Hobson's Choice

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Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, the movie. I lay awake in bed last night, thinking about it and how good it was. And I'm NOT talking about the torrid parts. This blog has not suddenly taken a disastrous turn to the x-rated.

I loved how the films made the early 19th century seem human and kin to us without resorting to setting the action in a 20th century LA high school or Nazi Germany. Life in the early 19th century seems almost completely different from our own, almost unsympathetic in its manners. But here director Joe Wright chose to emphasize the earthy to get us all connected. There were pigs and geese in the front yard, overcrowded and sweaty dance halls, rain and mud everywhere. Since we new millenium folks are rarely crowded, muddy, or be-livestocked, I don't know exactly why it worked, but it did. Suddenly, all the mannerliness didn't seem so foreign since we all know what it is to have cold, muddy feet.

I applaud the decision to use actual teenagers and young adults in the roles of the Bennet sisters. Keira Knightly was right for Lizzie; you could see that she remembers exactly what it's like to be a giggly, serious, passionate adolescent. Mary, Lydia, and Kitty came off sympathetic because they seemed like teenagers who might grow out of their sillinesses.

And how much more despicable Wickham seems when we set eyes on Miss Darcy, an actual child. We are probably more disgusted nowadays by 14-year-olds getting married than our 19th century peers would have been, but we also cannot evoke much true sympathy for the idea that the entire Bennet family has been "ruined" by the loss of Lydia's virginity. Wright made a brilliant decision to transpose our disgust about older men seducing almost-children into sympathy for the entire family, something that we don't feel in watching other versions of _Pride and Prejudice_ where Lydia and Georgiana are 40 year old actresses in their off time.

I think that it's reasonable to argue that this film is not true to Jane Austen, and not in its sexiness (and it is sexy), but rather in its pervasive humanity. Austen has an axe to grind with Mrs. Bennet, the young sisters, and Mr. Collins. She does not offer them the generosity she does feel toward the other characters. In Austen, they are comic only. In the film, I felt that Mr. Collins was a believable character for the first time ever. He was pompous and unlike-able, yes, but you could see how his manner sprung from how hard he was trying to succeed in being liked, successful, and correct. Always to fail, of course, but you could see the man in him. Poor Brenda Blethyn didn't get much chance to do anything new with Mrs. Bennet, but there were hints, moment when you could see what the burdens of having 5 daughters to marry off and knowing that you will lose your home could do to a person.

I went into the film wondering, "Do we really need yet another film version of Jane Austen?" I got to thinking that perhaps the British need a new Austen for every generation, just as perhaps we Americans need a new Fenimore-Cooper movie or a _Scarlet Letter_. And it's so gratifying, at a moment of empire and brutality in the world at large, that the Austen this generation gets on film is one of such humanity and sympathy. Perhaps we are not irredeemable ourselves.

8:51 a.m. - 2005-12-06
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