Can we ever have too many decent Jane Austen adaptations?
In 1797, an unmarried upper-class young lady began writing a romance, the drafts of which she had to keep hidden beneath her sewing. It was perhaps an inconvenient way to compose one of the most tautly formed pieces of English prose we possess, but it did not seem to hamper the shrewdly witty Jane Austen. In another century, she probably would have been a New Yorker staff writer. In our century, she is adapted for the screen, over and over and over again.
***image2***As the BBC has produced no fewer than five versions of that novel underneath the embroidery,
Pride and Prejudice
(to say nothing of last year's Bollywood take,
Bride & Prejudice)
, Austen has surpassed Shakespeare in terms of camera fodder: every subgeneration apparently requires its own version. People who loved Alicia Silverstone as Emma (in the thinly disguised
Clueless
) turn up their noses at Gwyneth Paltrow and vice versa. This week's adaptation, starring Keira Knightley, has close ties to Ang Lee's 1995
Sense and Sensibility
-closer than at first you might think. The sharp-eyed will notice Emma Thompson is thanked in the closing credits; the clever Cambridge-educated actress rewrote the script at the 11th hour for no credit and no pay. Joe Wright and Deborah Moggach, who have worked primarily in television until now, probably owe her more than they can comfortably admit. While Austen's plot has a kind of inexorable rightness to it, the movie package offered here is sloppily subpar at points. If you grew up in outer Mongolia…then you probably know the story better than the rest of us. But if you grew up in Dallas and don't, it is as follows.
***image1*** Elizabeth Bennet (Knightley) is the next-to-oldest daughter in a rambunctious country family poised to lose its small income due to the fact that women in Georgian England cannot inherit property. Its daughters must marry well in order to provide an income not only for themselves but also for their aging parents (in the film's smartest move, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are played by an hysterical, constantly breathless Brenda Blethyn and, in one of the best performances this year, Donald Sutherland, unexpectedly wonderful and moving as the much-put-upon father of five). So it's open season on wealthy bachelors; the well-heeled Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) is immediately set up with the oldest girl, Jane (lovely Rosamund Pike), whereas opinionated Elizabeth takes an immediate dislike to his friend, the dour Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFayden, who plays morose until it's funny-his Darcy is like a high-school Goth) who at first seems to embody the pride of the title. But "I could more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine," Lizzie later confesses; is she too proud to accept his help in an hour of need-or to admit that she's fallen for him?
If you can manage to turn off the part of your brain that winces at mediocre camera work (one particularly awful blurry fisheye montage comes to mind), you'll be perfectly content with Austen's zippy dialogue, undercut with economic urgency, and the requisite ballroom festivities and intrigue. Knightley isn't brilliant but she's quite passable, and very pretty; and when she's onscreen with Sutherland or MacFayden you can't tear your eyes away. A fiery cameo from a great British actress clinches the deal: It's another Austen adaptation we can all welcome happily into the fold.
