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shewhomustGail suggested we go to the afternoon showing of Pride and Prejudice: and the short version is that it was a perfectly agreeable way to spend an afternoon: it wasn't as good as the last movie I saw (Curse of the Were-Rabbit), nor as good as the book (d'oh!) but nor was it as bad as I'd been warned.
The real stars of the film were the locations: if the English Tourist Board didn't have money in the production, they should have, for the camera lingers lovingly on stately home after stately home. Had their agents been doing their jobs properly, they would have had name by name billing (Netherfield Park played by Basildon Park, and with a cameo appearance from Burghley House as Rosings). Fortunately the Working Title web site spills the beans... The houses are all slightly too grand, I suspect, but this is in the nature of movies: if Lady Catherine de Burgh really lived at Burghley, one of the largest homes in England, her sense of her own importance might be justified, which would never do. The note on Chatsworth remarks that "Jane Austen mentions Chatsworth in the book, and the Duchess believes that the author was thinking of Chatsworth when describing Pemberley." Not that the Duchess has any reason to promote Chatsworth as a tourist destination... But grand though Mr Darcy is, he is not the heir to a dukedom.
Only Longbourn (Groombridge Place) is built on a domestic scale, and filled with noisy young women to the point where I wonder if the design has erred in the opposite direction. Boisterous though the younger Bennet sisters are (and someone should have a word with the servant at Netherfield who does not know that only the eldest sister is Miss Bennet, and that it is permissible to refer to the younger girls as "Miss Mary Bennet" and so on...), Longbourn is not the overcrowded zoo from which Fanny Price escapes to Mansfield Park. Here it is not possible to have a private conversation without sisters lining up three deep outside the door. Elizabeth understandably spends much of her time outdoors, despite the house's exterior having been transformed into some sort of Home Farm (many fine shots of impressively built pigs).
The conversion of Elizabeth Bennet into an outdoor girl, excused hats (for the two curious omissions in this film are that Elizabeth doesn't appear to own a single hat, and Darcy doesn't seem to have a first name), is taken to the bounds of plausiblity and beyond: to admire "the finest woods in the country" (which form part of the well-maintained estates of Pemberley) is one thing, to perch like Caspar David Friedrich's mountaineer on the very edge of the High Peak, quite another. What's more (and it is perhaps this that prevented the film receiving the full backing of England's Tourist Board) a Bennet sister who ventures outside for a romantic encounter is sure to be caught in a downpour (thus saving Mr Darcy from the obligation to follow Colin Firth in plunging into lakes). No wonder that Lady Catherine seems to have insisted on having her final encounter with Elizabeth in the house, rather than stroll through the shrubbery as they do in the book.
It is true that Jane and Elizabeth are given to fits of the giggles: they are played somewhat younger, closer in age to the younger sisters, than is usual: this worked perfectly well within the film. Indeed, one of the most interesting features of this interpretation was its refusal to depict the Bennets as a family divided between the Good and the Bad. From Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn we are entitled to expect much, and I think they deliver: with his indolence, and her good-nature and deep, if misguided, affection for her daughters, Mr and Mrs Bennet made a believable couple, for once, and parents who might just have produced this very mixed set of daughters.
The question remains, what is this film for? I watched it against a consciousness of previous versions, the book, the previous TV adaptations, the version with Laurence Olivier with Mr Darcy (and a script by Aldous Huxley)... There's an audience, I suppose, who insist on new movies, but don't mind their being adaptations of classic novels, and this film was made for them. It seems a lot of effort for something agreeable, but entirely disposable.
The real stars of the film were the locations: if the English Tourist Board didn't have money in the production, they should have, for the camera lingers lovingly on stately home after stately home. Had their agents been doing their jobs properly, they would have had name by name billing (Netherfield Park played by Basildon Park, and with a cameo appearance from Burghley House as Rosings). Fortunately the Working Title web site spills the beans... The houses are all slightly too grand, I suspect, but this is in the nature of movies: if Lady Catherine de Burgh really lived at Burghley, one of the largest homes in England, her sense of her own importance might be justified, which would never do. The note on Chatsworth remarks that "Jane Austen mentions Chatsworth in the book, and the Duchess believes that the author was thinking of Chatsworth when describing Pemberley." Not that the Duchess has any reason to promote Chatsworth as a tourist destination... But grand though Mr Darcy is, he is not the heir to a dukedom.
Only Longbourn (Groombridge Place) is built on a domestic scale, and filled with noisy young women to the point where I wonder if the design has erred in the opposite direction. Boisterous though the younger Bennet sisters are (and someone should have a word with the servant at Netherfield who does not know that only the eldest sister is Miss Bennet, and that it is permissible to refer to the younger girls as "Miss Mary Bennet" and so on...), Longbourn is not the overcrowded zoo from which Fanny Price escapes to Mansfield Park. Here it is not possible to have a private conversation without sisters lining up three deep outside the door. Elizabeth understandably spends much of her time outdoors, despite the house's exterior having been transformed into some sort of Home Farm (many fine shots of impressively built pigs).
The conversion of Elizabeth Bennet into an outdoor girl, excused hats (for the two curious omissions in this film are that Elizabeth doesn't appear to own a single hat, and Darcy doesn't seem to have a first name), is taken to the bounds of plausiblity and beyond: to admire "the finest woods in the country" (which form part of the well-maintained estates of Pemberley) is one thing, to perch like Caspar David Friedrich's mountaineer on the very edge of the High Peak, quite another. What's more (and it is perhaps this that prevented the film receiving the full backing of England's Tourist Board) a Bennet sister who ventures outside for a romantic encounter is sure to be caught in a downpour (thus saving Mr Darcy from the obligation to follow Colin Firth in plunging into lakes). No wonder that Lady Catherine seems to have insisted on having her final encounter with Elizabeth in the house, rather than stroll through the shrubbery as they do in the book.
It is true that Jane and Elizabeth are given to fits of the giggles: they are played somewhat younger, closer in age to the younger sisters, than is usual: this worked perfectly well within the film. Indeed, one of the most interesting features of this interpretation was its refusal to depict the Bennets as a family divided between the Good and the Bad. From Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn we are entitled to expect much, and I think they deliver: with his indolence, and her good-nature and deep, if misguided, affection for her daughters, Mr and Mrs Bennet made a believable couple, for once, and parents who might just have produced this very mixed set of daughters.
The question remains, what is this film for? I watched it against a consciousness of previous versions, the book, the previous TV adaptations, the version with Laurence Olivier with Mr Darcy (and a script by Aldous Huxley)... There's an audience, I suppose, who insist on new movies, but don't mind their being adaptations of classic novels, and this film was made for them. It seems a lot of effort for something agreeable, but entirely disposable.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 12:10 pm (UTC)Must go see, even though not expecting much beyond simply agreeable...
I still prefer the old BBC Garvie/Rintoul version, followed closely in second place by the Ehle/Firth one.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:02 pm (UTC)Come back and tell me what you think after you've seen the movie!