Only Mister Bennet to Keep Bounders and Cads at Bay

Rating: 10/10 (13 December 2005)

Pride and Prejudice has a fantastically fast-moving opening at an Upper Middle Class social gathering and dance. We're introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Bennett and their five daughters in the middle of things.
The Bennet Daughters are there to capture husbands like every sensible woman in late 18th century England. The spirited dancing seems to ape the emotions of the Bennet girls as they wander about.
The dance features not the usual snobbish Brits but rather a free- wheeling group of normal socialites reflecting the carefree, not posh and not snobbish Bennets, their five daughters and assorted friends.
Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet, Donald Sutherland her besieged, droll rather appalled father. Mr. Bennet, as in the book, is called Mister even by his daughters. Every man is Mister. It makes the movie funnier contrasting the formality of the Misters with the convivial and fun-loving play of the Bennet girls.
Mrs. Bennet is a shimmering pile of unspent emotional fiery. The girls at any moment, mother included, are likely to lose their heads at the sight of a man with 5,000 a year. That is if they're not having a joke at his expense at the time.
At those moments, Mr. Bennent retreats to his study, where he has a new plant to look at.
Only Mrs. Bennet is a straight fortune hunter. The Bennet girls somehow have found time to understand genuine love, though Mr. Bennet seems as unaware of this as Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet seems to have sense you see. How the girls learned of true love is a mystery.
Jane Austen's novel is set in a predatory England. A man with 1,000 pounds will stir interest. A man with 5,000 could drive the Bennet girls to revelries of screaming and shouting.
Austen predates Dickens and the Bronte Sisters, but the Director has managed to include visuals lifted right from the heather of Wuthering Heights and has placed Elizabeth in settings that just do not exist in the somewhat hardscrabble back yard of the lower middle class Bennets.
There is an instance or two of an enormous boar in the house for instance. Elizabeth escapes home with a flock of ducks fluttering about, seeming to imitate her. The image is stolen from the thirties David Copperfield, copied again with great effect in Tom Jones.
The only true snob in the film is Mister Darcy. Poor Mister Darcy, he cannot bring himself to speak to most women, considering them trivial. He boorishly connives to torpedo Elizabeth's sister Mary's budding romance with the handsome though high-haired Mr. Bingley.
At the dance opening of the film, Elizabeth finds Darcy odd at first, then turns squarely against him after encountering his more offensive traits. The audience knows that both are intrigued and Darcy may even be smitten.
There is Mr. Collins, who, spotting Elizabeth at the dance, immediately cocks his hat for her. Only Lizzy is taller than he, his designs on her seem more about money than love, and besides, he and the film are moving too fast.
There's room for one bounder in the shape of Mr. Wickham, who, it develops, knows and dislikes Mr. Darcy as much as Elizabeth and tells her so. A frame or two later he has run off with one of Elizabeth's sisters. Mr. Collins too finds matrimonial bliss in Elizabeth's friend who confides to Elizabeth that she hasn't attributes enough to wait for love to arrive at her door as Elizabeth has.
The new Pride and Prejudice is certain to be compared with the 1995 BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth. Keira Knightley, who ran away with the movie King Arthur two years ago, owns this film too. Unlike the miniseries, she doesn't really have to share with this Mr. Darcy (Matt McFadyen). Knightley seems to be at once Audrey Hepburn and Winona Ryder. Judy Dench, almost a necessity now in every British period film, plays Darcy's high-handed and very rich aunt with her usual bombast.
Some screen notes say actress Emma Thompson gave this fast-paced screenplay a touch-up that is uncredited except at the end. I laughed more at this film than I did at the '95 miniseries.
I could hear all of Darcy's, Mr. Bennet's, and Elizabeth's lines, but the rest was sometimes too British to understand. Still, one could read body language just as well in many scenes. Director Joe Wright pushed the movie along at a torrid pace. At times his camera moves in and out of doors and windows peering at the bewildering contrasts in attitudes of the many lovers and players in just seconds.
I recommend that everyone see it. Its very funny. When Mr. Bennett learns Elizabeth finally wants to wed Mr. Darcy after all, he becomes teary when telling his daughter why, totally stealing the scene from Miss Knightley. Score one for Mister Bennet.
Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson were Darcy and Elizabeth in the first 1940 version. An Indian Directress who re-filmed Vanity Fair in 2004 put out a Bollywood version of Pride and Prejudice early this year.
The present version, more than the miniseries, reminds that Louisa May Alcott borrowed heavily from Austen's Pride and Prejudice to produce Little Women in 1869. The two novels have nearly the same structure. Pride and Prejudice is a first instance of Chick Lit written in English. Its a story of girls for girls and any male who wants to learn a few things about them they hadn't known.