While providing great escapist entertainment for viewers of our time, the novel provides a negative comment on the social system of Austen's contemporaries in which love bows down to money and perceived class membership. Austen provides her audience relief from the tragedy of thwarted love, but not by changing the social system in her story - the mindset of some is a constant. Austen's humorous parody of her times should strike a chord with us today as well. Even in these enlightened times love is often not the only consideration in marriage. The heroes of this film are those that contend with what their fortune-holding relatives desire, and the greater society expects, and instead aspire to act with honor.
Honor is achieved through sensibly achieving the ends of love - sensibility, that is.
The heroes win. While Elinor and Marianne represent two extremes of disposition, the former coping with distress at knowledge of love unfulfilled, and the latter allowing the ravages of depression to take her to the brink of death, both share a love for each other, and both are fortunate enough to be reconciled. Some of the scenes in his film manage to say all that Austen wrote in an image, such as Marianne's despairing dash through rain and thunder, giving up her health in order to see that sight which will only break her heart more severely, the estate of the man whom she can never have. When the audience doesn't need a one-line zinger to inform them of the humor of the situation, you know the filmmakers are doing their jobs. Not the least of which includes proper casting, which Ang Lee does impeccably.