Some nice script touches and an original feel

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2007)

The story is so well known it seems superfluous to go over it again. If you haven't read and loved the book (one of the greats of English literature), shame on you. But knowing the story so well leaves the viewer at full liberty to pick as many holes in the film as we like. So here goes Keira Knightley I find captivating and infuriating by turns. At times her dark beauty eclipses everything else on screen - small wonder she's a huge star. But her jollyhockeysticks accent and gummy toothy "isn't it FUN!" smile drive me completely insane. However, overall she makes a pretty good Lizzie, and does the material  and herself  justice, carrying the film well enough.
Matthew McFadyen's Darcy is more problematic. I've revised my former opinion that he's just a 'wet' Darcy: this isn't fair. But his delivery is all wrong, and really, it must be part direction, not just his fault. He's not really engaging with the material or with Lizzie. His clipped and rushed lines were almost comical, racing to churn them out, and when he asks Lizzie in his plumiest tone; "did you have a good trip?" I burst out laughing  it's ridiculous! - Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson's Brief Encounter all over again! Alsoas a good looking man the cinematographer and director ought to have been able to 'find' the latent beauty in him, and maximise it. But I think this happens only rarely: for example, during his rainy first proposal, when his face has the luminosity to show that he really cares about Lizzie, proud and foolish as he is. I wonder (not for the first time) whether he's not been hoist, as it were, by his own petrifying 'period' hairstyle and clothes. Granted his character is itself at first stiff and formal, but once he gets to know Lizzie better, he should change subtly, and he doesn't. You don't get to see how she's affected him, and in his snarling ripostes to Lizzie's playful thrusts, he seems to be in a perpetual and sometimes rather bad-tempered sulk.
Casting and script alike reflect the charming/infuriating conflict. Wickham's chirping is bland, ineffective and not charming. Dame Judy seems to be the only actress of her age known to Hollywood: there are others, you know! I found Bingley  excellent in series 2 of "Rome"  incomprehensible, sniggering and implausibly awkward, like a sort of Shakespearean buffoon. But I loved Brenda Blethyn's silly but nonetheless astute Mrs Bennett, and Claudie Blakley made a very appealing, down to earth Charlotte Lucas. Donald Sutherland's Mr Bennett is interestingly cast, an 18th century man, out of touch with the new century. This reinterpretation of period is one of the film's chief innovations and delights. The Bennett family and surroundings represent the rougher, less polished 18th century; while the expensive BIngleys and Darcys are the modern and determinedly fashionable face of the more restrictive and cold early 19th century (I know which I'd rather have lived in).
If I didn't know intimately what would 'happen next' in every single scene, I think I'd have got lost, as script rehashes paid every sacrifice to the constraints of the modern film format. Periodically, however, screenwriter Moggach dredges up beautiful snatches of long-forgotten original dialogue which truly add to the charm of the piece. I really disliked the second proposal: both of them looking like they've walked out of a commercial for a chocolate bar or a shampoo. I also didn't much like the brazen and showy use of Chatsworth as Darcy's home. Using so well known a building has an alienating effect, engendering disbelief at a point in the story when you most need to believe in Darcy as a real, and not a fairytale, man.
My favourite moment comes in a scene at Bingley's Netherfield house: Lizzie and Miss Bingley have been 'taking a turn' about the room, and meantime exchanging sharp witticisms and sly flirting with Darcy, who sits, writing, in the centre of the room. In the scene's final shot, Darcy, in the foreground, pauses, discomfited, pen in hand, while behind him the two ladies part and circle, for all the world like cats circling prey. A finely judged shot, and in fact the whole film is beautifully shot and lit throughout. However, I find myself preferring the 80s Fay Weldon adaptation more and more as time goes by. Elizabeth Garvie's delicately drawn, gentle Lizzie, and the stately pace and modest tone of the whole, seem to suit my taste much better. This sort of attempt  to sex up what is already plenty sexy if you only ensure that the leads have chemistry and the sparkling, witty dialogue remains firmly in place  just makes the least of the available material. Of course, as a woman in love with romanticism, that doesn't mean I won't be watching the DVD until it wears out