FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Joe Wright. Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner & Paul Webster. Written by: Deborah Moggach, based on the novel by Jane Austen. Director of Photography: Roman Osin. Edited by: Paul Tothill. Music by: Dario Marianelli. Released by: Focus. Language: with English subtitles. Country of Origin: UK. 128 min. Rated: PG. With: Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Tom Hollander, Penelope Wilton & Judi Dench.
Why remake the Jane Austen comedy of manners so soon after the acclaimed BBC
miniseries of barely a decade ago? If you somehow guessed Keira Knightley,
you're probably right. The actress takes on the famed heroine Elizabeth
Bennet with a clinched mouth and an appropriate teenage awkwardness. But
the real find is Matthew Macfadyen as the aristocratic Mr. Darcy. Director Joe
Wright wisely keeps Mr. Darcy lost in crowds until he declares his love for
the penniless Elizabeth. It's no wonder her heart melts as this tall,
strapping man's voice quavers. Close-ups take full advantage of his
smoldering intensity.
But on the whole, the film lacks the buoyancy and gracefulness of both the
1995 adaptation and perhaps the best of the recent Austen adaptations,
Sense and Sensibility. In Tom Holland's strained turn as the unctuous
Rev. Collins, there seem to be pauses for laughter. Family members eavesdropping through a key hole is funny once, but not three
times. And Elizabeth's two frivolous sisters, Lydia and Kitty, are directed
with such a heavy hand, repetitiously laughing at anything and everything,
that you would think they lived solely on rum punch. However, there are inspired
moments with Judi Dench as the formidable Lady Catherine and Brenda Blethyn
as Elizabeth's loutish ambitious mother. Blethyn indulges in theatrical melodramatics,
as the mother does in the book, but never loses sight on her urgent mission:
to find husbands for her five daughters, all without a dowry.
Plot wise, nothing crucial has been excised from the novel, save for the
diminution of Mr. Wickham and the indifference of Lizzie's father. Missing
quotes and a few story changes will be noticed by Austen fans, but no
alteration will set off serious alarms. But unlike the miniseries, with its
spacious running time, many of novel's crucial confrontations are clipped.
The screenplay by and large maintains the outline of the novel, but not its pace. The last third of the book is a page-turner as all of
Elizabeth's judgments regarding the aloof Mr. Darcy turn over. Even in the
film's last act, languorous tracking shots yet again capture the Bennet
family in their daily life, which has been rustically downscaled from
previous versions. While Elizabeth waits for a sign of affection from Mr. Darcy,
the momentum comes to a halt as she sits on her swing, pondering. But in
spite of its unevenness, this version is head and shoulders above Patricia
Rozema's revisionist Mansfield Park and last year's dour and
dispiriting Vanity Fair, also set in the Regency period. Kent Turner
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