SERVICEABLE, BUT NOT STELLAR AUSTEN

PRIDE & PREJUDICE
Directed by Joe Wright; written by Deborah Moggach, based on the novel by Jane Austen; cinematography by Roman Osin; edited by Paul Tothill; music by Dario Marianelli; production design by Sarah Greenwood; art direction by Nick Gottschalk and Mark Swain; set decoration by Katie Spencer; costume design by Jacqueline Durran
With: Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Judi Dench, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Tom Hollander, Rupert Friend, Claudie Blakley, Simon Woods, and Kelly Reilly. Rated PG for some mild thematic elements. Running time: 135 minutes



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

I write this film review with trepidation. Pride & Prejudice is the most recent film adaptation—one of ten film or television adaptations listed on the Internet Movie Database—of a book by Jane Austen. Austen, the daughter of an English clergyman, wrote just six novels during her short life that ended in 1817 at age forty-one. Since women were not expected to be writers, her books were published under “anonymous” during her lifetime, and some were only published posthumously. Astonishingly, this obscure woman’s writings continue to be in print and widely available nearly two hundred years after her death. Her books have been directly adapted for film and television, including attempts to transplant Austen stories to a much different setting from Georgian and Regency England. Bride & Prejudice (2004) and Kandukondain Kandukondain ([2000] based on Sense and Sensibility) are recent films that set Austen stories within Indian culture. Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Comedy (2003) sets Austen’s most popular novel amongst contemporary Mormons. Alicia Silverstone’s character in the contemporary teen film Clueless (1995) is reminiscent of the title character in Austen’s Emma. This persistent popularity cannot be the result of luck or even the machinations of a clever, hard-working literary agent. This is the result of writing that continues to be fresh as it illustrates timeless universal human foibles in the stories written of her time. That is why she continues to find an audience and continues to be a beloved author. Few love her more passionately than Wolf Moon’s dear Madame Editor. For our dear Madame Editor, Austen is held in the same regard that many others reserve for sacred texts. As an Austen-illiterate who is only familiar with her work through the shortcut of film and television adaptations, I know that I must tread very carefully. Yet the truth is that film viewers greatly outnumber the individuals who will actually read any particular book. Thus the question that I must answer is does Pride & Prejudice—irrespective of its pedigree as a beloved classic novel—work as a film?

The answer is that Pride & Prejudice mostly does work. It comes from excellent source material, and the saga of love triumphing over the lovers’ natures is always engaging. It is a serviceable adaptation—though certainly not a stellar one. While I won’t try to compare it directly with the novel, I will compare it to the excellent A&E/BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice (1995) that was directed by Simon Langton from Andrew Davies’s screenplay. It may be better known by its cast, with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. Matthew Macfadyen (MI-5, The Way We Live Now) and Keira Knightley (Bend It Like Beckham, King Arthur, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films), two fine young actors, have those roles in director Joe Wright’s 2005 film version. It is, however, less than half the length of the 300-minute miniseries. That extra time allows the miniseries to more fully develop scenes to show the distinctive qualities of even Austen’s minor characters. This film feels rushed, and several characters get short shrifted. Kelly Reilly’s Caroline Bingley has a “lean and hungry” look á la Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar befitting her scheming nature, but she never fully reveals her matrimonial interest in Mr. Darcy nor her naked viciousness in furthering her intentions. Mr. Wickham (Rupert Friend) is a dashing cad as the soldier (and former Darcy confederate) who runs off with  Lydia, one of the younger Bennet daughters. Yet his villainy is softened because he is not seen as setting his sights on the brassy flirt Lydia after being rejected by older sister Elizabeth. While Mr. Bingley must always be no more than a distant second as the most attractive eligible bachelor in the Bennets’ social circle, Simon Woods’s Mr. Bingley comes across as a male version of the “dumb blonde.” It makes one wonder whether Elizabeth’s beloved older sister Jane (Rosamund Pike) is really being “robbed of her chance at happiness” when Darcy discourages the insipid Mr. Bingley’s interest in her.

Director Joe Wright has stated that he envisioned filming Pride & Prejudice with realism for England circa 1800 as opposed to setting it in an idealized England of this period. To that end, the film is shot using subdued lighting for the interiors. This is a technique that Shekhar Kapur used quite effectively for Elizabeth (1998). However, that film dealt with the multifaceted deadly court intrigues surrounding the young Elizabeth I. Dingy lighting would seem to be less helpful when the intrigues revolve around love and marriage. This desire for realism may also explain why the film doesn’t hide the farm animals that would have been ubiquitous during that time and seems to dwell on England’s reputation for rain, using it in several scenes including a rather prolonged meditative sequence. He also made a choice to cast Knightley less, he states, because she is a rising young star than that he felt that her tomboyishness provided the toughness he was looking for from his Elizabeth Bennet. Macfadyen, too, was a risky choice as the successor to Colin Firth. He had been featured in British television series but had mostly appeared in supporting roles in films. Hardly any of his roles seemed to show him as a romantic lead. Yet the two actors successfully capture both their character’s essence and the powerful tension in the relationship. Even though the rest of the cast does as good a job of supporting the leads as possible, given their sometimes abbreviated screen time, the success of the film depends on the leads providing the essential definition of their differences and the chemistry to make it matter.

Wright and cinematographer Roman Osin execute bold and aggressive camerawork. This works quite successfully during the party sequences and, especially, the dance sequences. The camera is quite active and frequently circles its main characters. This does occasionally seem to be overused and needlessly draws attention to itself when it dizzyingly wheels round and round and round.

Pride & Prejudice is a flawed film, rushing to introduce the legion of characters that Austen created. It undercuts its romance in its efforts to achieve realism. The visuals are bold but sometimes draw too much attention to themselves. Yet the story of the Bennet family’s plight of having too many daughters and their need to find suitable husbands continues to be compelling. The Bennet matriarch’s (Brenda Blethyn) all-too-transparent machinations to make the right matches are still a source of humor. The pride and prejudice that must be tamed for love to flourish are universal, and the leads deliver those qualities and the resulting ambivalence. Despite the successful chemistry between Macfadyen and Knightley, the film cannot claim to have surpassed the version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. That was a superlative adaptation. The current film may further fail to deliver the snap and crackle of Austen’s wit, but it will be the Austenophiliac readers—and not the filmgoers—who will make that case.  

 

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