A Gem even for a Purist - but for God's Sake Reshoot the Balcony Ending!

Rating: 10/10 (12 March 2006)

I loved this movie because it gave me, a purist, some joyous chances to relive the book and to see it from fresh angles - something I would not have thought possible before, given how well I know and love it. Let me just say that the world created by Jane Austen is so self-sufficient, rich and orderly that one feels that physical description supplied in interpretation cannot taint it but merely "brighten it by exercise," as Darcy said of Lizzie's eyes.
In the book, Darcy had no doubt that he would be accepted when he first proposed; "He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security." MacFadyen's Darcy faced a modern audience with even less patience than an insulted and injured Elizabeth. Since they do not share Georgian convictions on class stratification, they would have hated a jerk who acted like he was God's gift to earth. I don't think Austen herself would have been able to give us a sympathetic Darcy if she had only 20 pages before the proposal scene kicks in. MacFadyen's Darcy therefore does not act out the complacency but only the incredulity by saying out loud, "Are you laughing at me? Are you rejecting me?," in order to embody the subtler descriptions of the book."
After watching it a few times, I was struck by the way in which MacFadyen first reels off the obstacles to his love: "the expectations of my family, your inferior birth, my rank," where the laundry list delivery is so mechanical and yet his drenched despair so Brontesque I laughed: you can see that Darcy has been reciting these objections to himself so many times, and his conflicted love is so hermetic, that he makes the fatal error of combining the two: He already believes that she loves him so absolutely that he can be perfectly honest with her and share his doubts with her. And come to think of it, isn't this what Austen's Darcy did, in a certain way? And isn't it very human to do so? The selfish preoccupation with his own concerns is more forgivable in this light; his arrogance stems in part from the nature of unrequited and unacknowledged love: the lack of any input from the object of one's desire. I have always loathed Mr. Darcy just a bit in this scene, but now I have even more reason to believe Elizabeth's assertion that "in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just."
And I challenge those who criticize the script to show anything in Hollywood or even indies to rival this these days. The arrogance of purists who say that Knightley comes across as being merely sharp rather than incisively intelligent goes beyond anything Darcy ever dreamed of: a tenth of Austen more than suffices. Elizabeth teased Lady de Bourgh about "sisterly affection" and her age, satirized idle and insincere social exchange during her dance with Darcy, saw through her own reaction of wounded vanity at the Assembly  frankly, Britney Spears could have said these things and she would have come across as brilliant. That's how good our Jane is. And Ms. Knightley did very well with what she got.
On people's dislike of the post-nuptial "drivel" - there was plenty of sentimentality during Austen's time, and just because she wrote "Northanger Abbey" we cannot suppose she therefore wants that part of human existence obliterated. She merely chooses to eschew those grounds  very wisely. But I have always wanted to hear exactly was said at this time:
The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do...he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.
For God's sake, what's the payoff of getting into such a perfect intellectual union, if it were not in part the romancing that comes after-wards?! For Darcy to have said "you have bewitched me, body and soul" is probably still understated in the hyperbole of the day. I have not seen the balcony scene yet, but in view of the above I think we can forgive a bit of the filmmakers' licence  Austen did not want to go there, but we do, and given her perspicacity about our foibles I think we would have had her blessings for going there. However, it is heinous of the filmmakers not to use the post-second-proposal discussions as the fodder for the balcony dialogue:
ELIZABETH'S spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. ''How could you begin?'' said she. ''I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?''
'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation...I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.''
You can look up the rest. If this has been used instead of "Mrs. Darcy," they could have kissed until Kingdom Come and I would have watched them  the intellect, affection and wit of the exchange are so powerful they are, like one reviewer said, "forces of nature." This part does deserve the "dumbing down" criticism. Reshoot the ending!