Not for Austen purists - the rest of us love it!

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2006)

When I studied English lit in college we were supposed to read Pride And Prejudice. I only got through a third of it. Jane Austen is a writer you either love or hate, and I belong in the latter category. This bourgeois ad nauseam obsession with manners and marriage is extremely far removed from my own experience and my preferred way of life. I like classic literature, but in my opinion Jane Austen's work usually doesn't qualify.
This movie, however, creates a proper, worthwhile narrative, loaded with classic symbolism, taking the basic plot from the novel, and doing something quite different with it. In this movie Elizabeth and Darcy are forces of nature, undergoing an evolution towards a union based in poetic beauty, as is conveyed by the long scene at Darcy's estate towards the end, admiring the sculptures, etc. (a scene not in the book).
I have seen most of the other Jane Austen movies and TV series (it saved me reading the books), and this one is the first that properly translates the substance of a novel from the literary medium to the movie medium. It uses imagery. It establishes a highly visual and visceral setting. The cinematography here is capable of making a dung-heap look good! The panoramic beauty of the camera's movement across a breathtakingly authentic late 18th century semi-dilapidated farm and grounds is a bloody cinematic triumph. This era and the financial situation of the Bennets is presented infinitely more believably and interestingly than in past adaptations, and together with the scarce use of the original dialog and the fairly sketchy representation of the original plot, the end result is a lingering visual feast that gains far more than it loses. If you think, like me, that Austen is wildly overrated, then this movie actually succeeds in making her story palatable. My hat is off to the incredible rapport that must have emerged between the screenwriter and the director in the production of this movie. It is a thing of cinematic beauty.
I feel I should add, though, that I was not at all as taken with Knightley's performance as everyone else seems to be. She was adequate, nothing more. The meat of this movie lay in the cinematography.
9 out of 10.