The P&P3 Daily News Roundup: The Wrath of Khan
The reviews and articles are a-rollin’ in, both from U.K. previews and the Toronto International Film Festival.
Alert Janeite TeresaAF sent us a link from the Times in which Keira Knightley tries to increase male attendance.
All the same I was absolutely astonished by Keira Knightley, the beautiful Lizzie Bennet in the new film of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, during her trial by microphone just before the premiere in Leicester Square last week. Maddened perhaps by a particularly annoying young man, this bewitching creature offered up to her interviewer the thought that if a man sees this new film with a girlfriend he is guaranteed to get laid afterwards.
We don’t know about that, but certainly some smutty fan fiction is bound to be produced.
EDP24 talks about the cinematic quality of the book that inspires filmmakers to keep remaking it and gives some biographical information about Jane Austen.
Austen fell ill in 1816 and the next summer her family took her to Winchester for treatment, but she died peacefully on July 18, 1817 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.
If we may be allowed to go off topic for a moment, can we put the Peaceful Death meme to bed for good and all now? If one were to read Cassandra Austen’s letter to a friend telling of Jane’s death, one would learn that Jane spent her last conscious hours in tremendous pain and praying for death. It might be termed “peaceful” in that she slipped into a coma shortly before she died. Have a hanky handy if you do read the letter; you’ll need it.
The Islington Gazette is cranky but gives a grudging thumbs up.
As Darcy, Matthew Macfadyen is an earnest but inferior successor to Firth, his efforts at playing sexily aloof simply coming over as sulkily bland.
To be fair, the role does not allow him to come to life at least in the first half and he is much better in the later scenes.
Meanwhile, Knightley, with an all-too-ready grin springing to her face, is simply irritating as Lizzie Bennet.
The Syncophantic Lickspittles Society weighs in, primly repeating the company line. ThisIsLondon delivers a lecture on Gritty RealismTM:
And refreshingly, this Working Title adaptation, directed by Joe Wright, is not all about frilly dresses and giggles (although they do feature). It shows the desperation of these women’s situation.
Now it’s Professor Mags’ turn to lecture: Jane Austen faced the same “desperate situation” and yet turned down an offer of marriage to a comfortably well-off man. So clearly, it was not as desperate a situation as the parrots want us to think. Does anyone really think that Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, famous local beauties and daughters of a gentleman, would not have married someone, even if Bingley and Darcy had skived off? And in the unlikely event that they had not, do you think that had Mr. Bennet died, Mr. Collins would really have driven them out of Longbourn (though we admit it might have been unpleasant to live there), or that Mr. Philips or the Gardiners would not have offered them a home, just as Jane’s brothers chipped in to make sure their womenfolk didn’t starve in the hedgerows? Sheesh. Can we get reviewers who can think for themselves instead of repeating the same old tired crap, please?
Class dismissed, and yes, this will be on the exam.
Channel 4 Film swoons with delight over the film:
What an enormous relief it is to find the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice has turned out to be one of the best British films of the year. It’s a smart, elegant but exuberant version that’s in every way faithful to the spirit of a book that was first written by a 21-year-old woman.
So does IndieWire:
There’s nothing like the sound of bustling corsets and rattling teacups to thwart this critic from connecting with stuffy period pieces, but “Pride & Prejudice” is different in that you’re immediately immersed into Austen’s world. It helps that Knightley’s Lizzie is such a modern character, brash and unapologetic about speaking her mind, although it’s director Joe Wright’s modern take on musty history that does the trick. Rather than basing the film’s look on formal portraits of the time, Wright dug a little deeper to find how normal people behaved. The result comes within a whisker’s breadth of matching Ang Lee’s sublime “Sense & Sensibility” for its sheer romantic and literary appeal.
Pray, what does a bustling corset sound like, anyway?
A couple of reports from Toronto: The Seattle Times segues beautifully from talking about Ang Lee’s new film into SENSE AND SENSIBILITY into P&P:
Though the two films would seem to have little in common, “Brokeback Mountain” made me think of Lee’s “Sense and Sensibility,” in its depiction of a society with a rigid code of behavior, full of words that can’t be spoken. And speaking of that film, a lively new Jane Austen film debuted this week: “Pride & Prejudice,” directed by Joe Wright. It doesn’t quite touch Lee’s film for me (which remains my favorite Austen adaptation), but has plenty to enjoy: a spirited lead performance by Keira Knightley, glorious settings throughout the English countryside, charming chemistry between Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland as the long-suffering parents Mr. and Mrs. Bennet — and, of course, lots of pretty frocks.
“Pretty frocks,” clearly, being a subjective term. 
And a Janeite on the Austen-L mailing list is thoroughly pleased with the film and passes on the interesting tidbit that the ending at Pemberley is back in the film–and according to Joe Wright, there to stay. Snogging ahoy!
