All I’ll say is that if you wish to film a fairy story, and fill it with a cast whose faces belong in one, at least make the cinematography beautiful, and don’t fill your depiction of high society (albeit the lower end of it, in the Bennets’ case) with anachronisms, squalor and girls who behave like modern teens. If you’re going to make a period drama, at least have some idea of what we know of manners and deportment, and don’t try to squeeze humour out of awkwardness and male haplessness to appeal to a modern sensibility. If you want to make stiff characters more human, don’t direct the actors to perform as though they’re in panto.
And if you’re trying to make a movie at all, don’t insert shoddy extended shots that are supposed to showcase your camera-manipulation prowess, but ultimately look clunky, don’t slow the pace down so much your film becomes almost as dull as Austen’s prose style, and certainly don’t try to get symbolic by removing a room full of people for a single shot. A functional adaptation, but not as good as the seminal BBC version, which was nothing special in the first place.
At least it allowed me to recall my biggest problem with the story: because Darcy does Lizzie’s family some favours just so he can get her into (the marital) bed, we’re supposed to believe him reformed? He’s still a nasty piece of work. But then, I appreciate that I’m not the target audience. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why two X chromosomes will (if certain reports are to be believed) make you want nothing more than to never have to work or achieve anything but netting a rich man for yourself, whereupon you can live life in a prison. It’s beyond my powers of empathy…
No comments:
Post a Comment