A great date movie for both sexes!

Rating: 9/10 (6 December 2005)

No ordinary reading of _Pride and Prejudice_ or previous enjoyment of the actors involved could have prepared me for this movie. From the first sequence of Keira Knightley's walk through the yard (reading a book), you are introduced to an England that is lush and fecund. It cannot be denied that here is a movie about growth and passion.
Director Joe Wright's first full-length movie shows a fresh eye on the world. He paints with the camera...lush landscapes, the bustle of life in a busy, lower-end genteel home, the cool grandeur of a regal manor estate contrasted with the warmth of a small family room in that manor. Keira Knightley is his muse in this piece and she lives and breathes Elizabeth Bennet. Wright constantly finds new angles to capture Lizzie's emotions. This Lizzie is not proud and cold. She is proud, yes, but full of fire and uncompromising in her choices and passions. Knightley rises above her other performances to give us a Lizzie that hardly dares to dream of finding love in a world that so often pushes us in another direction. One scene, after Lizzie has turned down Darcy's proposal, will haunt the viewer far after the movie is over.
This movie is all about passion. The story has been pared down to the essential message of the growth of Darcy's and Elizabeth's love. We see Mr. Darcy's glances and yearning far before he (horribly) expresses his growing emotions to Lizzie. The cast are sublime and passionate - from Brenda Blethyn's gently histrionic Mrs. Bennet to Judy Dench's turn as Darcy's aunt, the esteemed Lady Catherine de Bourg. Strong performances from Americans Donald Sutherland and Jena Malone fit into the English accents swirling around them. I particularly enjoyed Claudie Blakley's performance as the decisive Charlotte, a character that strongly contrasted with her last film role as the defeated Mabel Nesbitt in _Gosford Park_.
The movie shows us much about living a shabbily genteel country life as it truly was at the turn of the 19th century. There is no stiff formality in the Bennet family's life; we see geese, pigs and cows living cheek-by-jowl with the humans, raked manure in the yard, careworn walls and doorways. The ballroom sequences involve real elbow-to-elbow dancing, complete with squeals of delight from young girls and the crowded, gossiping audience packed around the dancers on the floor level of the ballroom. The critters are in the yard, the roads are overgrown paths by today's standards, and the castles are magnificent.
See this movie if you've ever been in love, wanted to be in love, or wondered what love is all about. See it if you want to see England at her lush, glorious best. This Jane Austen presentation is for all of us, men and women alike; it is not a "chick flick". Everyone in the theater was totally enthralled, from the men who were encouraging Mr. Darcy, all the way down to my neighbor's 12-year-old daughter who had just finished reading the book.
This may have been the most truly satisfying movie I've seen all year.