Why do you dislike the 2005 Pride and Prejudice so much? I thought it was a pretty good movie?
Okay, here’s the thing. Like, it is a “pretty good movie” - it’s visually gorgeous and the soundtrack is stunning and yeah, okay, from many angles it can be considered a great movie.
But it’s not Jane Austen.
Let me explain: the thing about Pride and Prejudice is that it is fundamentally a social commentary expressed through a comedy of manners. So much of Austen is about claustrophobia and people rubbing each other the wrong way in these tiny social circles because travelling was so much more effort. But in order to make his film so beautiful, Joe Wright completely disregarded this.
For example, possibly my biggest pet peeve about this movie is Darcy’s first proposal scene. In no way shape or form did that need to take place in a thunderstorm. That pathetic fallacy is completely unnecessary and actually detracts from the drama of that scene. The whole point is that they’re in this tiny room together with these emotions running high but they can’t raise their voices, they can’t get away from each other because of the social rules they’re still bound to.
What’s brilliant about the BBC version is that it captures that perfectly. Jennifer Ehles does such a good job of this seething rage beginning to get the better of her so that when she finally says “you are the last man in the world I could ever marry” she brings herself up short because she knows she’s gone too far, she’s been too rude. Elizabeth may be witty and ahead of her time but she remains a product of her time and she wouldn’t get all up in Darcy’s face about it.
I don’t dislike Keira Knightly as an actress, I’ve enjoyed her performances in many things but she was not right for this role at all. (Though the thing about film acting is that it’s so dependent on the director and the editing that hey, maybe under different circumstances she could have done a good job, but I’m unsure). She played Elizabeth as a modern woman in a Regency Era setting, and that just doesn’t work. She’s too loud, too physical for the kind of environment that Pride and Prejudice takes place in.
But while her performance is too big and too unrestrained, things that should have been big were too small. Again, Tom Hollander is an actor I like very much, but his Collins was all earnest and small. He barely made my flesh crawl at all, which he really should. (And when you look at David Bamber, he’s flawlessly slimy, and hilarious to boot). One of Austen’s strengths is this wonderful melding of big and small - her principal characters are stuck in these tiny communities with these huge supporting characters that only increase the sense of claustrophobia.
One thing I will say for the 2005 version is that Jane and Bingley were lovely. Though I will never understand how that one thing was so perfectly Austen while everything else was trying to be a Bronte novel.
WHICH IS ENTIRELY THE THING. Joe Wright tried to play Pride and Prejudice as if it were written by Emily Bronte. Like that scene with Darcy walking through the fucking mist in the morning to confess his love to Lizzy again - that’s just wrong. And I know what you’re about to say: “if you’re complaining about that, why aren’t you complaining about Colin Firth’s wet shirt in the BBC version?” Well I’ll tell you: because it was played right. When Lizzy and Darcy come across each other in that scene it is painfully awkward because it would be. Darcy asks if her parents are well about three times and Lizzy can barely make eye contact. It might not be in the book but, were it to have been, that’s how it would have gone down. Instead, Joe Wright gave us this… whatever it was with dramatic whispering and hand kissing.
(Don’t even get me started on that “Mrs Darcy” scene, which luckily wasn’t in the UK version because everyone knew we’d hate it as a nation)
And the thing is, this style might have worked for a different Austen novel: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion are all novels that are in dialogue with the Romantic ideology of the time, and maybe Joe Wright’s style would have worked with them, but it doesn’t with Pride and Prejudice.
So that was really long, sorry.
TL:DR - it is by many standards a “good movie” much like Game of Thrones is by many standards a “good show”. The cinematography is good, the score is good, the acting is good (because poor characterisation and bad acting aren’t always the same), but it completely misses the point of the original text upon which it is based.
no, yes, I’m glad you tagged me in this because I exactly agree
on the one hand, I really do love the sexual tension period drama with sweeping lovely scenery and moving heart-string piano music (aka, exactly what you’re saying, he filmed a P&P adaptation as a Bronte film, because all of that is what Jane Eyre should be), and it does actually work as a film. it’s sweet and poignant and enjoyable, and I would have fond memories of it if only it weren’t based on that book.
on the other hand, it’s quite possible the worst adaptation qua adaptation I’ve ever seen. Austen is, first and foremost, an ironist, and one whose irony shines so beautifully because of the incredibly formal society she inhabits. she takes formal statements that people make in social interactions, contrasts that with what the reader immediately can tell to be the opposite, and yet still managed to take a larger, more forgiving look at human folly than anyone else (we can think mrs bennet is ridiculous and get annoyed at reading her monologues and still love her as the caring parent she is). she is quite possibly the only author I’ve ever read who understands that the vast amount of human experience is awkwardness, and that our consciousness of self doesn’t depart when we experience the highs and lows of intense feeling. this movies forgets that immediately.
also, it commits to me the most unforgivable sin an Austen adaptation can–it’s not funny.
it’s strange: seeing that adaptation for the first time, I realized what Pride and Prejudice is to most of our culture–the progenitor of the romantic comedy. while it is a romance, and while it is a comedy, P&P essentially makes a grand statement about the intersection of human morality and goodness (in that what it is to have a “good” marriage in Austen’s opinion is based on her own ideal of rational love, the kind of love you choose every day based on mutual respect and affection and gratitude, and that a good marriage can, and does, in fact make its members better people). it is not a sexual tension driven story where they pretend to hate each other because they love each other–this is a trope retroactively applied to P&P because so many works inspired by this one have used that trope. and so the proposal scene, with the sweeping rain and the heaving chests, and lizzie looking at darcy’s lips–yes, it’s a bad adaptation. the director doesn’t seem to realize that darcy has actually insulted literally every aspect of lizzie’s life to a degree that she almost cannot speak. this is not romantic. it’s funny as hell (against his better judgment, he wants to marry her! I’m laughing just thinking about it) but it’s the opposite of romantic.
to be super pretentious about this–they took a book about the intersection of the intellect and desire and made it all about desire. what makes Austen Austen is that she wants to find true happiness and goodness in that intersection; what makes this terrible is that they reduce a love based on choice to one based on simple attraction.
