An Exuberant Interpretation Faithful to Austen

Rating: 10/10 (14 November 2005)

"Pride & Prejudice" is a "Gilmore Girls" take on Jane Austen and it is delightful.
Much as I loved the BBC's mini-series the last decade and didn't think we could possible need another version, adapter Deborah Moggach (with help from Emma Thompson) and director Joe Wright have shot the story through with adrenaline so that everyone is a lot more lively (with a throw down to the 1940 version as being portrayed by too-old folks and this is the first adaptation where all are the right age). This is a classic personified by emotional people not stuffed icons.
While there is too much landscape admiration from the opening dawn on, the crowded Bennet household is immediately captured as filled with five noisy, twittering sisters surrounded by household laundry. This liveliness is particularly noteworthy in the simply danced ball scenes, which are as crowded as a downtown dance club and are brimming with youthful energy and flirtations (this is the first adaptation I've seen that clearly distinguishes between public and private balls in costumes and attitudes). While fully clothed in modest period costumes, the exuberance injects the awareness of bodies as a visual subtext.
This constant buzz serves as a marvelous foil for an extremely dour, almost Eeyore-gloomy "Mr. Darcy" and serves to emphasize his social awkwardness in situations where every young non-snob is just having a jolly good time. Surrounded as he is by much more amiable guy friends, just when you think that Matthew MacFadyen's "disagreeable man" could not possibly appeal to Keira Knightly's live wire "Elizabeth Bennet," he creates sudden sexual tension in the pouring rain at his first, obnoxiously-worded proposal that builds up to a moment as charged as Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed on the phone in "It's A Wonderful Life." He later in the relaxed comfort of his own home splits the screen with a warm smile that suddenly makes the viewer (and "Lizzie") aware of his beautiful blue eyes, though we don't get to see his sister's startled response to their pre-Spencer/Hepburn competitive raillery.
The men are portrayed much more sympathetically and rounded than previous versions, for the benefit of the few guys in the audience dragged by the women in their lives. Though dad Donald Sutherland, barely trying to do a British accent but enjoying not being the villain he's been playing recently, prefers solace with his pigs, oddly, to dealing with his family as much as in his library, his paternal affection clearly comes through and he is more bemused, as in the book, than hen-pecked, as in other adaptations. Though we don't get to hear "Darcy"s charming soldier cousin's speech about how he needs to marry a woman with money to balance "Lizzie"s best friend's similar practical analysis, we do see, quite amusingly, just how anxious and nervous both "Darcy" and "Bingley" are in the presence of the objects of their affections. We are all indeed fools in love.
Knightly starts out seeming to be more "Jo" from "Little Women," but shines with the fast-paced repartee, especially in scenes where she talks circles around the socially inept "Darcy," let alone his snobby friends and relatives. Her "gotcha" scenes of self-realization, however, are less effective than the comparable moments by Emma Thompson in "Sense and Sensibility" or "Gwyneth Paltrow" in Emma as the director substitutes extensive close-ups for expressions that would communicate her intelligent thoughts. The frequent shots slowly going out of focus, usually to indicate time passing, are also annoying.
There is great emphasis on the social satire, with humor from chuckles to laugh out loud funny, propelled by the busy music (which despite the complaints of the woman in back of me was of the period), and the crowded matinée I saw it at the opening weekend responded actively. Tom Hollander is a marvelous "Mr. Collins" without making the minister too clownish. Brenda Blethyn brings unexpected depth to the exasperating "Mrs. Bennet," even if her riposte to "Mr. Collins" that they can still afford a cook and warning to "Lizzie" about just wait until you have five daughters aren't in the book. Dame Judi Dench is in no need of tight close-ups to carry off "Lady Charlotte", as she could be imperious to the last row of Giants Stadium, despite a hair-do that does seem more 1970's New Jersey than Second Empire. Jena Malone has a ball in what might be her first period work, even as her rambunctious "Lydia" falls to temptation as other characters she has played.
Theopulence of "Darcy"s Pemberley is so staggering that it does make "Elizabeth" seem too impressed by his wealth and gives quite a ring of truth to his professed prejudices against her. The opening shot with its lake does tease us about the BBC version as he does not emerge from the lake. It is also a bit obvious to put sensuality forefront to have the mansion filled with voluptuous sculptures rather than the paintings and portrait gallery described in the book.
While the erotic mise en scene of the second proposal is more out of Bronte than Austen (my sister-in-law was shocked to see them perambulating outdoors practically in their nightclothes), "Darcy"s lengthy, open-shirted stride through the mists of dawn practically elicited swoons from the audience.
A for some reason U.S.-only coda is completely faithful in spirit to the book, which did not end in the double wedding so frequently falsely portrayed in adaptations, even if the dialog itself, oddly, was not, as there is a parallel interchange that could easily have been used.
The great bulk of the dialog throughout the film is directly from Austen, though the writers had to invent romantic dialog where she otherwise dryly says that the couples converse as one would expect those "violently in love" to do. And that is the timelessness of this story that this film ebulliently brings to life.