pride, prejudice and adaptation(s) of all kinds

I’ve been working on this post for over a week— how sad is that? And I really don’t think even now I can decide if I actually liked the new Pride and Prejudice movie. That said, here’s a rambling view of the mess, to be read with this DISCLAIMER: I am nowhere near an authority on Austen. No hitting allowed.

It’s a tricky thing to approach, seeing as though this is the latest in a string of adaptations of one of the most beloved books ever written with a fan base that is both rabid and girly. (Right. And no biting, either.) The aforementioned adaptations ranging from the very good to the passable to the ridiculous. As someone who loves the novel, and as someone who has seen the majority of the attempts to bring it to film, it’s a difficult thing to assess. One of the reasons why the book has had such a long shelf-life is because there is so much in it: the fast-moving plot, the social commentary, the drawing room comedy, the family drama— there is enough material to fill five movies, one for each Bennett daughter, let alone one.

The new movie’s plot is the same, of course, though the sub-plots are abbreviated and minor characters go missing. It’s beautifully shot, the costumes are rather gorgeous (didn’t even mind the hair styles and actually rather love the pearls in Lizzy’s hair for Bingley’s ball) and the piano score played by the ultra-magnificent Jean-Yves Thibaudet was lush and gorgeous and very worthy of purchase. Speaking of music, Mr. Beveridge's Maggot, the go-to song for Austen romantic dances is notably missing from the Netherfield Ball, though they perform the same exact dance to different music. Maybe it was just me, but there wasn't the same lyrical quality to the dance without it. Or maybe those scenes were just shot better in the other movies. Whatever. I point it out because someone has to.

What most point out is that there is a great emphasis on class, or rather the utter lack of class, of the Bennett household: Pigs running round; Mud everywhere; The assembly rooms of Meryton being turned into a farm dance. While Darcy apparently has galleries of antiquities to rival the British Museum at Pemberley. It’s a stretch, and you can totally see the Hollywood rational behind these decisions: “look at the barriers between these two beautiful young people— she lives on a cow pattie and he on a Carrara marble quarry! They’ll never like each other! There’ll be tears, and fighting, and DRAMA! Let’s get some anvils with this slogan on it and pronto!” Ah, Focus Features Anvil Makers, I know you well.

The script is not as snarky as Huxley’s or as accurate as Davies,’ but there are glimmers of something palatable amidst all the giggling and overly complicated phrases (I suspect it’s the Emma Thompson script-doctoring making its appearance. If I was a betting girl, I’d wager that the great line about Darcy owning the “miserable half of Derbyshire” was all her doing.) Mostly, the new script isn’t much to write home about. And then there’s that controversial ending, which to me wasn’t that god-awful until poor Matthew McFayden had to repeat “Mrs. Darcy” like ten times before actually kissing Keira Knightley on the lips. Then I was suppressing the gag reflex, because after seeing a half-way decent movie I always like to add Bruce Springsteen to the soundtrack and “You had me at good-day” and just drown myself in goo. Because isn’t that romantic and Oscar-worthy. Gah.

Let’s do the rest of this on a character by character basis:

Bingley
Probably my biggest characterization beef. Bingley of the books, and of the BBC production, is clearly singled out as a goodnatured fellow, thoroughly honest, agreeable and firmly optimistic. Not as an idiotic, wholly naïve, dunderheaded fool who can’t speak in complete sentences and smiles nervously underneath his overly poofy hairdo. (Seriously. The hair? Messed UP, emphasis on the vertical. Taking cues from this wackjob, are we? Simon, Simon, you’re prettier than him, promise. Lose the mousse... Oh excuse me, product.) Truth be told, he’s rather the Gary Stu of the book, but it’s acceptable in the same way of doomed Cedric Diggory: their perfectness is part of their respective plots. He is the matrimonial catch of the century and all mothers be damned if their daughters don’t try to nab him. Naveen Andrews, now there was a Bingley. Bringing the pretty along with the intelligent, warm-hearted personality. I think I need a moment alone.... Ahem. Right.

Jane
A Bond girl in an Austen adaptation, welcome to the 21st century people. Jane has always been for me the hardest character to place in the Bennett family. She’s the sensible one, the pretty one, the honest, agreeable, optimistic one a la Bingley. In a way, she is exactly like Bingley— too perfect for her own good. But never, ever, in any adaptation, in any passage of the book, do I recall her being shy. Um, she can keep her own counsel, yes, and is mild in public but at home, among her family, there is never any undo reserve; and she consistently categorized as being confidants with Lizzy. She deludes herself, yes. She tries to get Lizzy to believe her own delusions, yes. (Sure, honey, you never really liked Bingley and you are so over him. Right, but could you say that without the mad teary eyes?) But outright lying or downright uncommunicative? No, my dears at Focus Features. That is the wrong Austen elder sister.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennett
Two consummate actors against two consummate actors, and man oh man, is this a hard one to call. Now, as I worship at the twinkly-eyed shrine that is Benjamin Whitrow, I was skeptical about the Sutherland. (Not that I don’t also love Sutherland the Elder. I mean, who else has magic fingers?) However, the two really don’t compare. Both had really sweet interactions with their respective Lizzies, and to a lesser extent with their Mrs’. But where Whitrow had this man of letters quality about him, Sutherland was this gardener/farmer hybrid (Question, Focus Peoples: why was he constantly carrying potted plants from one room into another? Was he doing some sort of botany experiment? Did Sutherland just become very attached to the plant? Was it the same plant or several of the same, in which case, why have five identical potted plants to move between the rooms of your house, unless you were planning to pull off a farce of sardine proportions?) Blethyn was shrill enough to be annoying as hell, and slighly goofy enough to teeter close to actually being funny, but she came nowhere near Alison Steadman’s tour-de-force of nerves, entitlement, and inanity. To sum up: The Mr. Bennets, tie. The Mrs. Bennets, Steadman by three wet hankies.

Lydia and Wickham
I think I’m going to have to go the Bride and Prejudice route with this pair. You really get a sense of Lydia being a modern-day tween: selfish, boy-crazy, pop-song mad, generally cruel to rival females and whiny to her family. The trick that B&P managed that the other adaptations didn’t was that we actually care about Lydia— for once I was sad that she got involved with Wickham, as opposed to huzzahing and thinking she got what she deserved. And Wickham— actively nice and evil at the same time. (Not to mention pretty. What? Do you think chick flicks are all about the talking? Silly rabbit.) Both characters unfortunately got relegated to the background in the new movie, which is a shame, because Wickham is such an interesting character. The BBC’s Adrian Lukis (aside from his unfortunate un-pretty appearance) did a nice job in showing that he and Lizzy have a genuinely complicated relationship: there is a friendship, and a bit of lust, and after the revelation, disappointment/disgust, and after the marriage, a sort of grudging acceptance, a good bit of which gets played out on screen. But we couldn’t for once have a grown-up villain, could we? Anyway, with nil screen time, it was a bit unbelievable that he would suddenly spill his deep dark Darcy secret to Lizzy who he knew all of what? Two minutes? But no matter.

The Other Bennett Sisters
... whom I always feel bad for, because in the movies they’re either magically disappear, or exist but are a) ignored or b) made out to be these bat-shit crazy girls who need to be locked up, but because they’re Bennetts, tee hee hee, said craziness is taken as just part of their country charm as opposed to needing massive amounts of prescription drugs. (See Crazy-Enough-For-Two Combo Sis and her Snapping Snake Dance of Scary Significance, Mary and the Howling Dog Chorus, and Kitty and the Ill-Mannered Parrot.) Kitty is shadows of Lydia, except whereas Lydia benefits from being her mother’s favorite, Kitty ends up with the typical middle child desire for attention. Mary of the Books and Spinnets is shown stereotypically to be a dowdy prude who apparently learns nothing from all those philosophical treaties she’s always reading and quoting. But in the book, neither are that ridiculous. Kitty is to Lydia as Jane is to Lizzy; she may be older, but she can be swayed by her confidant’s more vehement opinions. Mary, while bookish and accomplished, is not an idiot starved for attention— she has some of the most insightful remarks in the whole of the novel— and in fact, is the first person to give Darcy his real due (whereas it takes Lizzy how many pages to realize the guy is decent?)

And this is where I go on a rant, because dammit, I’m sick and tired of the Mary maligning. (You can skip this if you like, but I really need to get this off my chest.) She’s really terribly interesting. It goes hand in hand with the general assumption that Lizzy is such a phenom because she’s bookish and unconventional. No, dears, she’s not, on both counts. She’s a social creature, who has many interests. She’s witty, and she’s not stupid, but she’s not this voracious reader who prefers a book to a ball. (That would be Mary.) And she is openly husband hunting as blatantly as her other sisters (save Mary). Lizzy stipulates that she would only marry for love, but Mary is the real radical in not even considering love as an inducement to matrimony. So, why the Mary hate, people? Show my career girl some R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The new movie actually did this by adding that little snippet of a scene between Mary and her father— to show how seriously she takes her accomplishments. Rock on, Talulah Riley. Rock on.

And now, a diversion: Working on this post (and quite frankly it’s so long now that it qualifies as a short novel, I would think) I had a bit of a brain wave: there should be a spin-off book with Mary as an amateur detective. (What? Yes, I have too much time on my hands. But hear me out, this is good stuff.) Can’t you see it: she’s unconventional by nature, she has that philosophic, pedantic, scientific nature so prevalent in Holmesian detectives, and she searches for accomplishment outside of the home of which she can be proud, i.e. a career. Dude. It could happen (there are worse continuations of P&P out there— trust me on this one).

And back to our regularly scheduled nit-picking...

Mr. Collins
I love Tom Hollander. I love him when he’s a jam-eater in the process of growing a spine, a sarcastic Cambridge man, and an upper class twit. Yeah, he’s short, but so am I. J’adore. David Bamber played Mr. Collins with a greasy sort of obsequience that works well on its own terms, but the 40s version’s (the very huggable Melville Cooper) had that essential quality of being an oblivious yet well-meaning oaf. Hollander can’t really pull off the oaf part, but he nails the well-meaning obliviousness, and my heart broke a little bit when he toted his little flower all round Bingley’s house looking for Lizzy like a forlorn puppy. Because Collins is never shown as a villain in films, but rather as comic relief. (I've got to go back and re-read the book to recall how Austen specifically characterizes him-- it can't possibly be as simplistic as the myriad screenplays would have us believe.) The Collins of Film can be hilarious (thank you, Mr. Bamber and your unfortunate hair and hand gestures) but really, in the end, he’s an okay guy. He’s not the prince on the white horse (Darcy), but Charlotte is absolutely right when she says that she could have done much worse. And this is the kicker to which silly tweens should pay attention: his proposal is just as good as Darcy’s— even better if one takes into account that Darcy adds a lot of insults to the front of his. He’s honest and up front with her, he wants to do right by her family, and he can provide for her. For most women (and certainly for Charlotte), that is enough. What pissed me off was the weird characterization of the family Bennett towards him: they laughed at him for being ridiculous... when he wasn’t being ridiculous. Was he wearing silly hats off camera or something?

Lady Catherine DeBourgh
My mom’s going to freak when I say this but the Dame Judy missed with this one for me. (Hell, I guess she really can’t be perfect in everything.) She can play the heavy well, and she serves her purpose but Barbara Leigh-Hunt rocked the DeBourgh in ‘95 and there’ll never be another thing like her. Severe yet sarcastically funny, entitled but utterly inappropriate, and perfect line delivery on the classic “And if I had ever learned, I would be a true proficient!”

Caroline Bingley
Let us choose to forget that this updated version loses both Mr and Mrs Hurst and their comic potential. Let us focus on Caroline, that social climber, that Queen of the Jellyfish, that Not-So-Subtle-Darcy-Flirt, and how absolutely miscast and misused the character was. Where was Anna Chancellor's fabulous hauteur? Where was Frieda Inescort's catty sarcasm? A block of wood could have played Caroline with more wit and facial expression. I remember Kelly Reilly from Tom Jones and distinctly recall that her face had flexibility then. What the hell happened, Kelly? Did the French do something to you? Did Catherine Deneuve threaten to drain you for her ritualistic blood baths that keeps her looking gorgeous even though she's got to be practically 80 by now? A great disappointment, Kelly.

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Lizzy and Mr. Darcy.
Keira’s no Meryl Streep, this is true, but for once they actually someone age appropriate and that works well. The girlishness is refreshing, as opposed to watching Jennifer Ehle try really hard to appear “free-spirited” while skipping down a hill with a ram-rod straight posture. The over giggling, well, that’s a problem with all the Bennett girls characterization and not just Lizzy. Matthew McFayden is pretty and brooding enough for me, and after following Wet-Shirt Firth and Sir Olivier, I think he holds up well.

HOWEVER, and these are my two biggest issues with the movie: #1, the proposal scene, which oddly enough takes place in the rain, outdoors, in some sort of ruined shrine courtesy of the Bronte sisters. He tells her her family sucks but he adores her. She gets her panties in a twist because of the rain and because he told Bingley to forget about Jane. He realizes his underwear is riding up as well and that perhaps this wasn’t the best time to spring this proposal, but now that he’s into it, he’s not sorry about stopping the marriage, and hey, pretty lady, at least be civil to me. She’s pissed and hates him and won’t marry him. He’s heartbroken and pissed and fine, then I don’t want ya, bitch. And THEN they have this moment, where they look at one another, and their eyelids half close and it’s like they’re gonna kiss but decide not to because dammit, we hate each other right? Hate. HATE! At least, wait, hmm... Maybe in 40 minutes. They show this scene in every friggin’ commercial with this god-awful pop music EVERY DAY since it’s premiered and I keep hissing at my television as if that would make the ridiculousness go away.

#2, the pick-up dance scene at the ball. Now, I’m not generally part of the Continuity Police, and yes, I realize that editing is difficult. But terminally STUPID people could realize that the shot of Darcy and Lizzy dancing was NOT in the Bingley ballroom. Were they transported by their repressed love into the Curiously Empty Ballroom of Lovey-Doveyness? Did everyone else in the very crowded ballroom suddenly go, “hell, let’s move away from these two, they’re having a MOMENT over here that needs a little privacy. We’ll just regroup with y’all at the end, k?” while at the meantime, painting said-empty room in a completely different color and then reverting it back, because hey, the Cream Dreaminess just didn’t work for them?

I think if I continue any longer my head will explode. So that was that, then. Good night.