A Classic in the Remaking

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2006)

This version of Jane Austen's beloved story is one of the best marriages to date (pun only slightly intended) of integrity to the time and, simultaneously, modern day cinematography. From a film-making standpoint, the shots are both as beautiful and colorful as those in the most recent rendition of "The Phantom of the Opera", but as honest and real as "Bridget Jones Diary" or "Life or Something Like It". The truth of emotion and relational dilemmas is well displayed as one might expect with this film's producer connections to "Love Actually".
Special attention should be drawn to the way wide angles are avoided when unnecessary, giving us a chance to walk along-side characters for long shots that continue through doorway after doorway, nearly Dragnet like but for the crowd and doors being open already in most instances. Dollhouse shots outside the Bennet home give a sense that we've truly stepped back in time and are viewing the ghosts that once possessed the classic homes we now walk through as museums.
Casting was also done remarkably, with actors selected and costumed so that viewers might not fall in love with characters until the appropriate time, making us, perhaps, realize our own prejudices and letting us progress past them just as the characters themselves do.
T'would be a pity if this film is not adopted into the realms of such classics as "Anne of Green Gables" since it is equally wrought with social lessons and remains family friendly while still addressing very real issues people of all ages face, even in current times. The film offers men more than a few lessons on how (and how not) to go about proposing, and women a greater understanding of wit and self-confidence as assets to femininity, as they're seen embodied so well in Keira Knightley's Lizzie. In an age where aggression and road rage are prevalent, it may also benefit modern-day men to see how MacFadyen masters being both powerful and genteel at the same time.
As a testament to this fine adaptation, true in all manners of acting, photography and writing, a friend (who usually cares little for period pieces, I might add, and had to be somewhat talked into going) that I took to the film just today said to me as we left the theatre, "I forgot I was in the cinema!" What more could a director hope for in the minds of his audience, male or (in this case) female?
A 'thank you' is deserved by Wright, Knightley and MacFadyen and the others who all daringly took on a daunting project and delivered it faithfully in a refreshingly new package.