Pride and Prejudice

[Deleted]

Why go through the trouble of making a period version of P&P if you are going to change the story around to suit your own "modern" take on the situation?

I can see this film being like a period version of the film version of Bridget Jones's Diary. Like, the BJD film cut out the plots with the friends, and a whole subplot where Bridget's mother [essentially becomes the Lydia character and almost besmirches the Jones family name] - making the focus of the movie the Darcy/Bridget/Daniel love triangle. I can see this version of P&P doing something quite similar in making it all about Lizzie (the book is about Lizzie but...) and her relationships with Wickham, Mr. Collins and Darcy.

I actually don't think the movie looks that bad - the preview doesn't exactly promise a faithful interpretation of the novel, but it doesn't look like it will piss me off too much (unlike that awful Mansfield Park adaptation - wtf was up with that piece of trash?).

I wish they had gotten Hugh Laurie to play Mr. Bennett. I saw him in Sense and Sensibility before I ever read P&P and immediately pictured him in the part. Although maybe I don't want him anywhere near this movie.

[Karrit]

Why go through the trouble of making a period version of P&P if you are going to change the story around to suit your own "modern" take on the situation?

I agree. The book is still popular today because people (ok, women) still relate to it. And the kind of audience who like "Austen movies" don't need to have it modernised to understand it.

[Deleted]

Here's a question to y'alls: In what year did Jane Austin place P&P? And in what year is the movie placing it?

I saw previews today at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and all I have to say is this: KK looks way, WAY too much like Winnona Ryder in this movie, and to me, that is many shades of wrong. Also, where is the lighting?? Geez. A&E's P&P was beautiful and rosy. The movie looks dark and grey. Sigh. Just how am I supposed to enjoy all the period costuming and details if everything is dark and grey???

[Karen]

There's a very frightening article here. It also answers eleanorrumming's question about the year of the book/movie.

A few quotes:

"What? No sewing, no simpering, no empire-line frocks? A new film of Pride & Prejudice is Austen with grit, says Joanna Briscoe

The Vogue-model presence of Knightley aside, this is an undeniably grittier, more socially profound and simply more human version of Austen.

With characteristic audacity, Wright yanked the setting of Pride & Prejudice backwards by more than a decade to 1797. Jane Austen wrote an earlier, rejected version of the novel, then entitled First Impressions, when she was 21; the version as we know it was published in 1813.

“I thought that the earlier age was more interesting; the world was more in a state of flux. And also, on a purely aesthetic level, I hate empire-line dresses — I think people look like balloons in them,” says Wright.

Here, the thin-frocked Bennets have to clamber past chickens and livestock to enter an unmanicured Georgian landscape, its shafts of sun thick with feathers and flies. A pig crashes through the kitchen, sizeable testicles on display; the mess of a family of seven clutters surfaces as a giggling gaggle of plain teenage girls squabble beside smeared windows; and a truly surly Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) watches the locals sweat, shout and spill drinks as they stomp and trip their way through the commotion of an Assembly Rooms dance that couldn’t be more removed from the customary Regency bowing and simpering.

The Bennets’ looser clothes are echoed by their unadorned complexions and more natural hairstyles. “We made them old-fashioned,” says Moggach. “So you can understand why Darcy might look on them as rather hoydenish and country bumpkin.”

In the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, it felt like the family lived in a very glossed-over world.

Why is "gritty" automatically good? Why can't a film be interesting and profound unless it's dreary? Why can't the nastiness of a Caroline Bingley be just as real and hurtful in a glossy, proper setting?

And as I like to repeat, one reviewer of this film called the Knightley Elizabeth a scruffy ladette. I don't think you have to be a raging Janeite purist to see what a crazy reading of the text that is. If profound means Ladette Lizzie, give me shallow any day.

[proper stranger]

*sigh* That is horrible, this idea. (/Samir in Office Space)

From the article:

The Bennets’ looser clothes are echoed by their unadorned complexions and more natural hairstyles.

You say "more natural", I say "needs a hairbrush".

If the director wanted to make a "gritty" movie about late 18th-century life, why didn't he create his own original story, instead of hijacking P&P for his own purposes?

Lame.

[chantal]

What a ridiculous idea. I can't think of anything less gritty than Jane Austen. If you want to make gritty movie set in the 19th century, Dickens would be far better source material than Jane Austen.

Half the fun of movies based on Jane Austen novels is seeing the lovely costumes, hair styles, and manners come to life.

Perhaps the director just couldn't tame Kiera into a proper young lady (snerk) and had to go this route instead.

[realitybug]

I liked the trailer. I think I'll wait to judge the movie when I actually see it....

[chantal]

But that would be logical and reasoned....

[Deleted]

*Snorts* Logic and reason? Get out with you! How can we be impressed with our own superiority if we didn't know it'd be crap all along? Or get to be 'pleasantly surprised' if it turns out to be not that bad?

Seriously, though, I haven't been all that interested in anything I've seen from the movie, apart from disliking certain elements. On that note, may I just say again that Elizabeth Bennet does NOT put her feet on the couch? And I don't need toilet humour to make Austen enjoyable, thanks.

[Deleted]

I find it really irritating when some idiot movie people decide to CHANGE parts of a classic book (time period, clothes, etc.) because they're not happy with the way it was written. Like they know so much more.

A few years ago, the Brits put on a 3 part mini-series of The Scarlet Pimpernel. For those of you who have not read the original book (written in the 1920s, I believe), it follows the adventures of a mysterious person who rescues worthy French aristocrats from the guillotine. He leads a group of people who cleverly trick the French and transport the would-be victims to England. He leaves behind his calling card which displays a small red flower - hence, "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Part of the fun of the book (and previously filmed versions) was being fooled as to who the SP was because he was a master of disguise. The book contained some of his escapades and didn't tell you until after exactly how the trick was pulled.

Anyway, the people making the newer version decided that it was silly to think that any disguises would actually work back in the 1790s and had the hero, walking around Paris in his own clothes, with only a scarf pulled over his face - Yep - that'll fool 'em.

Shame on these people.

I've seen bits of the trailer for the new P&P and seeing Elizabeth with her hair hanging down and blowing in the wind - Are they nuts or what? Apparently appearing unkempt is supposed to make Elizabeth more attractive.

Needs a comb.

I've seen 3 versions of P&P - the Greer Garson/Lawrence Olivier version (the clothes were all wrong and they made Lady Catherine not so nasty and more humorous, but the acting of the 2 leads was charming), the earlier BBC version with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul

Garvie & Rintoul version

and of course, the Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle version.

This looks like a bomb. Who is the audience for a movie based on a Jane Austen book? Jane Austen lovers, of course. Way to go - alienate us.