Sweet, but it isn't Jane!

Rating: 6/10 (14 November 2005)

To start with, I am a Janeite: I have read Pride and Prejudice at least a half-dozen times, and enjoyed it every time. This may be a disqualification for viewing this movie, because, delightful as it is, it isn't really Jane. I agree with almost all the comments regarding the casting and acting, which have been highly praised. The combination of edgy beauty and intelligence make Kiera Knightly almost the only choice for Elizabeth Bennet, Sutherland and Blethyn as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are superb -- both are actually better than Austen's originals -- Sutherland suggests the weariness, the remoteness, the despair of the father, and Blethyn grounds the vulgar eagerness of the mother in real social and economic hope and despair. The three youngest sisters fill their roles very well, being nearly as insufferable on the screen as they would be in real life. Bingley and Jane are well-portrayed, he as an amiable doofus, she as a sweet, long-suffering girl, yet capable of deep feeling. Mr. Collins is sublime: I am sorry that there was not more of his pervy absurdity. Caroline Bingley is something of a one-note character, but well done. Mr. Darcy, however. The actor does what he can with the role, but he is, I think, wrong for it -- I think anyone who does not look like a young Olivier is wrong for the role. An imposing physical presence ('tall' is not enough) is an absolute requirement. Olivier had it in the 1940 film (its one bright spot). Firth had it in the 1995 TV version. This film doesn't have either actor, and thus falls short. Lacking an obvious reason for his conviction of superiority, he seems to be a mere snob. The worst acting and directing lapse, however, is from a direction you would never suspect. Dame Judy Dench is wrong-wrong-wrong for Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is too dignified, serious, and intelligent-seeming to play the imperious buffoon, Lady Catherine. Actor-proof part, one would think, but I think Dench missed it, because there is too much cynical wisdom in her glance, where a lighter-weight actor would have made it a gem. The chap playing Wickham - did anyone else notice? - looked exactly like Orlando Bloom. I suppose you've made it when they start casting your clones. The art direction was splendid - and original - in the interiors. The messy, shabby Bennet house, cheek-to-jowl with the cowbarn, frigid Netherfield Park, the crowded assembly-rooms at the Meryton ball, all captured the period, and more important, the sense of social distinction, of the period. Though Lizzie Bennet tells Lady C. 'Mr. Darcy is an English gentleman, my father is an English gentleman; thus far we are equal.' The movie undercuts this to such an extent that the line, famous as it is, is not used. One sees Darcy's point. In the outdoor scenes, the art direction was equally splendid, in a postcardy sort of way. Did Mr. Darcy really have to emerge from the morning mist? But in the end it's the writing that makes the movie, and it's the writing that invalidates this as a definitive 'Pride and Prejudice'. Some choices were just stupid: Lizzie's description of her sister Jane as 'shy' is dead wrong - no one in the period would have used the word that way, and Jane isn't shy anyway, in the sense of 'socially inept'; what she is is modest, placid, even-tempered, good-natured, and, perhaps to compensate for her mother and sisters, not given to trumpeting her affections from the roof-tops. A very short speech to this effect would have worked, perhaps pointing out that men of Mr. Darcy's stripe demand just the qualities in a woman that Jane displays, and to dismiss her as unfeeling when she displays them is deeply unjust. I should point out that when the script and the direction turn to Jane, as in Lizzie's scene with Mr. Bennet after Darcy's proposal, it works perfectly. Is it possible that Miss Austen knew what she was doing all along,