![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
That Movie
So I went to see a lovely movie today, one apparently based upon the work of Jane Austen. I enjoyed it very much, although there were certainly points at which Miss Austen would have swooned dead away.
Spoilers abound...
What is done well?
The Bennet's house looks like a gentleman's house, not a museum. Every room looks lived in and not entirely picked up, as if (here's a radical thought) there were five daughters of various ages, and a demanding mistress who placed more importance upon her smelling salts than tidiness. And the girls seemed like sisters--all the giggling and poking and running about convinced me that this was a real family. When Lizzie says to Lady Catherine that having only one sister out at a time might be proper, but would do nothing for sisterly affection, you can see where she's coming from (imagine Lydia Bennet driving her family crazy because Lizzie and Jane are allowed to go to parties and she is not).
Mrs. Bennet, while a deeply frivolous woman, is not a complete idiot. And you can see that Mr. Bennet not only married her for love, but loves her still (there's a brief scene which hints that they are not only fond of each other, but that Mr. Bennet has not given up the comforts of the marital bed). I liked this, because it's so easy to make a standing joke out of Mrs. Bennet. As for Mr. B, the movie doesn't let him off the hook--when Lizzie tells him not to let Lydia go to Brighton and he does, all for a quiet life, you can see the train wreck just ahead as clearly as Lizzie does. And when he gives Lizzie his consent for her marriage it's truly touching: she is his favorite daughter and he loves her and is startled and touched to see his girl in love.
Oddly enough, one of the things I loved was that the men rarely appear entirely clean shaven; most of the time they have a day or more growth of beard. Nice touch. In the same way (as with Sense and Sensibility) the girls clearly have a limited wardrobe, which gets worn and reworn.
The Bennets' meals look familial--even the servants don't seem particularly starched. There's one maid who sings as she goes about her work among the family in a way that would never be tolerated in a more well-regulated hosehold. Still...see related cavil below.
I really liked Mr. Darcy--especially in the early parts, where he is clearly a man who knows how to do his duty, but is deer-in-the-headlights stunned at the necessity of being polite to a ballroom full of people he has never seen before. He has social anxiety disorder written all over him.
I liked that Elizabeth, when pressed to play the pianoforte, is clearly an amateur. None of that "oh, no, I can't play" stuff and then sitting down to outshine her sister Mary who works so hard at it.
I liked the woman who played Charlotte Lucas a lot--she is genuinely not pretty (I thought at first she was the same actress who played Hugh Grant's sister in Notting Hill, but IMDB.com says I'm wrong) but animated and smart.
Jena Malone's Lydia is wonderfully young. She's not evil, or even particularly selfish, she's just so painfully young and without judgment. I liked that; it's easy to demonize Lydia.
A nice thing: at the ball at Netherfield when Mr. Bennet tells Mary to stop playing already and she leaves the pianoforte in tears, we get to see him find her and comfort her. It's not in the text, but it's a nice touch.
The ending: okay, by that point I had decided that this was an alternate-universe version of the story, in which we get to see Lizzie and Darcy in, as the Times puts it, a post-coital clinch. Given that Miss Austen doesn't even let them kiss, this is, shall we say, veering from the text. But what I liked was that it is Darcy, more than Lizzie, who is clearly translated by their love.
What I didn't like:
Darcy, Bingley and Miss Bingley show up at the first party and the dance stops. What, someone mentioned what their Paine-Webber broker had said? Not.
Granted, the Bennets are not wealthy. Still, would Mr. Bennet be opening the front door to Lady Catherine in the middle of the night? They surely have more servants than they're given here, and not all of them work in the farm or fields. And they go out of their way to call them Mrs Hill and Mr. hill. Honorifics? Not in Austen.
Pemberly is Chatworth, I know that. But the Pemberly they show us is more a museum than a real place, and gave me no sense of Darcy's character or the way he grew up.
We never really see that Lizzie is interested in Wickham, so her discovery of his perfidy (how often does one get to use perfidy in a sentence?) misses that little resonance.
Lady Catherine--Judi Dench is my hero, and she's great in the earlier scenes (and it's nifty, since it seems to me that Lady Catherine is always cast as a Edna Mae Whitty-sort of character, to see her as so substantial and beefy a woman) but they have her show up at the Bennet's house in the middle of the night for no good reason I could fathom. It doesn't necessarily telescope the action, and it does drag Mr. Bennet in to the scene, which then makes his surprise at Mr. Darcy's proposal a little less reasonable).
The music is fine up to the point where Darcy and Lizzie, en dishabille(!!) meet each other in the fields. First of all, I cannot imagine so sterling a beacon of propriety as Fitzwilliam Darcy walking over the fields in his shirt. breeches and greatcoat--no waistcoat, no neckcloth. And Elizabetth appears to be gadding about in nightshift and dressing gown(!!). But up to that point the music had been fine; suddenly it goes into romantic overcompensation mode. Okay, remember the movie Witness, with Harrison Ford? There's a bit of music that comes up when they're building the barn, and later when all the Amish come swarming, summoned by the bell, to witness what's going on at the Lapp farm and thereby stop the violence: that piece of music is called "Here come the Amish." So watching this scene, with Mr. Darcy striding across the dewy, early morning fields, with Too Much Music in the background, all I could think was "Here comes Mr. Darcy." Ramp it back, boys.
The clothes. Okay, they're mostly fine. I have no problem with the fact that many women are wearing the older-style dresses of ten years or more before--after all, with what one of those dresses cost, you kept it until it had to be cut down for children's clothes. But Elizabeth's clothes were not cut according to the mode, but were lower waisted (I guess in deference to Keira Knightly, who has no discernable tits). There just seemed to be an odd implementation of the styles of the time, and I could see no reason for it. Miss Bingley also wore a sleeveless spaghetti-strapped dress to the ball at Netherfield, and while that might be okay (particularly because Ms B is tres fashion forward) it jarred.
Mr. Bingley is so good-natured he seems mentally challenged. No wonder he needs Darcy to tell him what to do. Although the scene where he rehearses his proposal to Jane was very funny.
The apparent necessity to explain things--I guess they're afraid that much of the audience won't understand how crucial a blow to the family (and herself) Lydia's elopement is, but I thought they hit it with a hammer until it lay there like a dead thing. Pfui.
I think that's it, really. Yes, it's Bronte-fied. You never forget for a moment that this was the era when people built picturesque ruins on their properties, when the Romantics held the popular imagination. And if you're into Austen it's hard not to wonder what the author of Northanger Abbey would have made of it. But it's fun. It's entertaining. It is not your mother's P&P, and it's not Miss Austen's, but it I enjoyed it. Mostly.
Spoilers abound...
What is done well?
The Bennet's house looks like a gentleman's house, not a museum. Every room looks lived in and not entirely picked up, as if (here's a radical thought) there were five daughters of various ages, and a demanding mistress who placed more importance upon her smelling salts than tidiness. And the girls seemed like sisters--all the giggling and poking and running about convinced me that this was a real family. When Lizzie says to Lady Catherine that having only one sister out at a time might be proper, but would do nothing for sisterly affection, you can see where she's coming from (imagine Lydia Bennet driving her family crazy because Lizzie and Jane are allowed to go to parties and she is not).
Mrs. Bennet, while a deeply frivolous woman, is not a complete idiot. And you can see that Mr. Bennet not only married her for love, but loves her still (there's a brief scene which hints that they are not only fond of each other, but that Mr. Bennet has not given up the comforts of the marital bed). I liked this, because it's so easy to make a standing joke out of Mrs. Bennet. As for Mr. B, the movie doesn't let him off the hook--when Lizzie tells him not to let Lydia go to Brighton and he does, all for a quiet life, you can see the train wreck just ahead as clearly as Lizzie does. And when he gives Lizzie his consent for her marriage it's truly touching: she is his favorite daughter and he loves her and is startled and touched to see his girl in love.
Oddly enough, one of the things I loved was that the men rarely appear entirely clean shaven; most of the time they have a day or more growth of beard. Nice touch. In the same way (as with Sense and Sensibility) the girls clearly have a limited wardrobe, which gets worn and reworn.
The Bennets' meals look familial--even the servants don't seem particularly starched. There's one maid who sings as she goes about her work among the family in a way that would never be tolerated in a more well-regulated hosehold. Still...see related cavil below.
I really liked Mr. Darcy--especially in the early parts, where he is clearly a man who knows how to do his duty, but is deer-in-the-headlights stunned at the necessity of being polite to a ballroom full of people he has never seen before. He has social anxiety disorder written all over him.
I liked that Elizabeth, when pressed to play the pianoforte, is clearly an amateur. None of that "oh, no, I can't play" stuff and then sitting down to outshine her sister Mary who works so hard at it.
I liked the woman who played Charlotte Lucas a lot--she is genuinely not pretty (I thought at first she was the same actress who played Hugh Grant's sister in Notting Hill, but IMDB.com says I'm wrong) but animated and smart.
Jena Malone's Lydia is wonderfully young. She's not evil, or even particularly selfish, she's just so painfully young and without judgment. I liked that; it's easy to demonize Lydia.
A nice thing: at the ball at Netherfield when Mr. Bennet tells Mary to stop playing already and she leaves the pianoforte in tears, we get to see him find her and comfort her. It's not in the text, but it's a nice touch.
The ending: okay, by that point I had decided that this was an alternate-universe version of the story, in which we get to see Lizzie and Darcy in, as the Times puts it, a post-coital clinch. Given that Miss Austen doesn't even let them kiss, this is, shall we say, veering from the text. But what I liked was that it is Darcy, more than Lizzie, who is clearly translated by their love.
What I didn't like:
Darcy, Bingley and Miss Bingley show up at the first party and the dance stops. What, someone mentioned what their Paine-Webber broker had said? Not.
Granted, the Bennets are not wealthy. Still, would Mr. Bennet be opening the front door to Lady Catherine in the middle of the night? They surely have more servants than they're given here, and not all of them work in the farm or fields. And they go out of their way to call them Mrs Hill and Mr. hill. Honorifics? Not in Austen.
Pemberly is Chatworth, I know that. But the Pemberly they show us is more a museum than a real place, and gave me no sense of Darcy's character or the way he grew up.
We never really see that Lizzie is interested in Wickham, so her discovery of his perfidy (how often does one get to use perfidy in a sentence?) misses that little resonance.
Lady Catherine--Judi Dench is my hero, and she's great in the earlier scenes (and it's nifty, since it seems to me that Lady Catherine is always cast as a Edna Mae Whitty-sort of character, to see her as so substantial and beefy a woman) but they have her show up at the Bennet's house in the middle of the night for no good reason I could fathom. It doesn't necessarily telescope the action, and it does drag Mr. Bennet in to the scene, which then makes his surprise at Mr. Darcy's proposal a little less reasonable).
The music is fine up to the point where Darcy and Lizzie, en dishabille(!!) meet each other in the fields. First of all, I cannot imagine so sterling a beacon of propriety as Fitzwilliam Darcy walking over the fields in his shirt. breeches and greatcoat--no waistcoat, no neckcloth. And Elizabetth appears to be gadding about in nightshift and dressing gown(!!). But up to that point the music had been fine; suddenly it goes into romantic overcompensation mode. Okay, remember the movie Witness, with Harrison Ford? There's a bit of music that comes up when they're building the barn, and later when all the Amish come swarming, summoned by the bell, to witness what's going on at the Lapp farm and thereby stop the violence: that piece of music is called "Here come the Amish." So watching this scene, with Mr. Darcy striding across the dewy, early morning fields, with Too Much Music in the background, all I could think was "Here comes Mr. Darcy." Ramp it back, boys.
The clothes. Okay, they're mostly fine. I have no problem with the fact that many women are wearing the older-style dresses of ten years or more before--after all, with what one of those dresses cost, you kept it until it had to be cut down for children's clothes. But Elizabeth's clothes were not cut according to the mode, but were lower waisted (I guess in deference to Keira Knightly, who has no discernable tits). There just seemed to be an odd implementation of the styles of the time, and I could see no reason for it. Miss Bingley also wore a sleeveless spaghetti-strapped dress to the ball at Netherfield, and while that might be okay (particularly because Ms B is tres fashion forward) it jarred.
Mr. Bingley is so good-natured he seems mentally challenged. No wonder he needs Darcy to tell him what to do. Although the scene where he rehearses his proposal to Jane was very funny.
The apparent necessity to explain things--I guess they're afraid that much of the audience won't understand how crucial a blow to the family (and herself) Lydia's elopement is, but I thought they hit it with a hammer until it lay there like a dead thing. Pfui.
I think that's it, really. Yes, it's Bronte-fied. You never forget for a moment that this was the era when people built picturesque ruins on their properties, when the Romantics held the popular imagination. And if you're into Austen it's hard not to wonder what the author of Northanger Abbey would have made of it. But it's fun. It's entertaining. It is not your mother's P&P, and it's not Miss Austen's, but it I enjoyed it. Mostly.