Monday, November 28, 2005
Friday Movie Review (early)
The new version of Pride and Prejudice, with Keira Knightly is terrific. Well reviewed, but dying at the box office, it is clearly the best movie based on a Jane Austen novel--it is a gift for the eye and a delight for the soul. It is also a major chick flick, but I'm not holding that against it.
The only people in it you recognize are Knightly, Donald Sutherland (surprisingly good), Brenda Blethyn and Dame Judi Dench. In an unforgiving role as the vain and fatuous Lydia, American rising star Jena Malone (most recently in the quiet The Ballad of Jack and Rose but also in Donnie Darko, Life as a House and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) does a good job acting like the sister you love despite herself. Absolutely new to me was 31 year old Matthew McFadyen, the guy who played moody Mr. Darcy. He just kept getting better and better as the movie progressed. A rich snob for sure but a good guy. We begin to like him as Knightly begins to love him. For his part, he helps his friend and his enemy, and we strongly suspect that not only does he find Lydia, but he secures the officer post in the blue coats (Blue coats?) for her seducer and pays the guy to marry her.
I keep losing track of details in this film to my memory of Sense and Sensibility in 1995, with which it shares an amazingly similar plot, and with my comparing it to the Hollywood version of 1940 with Lord Olivier and Greer Garson (beautiful and witty--but 36 years old), which version it outclasses in every category: It is beautiful, the witty, polite banter is in fact witty, the characters seem age appropriate at last, and we get to see a ball where people are actually having fun. If only Keira Knightly had a big chest, but I quibble.
For the fifth time, the purpose of the chick flick is to reassure women that true, ennobling love exists in the World and is worth the struggle to find it. This is all the more true when the chick flick is based on a novel written by a woman two centuries ago, as the primary purpose of the late 18th early 19th century novel was to give literate women something to do when they got bored with needle point and to reassure women that true, ennobling love exists in the World and is worth the struggle to find it. The novel was written about Georgian England, at the end of the 1700s, and published in 1813. There is nothing in the movie to suggest a time in which it is taking place. There are no sub-titles announcing dates and places. The soldier's kit and uniforms give no real clue; the dresses suggest Empire style but are not in it. It is a timeless England of the past as clear of historical context as the Shire was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Not that I'm complaining. Before this movie my favorite movie of Austen'a work was Persuasion, with a Hollywood version of a plain lead woman (that is to say she is very pretty), Amanda Root, and the guy who played Caesar on Rome, Ciaran Hinds, as the male lead. The funny thing is that on the box for the VHS tape at the rental stores, there are two beautiful people embracing, like on the covers of romantic novels, but neither of them were in the movie. I see I'm digressing. In that film, I thought the protagonist was a form of Austen. Here the echo of Austen is the friend Charlotte Lucas, who marries the intolerable parson Mr. Collins. Her explanation to Knightly why she accepted his proposal is too heartfelt not to have touched the artist's core. Or so I believe.
Just as the details of daily life and worship in Rome are a great delight for me, so too is the verisimilitude surrounding Knightly's household--the geese and pigs, the washing and ribbons (what was it about young women and ribbons in Georgian England? It is a continuing mystery to me). The dialogue sounds authentic, but it's never the mystery that Shakespeare sometimes is, and it is to the point and funny, like:
Elizabeth Bennet (Knightly) on first seeing Mr. Darcy: He looks miserable, poor soul.
Charlotte Lucas: Miserable he may be, but poor he most certainly is not. He owns half of Derbyshire.
Elizabeth Bennet: The miserable half?
or,
Elizabeth Bennet: I could more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine.
(She has the lion's share of the good lines)
and finally,
Mr. Bennet: Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins... And I will never see you again if you do.
(Father knows best).
It is 127 minutes long but never drags. If you've ever suffered though reading an Austen book you were not particularly fond of in school, you owe it to yourself to see this movie. Think of it as a grand reward for your efforts. It is.
The only people in it you recognize are Knightly, Donald Sutherland (surprisingly good), Brenda Blethyn and Dame Judi Dench. In an unforgiving role as the vain and fatuous Lydia, American rising star Jena Malone (most recently in the quiet The Ballad of Jack and Rose but also in Donnie Darko, Life as a House and The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) does a good job acting like the sister you love despite herself. Absolutely new to me was 31 year old Matthew McFadyen, the guy who played moody Mr. Darcy. He just kept getting better and better as the movie progressed. A rich snob for sure but a good guy. We begin to like him as Knightly begins to love him. For his part, he helps his friend and his enemy, and we strongly suspect that not only does he find Lydia, but he secures the officer post in the blue coats (Blue coats?) for her seducer and pays the guy to marry her.
I keep losing track of details in this film to my memory of Sense and Sensibility in 1995, with which it shares an amazingly similar plot, and with my comparing it to the Hollywood version of 1940 with Lord Olivier and Greer Garson (beautiful and witty--but 36 years old), which version it outclasses in every category: It is beautiful, the witty, polite banter is in fact witty, the characters seem age appropriate at last, and we get to see a ball where people are actually having fun. If only Keira Knightly had a big chest, but I quibble.
For the fifth time, the purpose of the chick flick is to reassure women that true, ennobling love exists in the World and is worth the struggle to find it. This is all the more true when the chick flick is based on a novel written by a woman two centuries ago, as the primary purpose of the late 18th early 19th century novel was to give literate women something to do when they got bored with needle point and to reassure women that true, ennobling love exists in the World and is worth the struggle to find it. The novel was written about Georgian England, at the end of the 1700s, and published in 1813. There is nothing in the movie to suggest a time in which it is taking place. There are no sub-titles announcing dates and places. The soldier's kit and uniforms give no real clue; the dresses suggest Empire style but are not in it. It is a timeless England of the past as clear of historical context as the Shire was in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Not that I'm complaining. Before this movie my favorite movie of Austen'a work was Persuasion, with a Hollywood version of a plain lead woman (that is to say she is very pretty), Amanda Root, and the guy who played Caesar on Rome, Ciaran Hinds, as the male lead. The funny thing is that on the box for the VHS tape at the rental stores, there are two beautiful people embracing, like on the covers of romantic novels, but neither of them were in the movie. I see I'm digressing. In that film, I thought the protagonist was a form of Austen. Here the echo of Austen is the friend Charlotte Lucas, who marries the intolerable parson Mr. Collins. Her explanation to Knightly why she accepted his proposal is too heartfelt not to have touched the artist's core. Or so I believe.
Just as the details of daily life and worship in Rome are a great delight for me, so too is the verisimilitude surrounding Knightly's household--the geese and pigs, the washing and ribbons (what was it about young women and ribbons in Georgian England? It is a continuing mystery to me). The dialogue sounds authentic, but it's never the mystery that Shakespeare sometimes is, and it is to the point and funny, like:
Elizabeth Bennet (Knightly) on first seeing Mr. Darcy: He looks miserable, poor soul.
Charlotte Lucas: Miserable he may be, but poor he most certainly is not. He owns half of Derbyshire.
Elizabeth Bennet: The miserable half?
or,
Elizabeth Bennet: I could more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine.
(She has the lion's share of the good lines)
and finally,
Mr. Bennet: Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins... And I will never see you again if you do.
(Father knows best).
It is 127 minutes long but never drags. If you've ever suffered though reading an Austen book you were not particularly fond of in school, you owe it to yourself to see this movie. Think of it as a grand reward for your efforts. It is.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:48 AM 
