it is the passion of that love story that much more clearly comes through in the movie than in the miniseries

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2006)

I was initially very skeptical of this movie. "Why do we need another version of the book, when the BBC/A&E version was so thorough?" I thought. I now feel that being thorough in an adaptation isn't nearly enough, and that this movie version may actually do better justice to the novel than the miniseries did.
I say this because the miniseries was, after all, adapted from one of the world's greatest romance novels and yet at many times is not Romantic in the generally accepted literary sense of the word (and yes, I know Austen is sometimes considered Neo-classical). The movie, in comparison, is romantic in both senses of the word. I found myself noticing the overgrown and verdant plant life in several scenes and the rainy proposal/fight scene between Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth took my breath away. By the time Darcy was walking across the field in the early morning mist to make his second proposal to Elizabeth (with a beautifully lush score accentuating the mood), I was so enraptured that I doubt even Wordsworth himself could have found words to capture my emotion.
Admittedly, there are parts of the 2005 movie that I am not so ga-ga over. Although Rosamund Pike is angelic as Jane, the movie incorrectly portrays her amorata Mr. Bingley as fool. Additionally, the mercenary ways of Mr. Wickham and the vicious nature of Caroline Bingley are sadly curtailed. Mary Bennet is much less priggish and Georgiana Darcy comes off as almost mischievous instead of painfully shy. And, I have to say it, I really don't like Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennet. Granted, Mr. Bennet is neglectful in the book, but Sutherland plays him with a mean streak in the movie. But then again, Brenda Blethyn is so pleasantly ridiculous as Mrs. Bennet that I almost forget this. Besides, it isn't like it is Hugh Grant stomping all over the part of Edward Ferrars (don't get me started on that travesty of a mis-cast). I was saddened to find that my favorite line in the fight between Lady Catherine de Bourg and Elizabeth had been struck, but then again, casting Dame Judi Dench as Lady Catherine makes my complaint seem almost petty. The bottom line, as I see it, is that this is a story about two characters who fall in love the hard way, and how they are portrayed is so engaging that I can forgive nearly everything else entirely.
And I cannot say enough about how much I like the casting of the leads in this film. Colin Firth made being stoic downright sexy as Darcy in the miniseries, but Darcy is not made of stone in the novel. The novel makes it very clear that he is already painfully smitten with Elizabeth by the time she visits Netherfield to attend to her sick sister Jane and has a hard time keeping his emotions in check. Matthew Macfadyen does a much better job of portraying that passion, and therefore presents to us a much more approachable Mr. Darcy. The close up of him flexing his hand as he is walking back into Netherfield Hall after helping Elizabeth into the carriage is worth more than at least half of the romantic comedies of 2005 put together. As for the female lead, deciding between Jennifer Ehle and Keira Knightley would be a toss-up, but ultimately I agree with the director's assertion that the movie should be remade with younger actors. Elizabeth is 20 in the book, Darcy 28. Ehle was 26, Firth 35 when the miniseries was released, which is probably another of the reasons why that version seems so much more staid when compared to the more emotionally charged movie.
Ultimately, it was the last scene of the movie that really cinched it for me. The miniseries ends with the marriage of Jane to Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth to Mr. Darcy, but the book goes on past the marriage before it ends. In the book, Lydia visits her sister sans Wickham (since Darcy refuses to let Wickham anywhere near Pemberley ever again, after what he did to Georgiana) and she is constantly hitting up her sister for money. Also, Kitty starts living nearly full-time with the Darcys, and improves greatly after being separated from Lydia. And Mr. Bennett spends a lot of time at Pemberley too, leaving Mary and Mrs. Bennett alone at Longbourne to keep each other company. All of this is neglected in the miniseries, but comes to play in the movie, if you read between the lines in that final scene.
I didn't catch it at first, either. I initially didn't quite get a sense of the lapse in time, but then I realized that Elizabeth and Darcy are at Pemberley and there is no way that they could have made it from Hertfordshire to Derbyshire in the few hours between sun-up to sunset. It wouldn't have been proper to be so intimate before their marriage anyway. That one scene, with its sense of what their marriage will be like after all the brouhaha is over, made me smile.
Which is why I say again, I think that the movie may actually be a better adaptation of the novel than the miniseries, because even though the miniseries came closer to getting all the little details right, the movie comes closer to getting at the novel's romantic heart. Austen wrote "Pride and Prejudice" 15 years before she wrote "Sense and Sensibility" and then stuck it in a drawer, and it is the passion of that first story, written at a time when the author was still quite young herself, that still draws us to the story of Elizabeth and Darcy, and it is the passion of that love story that much more clearly comes through in the movie than in the miniseries. Because of that, I feel I must get online and gush that I loved this movie.