Another movie that pretends to be "historic".
The movie and several reviews claim this movie to be historic. In the main lines it surely is, but in all details overdramatized, overheroizing. We see the "so clever" Maria-Theresia teach herself in secret, almost a born genius apparently, highly unlikely to be real. She makes mature proposals about her wedding an must fight hard for the man she wants, in reality there was not much opposition. A kind of affair with an hungarian count, tears and an emotional, desperate appell to obtain hungarian troops, BS, nothing of the sort ever happened.
There is no doubt she was an important figure in the european history. Her major achievements however were several reforms in the state, the army, the education system, the justice, the economy, none of which is represented in the movie at all. Instead we get a view of her rack and get treatened with a lot of footnotes thought to be entertaining. A disgrace. If you really want to know something about Maria Theresia, read in Wiki or in a book.
This is a real annoying and irritating aspect in most of the newer german-language filmmaking. A strong disease called "Zeitgeist" that spreads from Germany, first only in broadcast and newspapers, now having reached also documentaries and the plots of movies and that seems not to be curable. To look at things not how they are, but how they are wished to be by the "progressive" intelligentia, an then sell them as indeed they would be so. Hopeless!
5 stars for production and entertainment, settings and acting, they were all decent and OK, but can't save the production as a whole.
