwhelming majority of our greater than 250 million month-to-month customers worldwide.” It got here as a blow to numerous weirdos utilizing their treasured, fleeting time on earth to debate insane fan theories about Forrest Gump, however you may nonetheless get your level throughout on the location’s crowdsourced trivia pages, as somebody with a grudge in opposition to the 2022 movie Corsage has confirmed.
Corsage is a historic drama directed by Marie Kreutzer, starring Vicky Krieps as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who reigned alongside husband Emperor Franz Josef I from 1854 to 1898. It explores the confines of the monarch’s life forward of her fortieth birthday, notably the strain to stay skinny and exquisite: she wears a severely-tightened corset whereas displaying signs of what as we speak we’d name an consuming dysfunction, fiercely defending her public picture in a manner that anticipates modern fame.
Krieps’ flip as Elisabeth (or “Sissi”) has earned her accolades this awards season, together with the Un Sure Regard prize for greatest efficiency at Cannes and a European Movie Award for Finest Actress, whereas the film itself has obtained typically constructive opinions and made the Oscars’ shortlist for Finest Worldwide Function Movie. But, since someday earlier than July 23, 2022, an nameless consumer has been steadily updating IMDb’s trivia part on Corsage with hostile and belittling feedback introduced beneath the guise of background data. Jeopardy! host and trivia grasp Ken Jennings seen the weird tone when perusing the location this week.
“That is one in every of 5 Austrian-German productions about Empress Elisabeth of Austria to be launched between 2021-2022,” reads one of many earliest entries, which fits on to sniffily report that Netflix’s 2022 sequence about Sissi, The Empress, “was an enormous hit on Netflix, being watched by almost 20 million houses globally and a complete of over 100 million hours within the first weeks of its launch, on the similar time that Corsage was struggling to make $1 million on the field workplace worldwide in opposition to its $8 million funds regardless of a heavy promotion.” Actually sounds just like the creator had an axe to grind!
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From that summer time onward, as revealed by web site snapshots from the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine, the Corsage trivia web page obtained greater than 20 further edits, basically all criticizing the movie and the circumstances of its manufacturing and launch. (IMDb’s recommended criteria for including a bit of trivia is that it “ought to be attention-grabbing” and will “be a solution in a sport.”) There’s the truth that the actor who performs Krieps’ son is simply 5 years youthful than her; quibbles with deliberate anachronisms and historic inaccuracies; and an insinuation that Corsage was solely financed partly by the Luxembourg Movie Fund as a result of Krieps’ father, Bob Krieps, was as soon as its president and nonetheless holds affect over it because the nation’s director common of the Ministry of Tradition. (His division does certainly supervise the fund, which is credited for co-financing a number of of her movies, and the identical remark reveals up on the IMDb trivia pages for those titles going again at the very least a decade.)
The creator additionally accuses the graphic designer of a Corsage poster of plagiarizing promotional artwork from the 2018 interval drama The Favorite.
Jogs my memory of the poster for The Favorite
— Caleb Clayton Cohen (@claybryce) May 10, 2022
By far the longest and most critical grievance, nonetheless — if we put apart the ire over Krieps allegedly mendacity about being a smoker in actual life, and using the track “Assist Me Make it By the Night time,” which was “launched over 90 years after the movie’s occasions” — issues the #MeToo motion.
The replace, added in late December, says: “On June 18, 2022, Austrian director Katharina Mückstein shared a narrative on her Instagram account that learn: ‘Tonight a perpetrator will stand on the stage and can be applauded. And there may be nothing we will do to counter that.’” The creator concludes that the unnamed particular person was an individual concerned within the making of Corsage, which had its Vienna premiere that night, then goes on to color Kreutzer and Krieps as hypocrites for utilizing #MeToo to market the movie whereas failing to chop ties with a male actor about whom unsettling “rumors” had circulated. On Friday, it emerged that Florian Teichtmeister, who performs Emperor Franz Josef I, has been charged with — and confessed to — possession of kid pornography. Nevertheless it wasn’t clear that Mückstein had been referring to him in June, nor that the “rumors” pertained to this type of crime.
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In any occasion, it appears as if the devoted Corsage hater was extra broadly offended by the unconventional biopic’s “feminist” themes, perceiving some try and forged Empress Elisabeth as a sufferer of the patriarchy or an empowered lady forward of her time. In a submit describing her self-importance and cruelty, the author concludes: “She couldn’t be farther from a feminist.” The identical observe clarifies that Sissi “by no means lower her hair by her personal alternative,” a symbolic act of riot depicted within the movie. Elsewhere, the critic writes: “Manufacturing made 5 totally different wigs for Krieps to put on all through filming. Empress Elisabeth was well-known for her lengthy and lustrous hair.”
So, who’s waging this unusual, lonely warfare in opposition to Krieps, Kreutzer and their method to historic narrative? IMDb doesn’t show the profile of the consumer who submits a given trivia remark, and Susan Norget Movie Promotion, which handles PR for Corsage, didn’t instantly return a request for remark as to who might need a vendetta in opposition to this artistic staff. The thriller scribe took purpose on the company as effectively, for a “For Your Consideration” package that included Austrian chocolate merchandise bearing the picture of Empress Elisabeth: “Director Marie Kreutzer and actress Vicky Krieps have each criticized all of the merchandise and merchandising which are offered in Austria with photographs of Empress Elisabeth earlier than their movie’s advertising and marketing staff did the identical factor to advertise Corsage to awards voters,” they complained.
Nonetheless, as a result of a lot of the phrasing on this “trivia” matches wording on the Wikipedia web page for Corsage, one could make an informed guess about who received heated sufficient to trash it on this meticulous and roundabout style. The closest factor we’ve to a smoking gun is the #MeToo stuff, which first appeared on the Wiki pages for Katharina Mückstein and Corsage on December 22, 2023, and was added to IMDb across the similar time. The Wikipedia editor behind these adjustments, who goes by “Zoolver” and lists “historical past,” “movie” and “celebrities” amongst their pursuits, is kind of in all probability the IMDb editor as effectively.
As to their evidently private beef with Krieps, there should be an attention-grabbing backstory, and Rolling Stone invitations Zoolver to return ahead and share it. Till then, we’ll need to be happy with following this shadowy affect marketing campaign — which does, in any case, have the flavour of gossip in a royal court docket.
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