The book vs. the movie
Time magazine has an article in the December 5 issue about recent film adaptations and the books upon which they are based, including PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE — Winner: Book
CHALLENGES: Hello? It’s only, like, one of the most acclaimed pieces of literature ever (although director Joe Wright had never read it). Those who love it love it a lot. To others, it smells a bit like homework. Not to mention that this is the third adaptation, including one of those BBC behemoths.
HOW THE BOOK WAS BETTER: It’s hard to match wits with the woman who wrote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The movie doesn’t try. It opens on a sunrise. The book is much funnier, the dialogue much cleverer, the social satire more nuanced. Oh, and some Austenites are spitting mad because the movie ends with a kiss.
HOW THE MOVIE IS BETTER: There’s a lot more of the grit of everyday life in 18th century rural Britain that was commonplace to Austen but is new to us. Animals wander through the house. There’s mud everywhere. Also, it ends with a kiss.
DEFINITIVE VERSION: The movie. Calm down: I’m kidding. The book, of course. But is there such a thing as too much Mr. Darcy?
Thanks to our Janeite Spy for the tip!
December 1st, 2005 at 4:26 am
I see from Keiraweb.com that the DVD is coming out on February 6th in Europe.
December 1st, 2005 at 8:34 am
“But is there such a thing as too much Mr. Darcy?”
Talk about a ‘truth universally acknowledged’!!!
December 1st, 2005 at 9:02 am
Karen Lee/ Not enough Darcy in my opinion.
Mayris/ Yeah can’t wait!
December 1st, 2005 at 9:55 am
Been rapturously in love with Mr. Darcy since high school which was *cough* a while ago. Definitely cannot get enough Mr. Darcy, in any form.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:24 am
Saw the movie twice with my husband of 20+ years, and the first time we took our 2 sons ages 19 and 15. We all loved it. I had read the book, as had our oldest son. While the book is better, the movie “gives” more. We are visual creatures anymore, admit it. I will purchase the DVD when it is released, already have the CD soundtrack, I just listen and wait for Mr. Darcy!!!
December 1st, 2005 at 4:39 pm
“Animals wander through the house.”
Yes, I remember that particularly when reading Herself’s letters, the predominance of wandering indoor animals. I have always wanted to go to England and tour Georgian houses, so that I too could tread where once someone’s dinner wandered. And of course, that wonderful scene in Persuasion — who could forget? — when Louisa breaks her ankle tripping over the pet hog Admiral Snuffles in the living room. I, as a rabid book-worshiping Janeite, have filled my home with sheep as a tribute to the master. Smelly? Perhaps. But gritty! And realistic!
[Sorry, sorry, I know. Meant in fun.]
December 1st, 2005 at 4:41 pm
I’m a bit puzzled by the concept of a Book “versus” a film adaptation of said book. They are, inherently, entirely different mediums. They convey ideas and emotions in entirely different ways. Not to stand in defence of any particular director’s artistic choices, but I suspect that had Jane herself directed a film version of her beloved novel, some of her groupies would still have been outraged by what was left out or made inconsistent.
The fact of the matter is that no film adaptation, no matter how tastefully done, will ever capture a full-length novel in it’s entirety. There will always be omissions and ad-libbing and the occasional liberty taken with the original material.
As flawed as the new film may be, I admire those involved in its production for taking such loved material and doing something new, a bit more organic with it. It’s a wild new expressionistic view of a potentially tame story. I’d hate to be pegged for defending melodrama, but moving so many emotional scenes out of doors (and into very emotional settings out of doors,) allowed the emotion to become much bigger, and considerably less restrained.
It’s difficult to say that any interpretation of a literary character is unfaithful to it’s original in the ways that I’m frequently seeing insisted upon. Because these characters, as fascinating and rounded and fleshed out as they are, as still characters, and not real people, they can never be entirely 3 dimensional, and so it’s difficult to draw the line as to what they would/would not/did/did not do.
Taking a few steps back and looking at the new film as an entirely separate entity from the book (difficult, I admit). I have to confess that it did some remarkable and brave things. It may have done some of them in ignorance, but it didn’t do any of it half-heartedly. The intention was not do faithfully duplicate the ‘95 miniseries, and I’m just fine with that myself, so comparisons between those two texts seems less-than-constructive to me.
It seems that the Janeites of the world need to aknowledge the inevitable rift between film and novel, and learn to rejoice in a world that refuses to forget Jane.
December 1st, 2005 at 5:06 pm
Well said Emily!!
December 1st, 2005 at 5:09 pm
@emily: very true.
just: where is the point of producing an adaption of a book, when you have to change and mess about, to make it work as a movie??
i personally am one of the few who’s convinced (after witnessing so many failings) that jane austen’s work is just not working as a movie. not in it’s entirety. there’s so much more to the books than the plot and lizzy getting darcy in the end.
so close-ups, sunrises and sunsets, large eyes and puppy-like face expressions will never do the job for me.
December 1st, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Emily, thank you for your thoughtful comments.
I took a class in college that was nothing but watching movies and then reading the book/play/short story it was based on and comparing them. Some of the films we studied changed the originals vastly–two that come to mind immediately are CABARET and STAGECOACH–particularly the latter, as it used the bare bones of the short story upon which it was based (”Stage to Lordsburg,” I think it was called–I have it at home somewhere) and put whole new themes on it, mostly to do with the Great Depression and hints of the coming war, U.S. isolationism, etc. (It was made in 1939 or 1940–right around the same time as P&P0!) Great flick, btw, now one of my all-time favorites, and John Wayne is teh hawt!
My final term paper for the class was a comparison of Emma and CLUELESS. I really wanted to do Persuasion and P2, but I knew my professor expected me to do something a little more challenging than a straight adaptation (there you go) and also he didn’t like P2.
(I would have concentrated on how the narration is reflected in tiny moments in the action–Wentworth lifting Anne into the Crofts’ gig, “His hands and his will had done it,” etc.–the main reason why I love that movie; it was obviously adapted by people who knew the novel intimately, to coin a phrase 
and loved it as much as I did, or at least were able to fake it.) The paper is on my Web site but I can’t get to it right now to look it up…try this link and see if it works, if not I’ll fix it when I get home tonight. (I wrote the paper almost ten years ago and I would say that some of my ideas on the subject have since changed, but it mostly still stands up, I think.)
So, yes, I acknowledge and understand that film and print are two different media. I don’t expect a completely faithful adaptation in every detail, and I agree that different can be more interesting. I just found the new adaptation of P&P to be sorely lacking in comparison to the original. I felt it was not as intelligent or clever or just plain fun as the original, and many of the digressions were silly. Several of the characters’ personalities were changed tremendously, which in turn changes the story, I thought not for the better. I would have preferred something, if not necessarily an absolutely faithful adaptation, one that was more, shall we say, complementary to the novel. Also I thought it was a tragically missed opportunity at making a truly great film, instead of trying to milk a blockbuster out of a complex and nuanced story. Don’t anyone fool yourself for a second that P&P3 was made to be some obscure little art-house film.
Jane Austen adaptations are harder, I opine, because many of us are such a bunch of hardened snarkers from reading her that we are that much harder to please–and that much quicker to mock overdone melodrama and trite dialogue. I like to joke that since I read NA, I can’t read Wuthering Heights anymore because I hear Henry Tilney snarking it in my ear. This is pretty much the same situation.
As always, everyone else in the world’s mileage may vary. I am just tired of the “you’re just a bunch of purists who don’t know any better” trope that lazy journalists and publicists at certain movie studios (and certain movie directors) keep trotting out, and yes, I’m tired of being patronized.
December 1st, 2005 at 6:28 pm
I’m writing my PhD on film adaptation. And I’m enjoying this conversation. The first chapter of my dissertation is about JA adaptation and the paragraph in the whole thing that was most fun to write points out the utter laziness (and imaginary-ness) of the “you’re just a bunch of purists who don’t know any better” line. It’s a straw-person argument. But an amazingly persistent one! There must be something very attractive about the idea of squads of Janeite “purists” holed up somewhere, plotting the overthrow of the motion picture industry.
December 1st, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Well if there is an impression I am eager to bash “purists”, I hope to put it to rest immediately. I’m far to middle of the road (&non-confrontational) for that. I just wonder about any direct adaptations having much of a chance at pleasing those who are book fans. Feature films are much better suited for adaptations of short stories, or according to the French New Wave’s Motley Crew, film is it’s own creation and shouldn’t be trying to copy another medium.
My other point is whether film adaptations help or hinder the books they are based on,i.e.: how many people actually read the classic books that so many Disney animated Features are based on? (Alice & Wonderland, Peter Pan, even Winnie the Pooh, etc.) But they are all familiar with the text because of the existence of the film. But is it bad (or true) that fewer people read the book because they assume they know the text from the film (which they obviously don’t) or is it good that people who otherwise would be unfamiliar with the text are exposed to it through the film, and does this exposure make more people likely to read the original text? All very tricky if you ask me.
December 1st, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Re: Books vs. movies.
I don’t expect that every single bit of treasured dialogue and all the side and sub-plots will show up in a movie version of a beloved book.
I was perfectly pleased, for example, with “Fellowship of the Ring” even though it left out Tom Bombadil, the Barrow-wights and numerous other Tolkienesque touches. Why? Because I felt it got the feel and the main narrative thrust exactly right. And nothing that happened later in either Two Towers or Return of the King altered that impression. A literary work which had been considered unadaptable came to life on film, was true to the central narrative, and stimulated a new generation of readers to discover the novels on which it was based. I had nothing to complain about other than trifles.
So, with regard to Jane. I think JA has become much like Shakespeare, in that her basic central storylines and main characters are so universal and adaptable that you can base any number of works, both contemporary and historic, on her novels and give a “fresh” directorial version which is nonetheless true to Jane.
For me, I looked at this most recent movie and I asked as Kathleen did, does it work as a Regency Period Film and does it work as a JA adaptation? And for me, the answer was a resounding NO on both counts. However, to the questions, did it work as a film and did it work as a romance, then the answer would be YES. It is surely better than 90% of the dreck that passes before one at the googleplex in the romance department, and I found it visually and cinematically-satisfactory.
But as a Jane Austen fan, it wasn’t P&P to me. I respect that others might differ. It wasn’t so much the lack of certain passage of JA’s dialogue as it was the hamfistedness of the thing, as I saw it, in driving home some notion of the inferiority of Lizzie and her family vs. Darcy’s, and the lack of delicacy where certain social conventions were concerned.
December 1st, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Whether you loved the movie or hated (or had feelings anywhere in between), I guarantee this will make you laugh!
http://www.livejournal.com/community/violentlyinlove/3195.html
December 1st, 2005 at 9:58 pm
That was great, Michele.
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:33 am
Thanks Michele! Hilarious parody! My favorite quotes from http://www.livejournal.com/community/violentlyinlove/3195.html are:
KITTY and LYDIA: We look so constantly cheerful that hallucinogens have to be involved!….
Suddenly, MR CHARLES BINGLEY, MS CAROLINE BINGLEY and MR FITZWILLIAM DARCY arrive. CROWD parts like the red sea, gawking at their richness.
PRODUCERS: What does this MRS HURST character do?
LITERATURE CONSULTANT: Well, she…er…she…
PRODUCERS: Cut her out and double the bitchiness of CAROLINE.
CAROLINE acts all snobbish and aristocratic, despite having no real birth given title.
DARCY wishes he was not obliged to show up and stand in the middle.
BINGLEY acts so cheerful he must be smoking pot.
And that establishes their CHARACTER for most of the rest of the movie.
MARY AT NETHERFIELD PARK: I am attempting early Goth, making anti-social statement and wearing all black.
The image of “Chuck” Bingly the pot smoking frat boy is just too funny. I love the way this makes fun of the movie and at the same time if you are a big fan of it like me you still laugh!
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:51 am
Emily said:
But is it bad (or true) that fewer people read the book because they assume they know the text from the film (which they obviously don’t) or is it good that people who otherwise would be unfamiliar with the text are exposed to it through the film, and does this exposure make more people likely to read the original text?
I guarantee you that people are reading the book because of the film. I went to a lecture at a library last night given by the R.C. of my JASNA region. She was going to talk generally about Jane–”Jane Austen 101″ if you will–but the library asked her to do the movie vs. the book. There were some Young Persons there who had “read the book for school years ago” who had rediscovered it because of the film. This is a good thing, as far as I am concerned.
As to your question, whether more are reading it or not, I don’t know, but some is better than nothing, I guess.
All this discussion/controversy etc. has been (from a cynical point of view) good for the film, because it brings attention to it, but it also bring attention to Jane Austen. I guess that’s why I’ve been kind of loud about it, because I don’t want Jane to get lost in the discussion.
Sorry, didn’t mean to jump all over you about the purist thing, I’m just a bit prickly about it–as Laura pointed out, it has become a truth universally acknowledged, if you will, that Janeites are uptight purists. Some no doubt are, but not all of us by a long shot.
Laura, I’d love to read your thesis when it’s done! Let us know if it gets published. And here I insert my Obligatory JASNA Plug by asking if you would think about writing something for Persuasions, our journal–scroll down for the submission guidelines. You don’t have to be a member to submit and it’s a nice academic publishing credit.
December 2nd, 2005 at 1:18 am
P.S. Jules–love the reference to Jane as “Herself.” I hope you don’t hate me if I steal it.
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:00 am
Perhaps all arguments and apprehensions of the new adaptation, would have been quelled by simply adding in the opening credits: “based loosely on JA novel: Pride and Pejudice”?
After all, the director himself, when asked in a recent interview, if, perhaps, reading the book would have been an asset to him in making of the movie, replied: “Why? Im not filming the book. I’m filming the script!”
From “horse’s mouth”, as it were…
What else is there to add??
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:02 am
Other than “r” in “Prejudice” … oops
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:02 am
Joanna: last summer a copy of a version of the script came into my possession (never mind how), but I didn’t read it at that time because I wanted to remain unspoiled.
I finally remembered/had time to read it last night, and I was astonished to see that the script is close to what they shot in many ways but closer to the novel as well. For instance, the post-second-proposal denouement scene used dialogue directly from the novel–just as I proposed here not that long ago. (Lizzy and Darcy slipped away from their wedding and had the “how did you come to love me” conversation.) Other additions were Mrs. Reynolds talking about what a great guy Darcy was at Pemberley, a much more canon conversation between Charlotte and Lizzy when Charlotte becomes engaged to Mr. Collins, a better second proposal–in other words, a lot of the stuff many of us have complained about. Also Mrs. Bennet’s comment about “You try to marry off five daughters” is missing.
If Mr. Wright wanted to shoot from the script, maybe he should have shot that one. Just saying.
Oh, and no pigs in the script. And I liked Lizzy much better.
The title page said “By Deborah Moggach, revised by Lee Hall.”
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:15 am
Perhaps there was loads of film shot from the script that ended up on the editing room floor. I am hoping there will be added footage to the DVD (think Lord of the Rings)maybe even in a continuous form.
December 2nd, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Is there a thing as to much Mr.Darcy?
Of course not! Any form of him is always welcomed by me.
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Listenup: STANLEY KAUFFMANN’s P&P3 review
…But the story! Jane, Jane, the story that you worked on for seventeen years! It was most pithily criticized by Emerson in his journals. He disliked Austen’s novels for several reasons, but what bothered him most was their dominant theme: “The one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories I have read, Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice, is marriageableness; all that interests in any character introduced is still this one, Has he or she money to marry with, & conditions conforming?” Critics innumerable have either scanted the matter that disturbed Emerson or, allowing it, have rhapsodized about Austen’s prose and her perceptions of character. Sound as those rhapsodies may be, they don’t help much with a film version. One of the risks of film adaptation is that it must strip away the prose and much of the dialogue and emphasize the story–a condition that, in this case, underscores Emerson’s complaint.
Even stripped, however, and contradicting everything that the last two centuries have done for women, Pride and Prejudice holds–for a reason that the author could not have foreseen. In many ways, its social order seems irrational; few would want it to return. But a visit to this past is a holiday from disorder.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20051212&s=kauffmann121205
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:32 pm
K. gives a nice recap of the familiar criticism of Austen’s world. His review is an elegant piece of hand-waving towards Dickens and might-have-been that should at least be of interest in this thread.
I will only add that marriage and money are fit subjects for an Oscar Wilde classic written over eighty years later and also admired by some P&P lovers. The Importance of Being Ernest satirizes the upper class in 1890s London, and its sparkling wit might be descended from Austen.
December 2nd, 2005 at 9:12 pm
1. Dear Mags, I read your Clueless/Emma term paper and loved it — I am a big fan of Clueless but have not read Emma.
2. I am one who read the book because of this movie, so the movie got me into Austen, and also these excellent Austen blogs. The commenters on this blog & other Austen blogs are excellent.
3. The focus on marriagability is not a problem, nor does that focus indicate that it was Austen’s personal obsession — by contrast, it was the inevitable social imperative of the day for women. What matters for Austen is the strength of character that the characters reveal as they cope with the dominant social imperative of the time they happen to have been born into. Today the social imperative for women is different — the status of the university that issues the woman’s degree replaces the status of the husband who signs the marriage license — so we get a book like I Am Charlotte Simmons, from Tom Wolff (a book I hasten to add that comes nowhere near anything of Austen’s).
December 2nd, 2005 at 10:48 pm
Mags, would a copy of that original script be found anywhere online?
December 3rd, 2005 at 12:42 am
I’m a bit suspicious of the common wisdom that marriage was all-important in Jane Austen’s world because Jane herself passed up a perfectly unexceptionable offer of marriage from a respectable man of good fortune.
In P&P Jane writes that marriage is the “best preservative from want” but I think that is meant to be Charlotte Lucas’ point of view–not Jane Austen’s. Also Emma Woodhouse opines that only poor single women are to be pitied–and of course we are meant to be amused at such an idea. All evidence points to Jane Austen being very happy in her single state.
Jessica, you can buy the script from here. We published that link a while back but I seem to recall they were made to pull it till the film was released. I guess they can sell it again now.
This site also has the script and can send it as a PDF, so no shipping fee.
December 3rd, 2005 at 4:14 am
So there is no saving grace for JW after all.
I don’t know how good or bad this movie is since Poland will not be graced by its presence on the silver screen for yet another, excruciating 6 weeks!!! (did I mention that already ;-))
But it’s comments like these (quoted by me above) by the movie’s director that raise a grave suspision as to validity of his “vision” of JA world. This, and, now internationally famous, “jump in the lake” comment. And those are the words of a gentelman??!(sorry, couldn’t resist :-))
December 3rd, 2005 at 11:42 am
Maybe Jane Austen was also happy to avoid what usually went with marriage at the time - the continuous cycle of pregancy and childbirth. I seem to remember reading somewhere (probably a Penguin introduction to one of her novels, not being a JA scholar) that in some correspondence she mentioned that she felt sorry for a particular woman, whom she thought would be worn out by the time she reached thirty, by constant childbirth.
Perhaps she preferred a less than settled life to this alternative, especially if she had never received a proposal from a man she truly loved.
December 3rd, 2005 at 11:50 am
I have read that in the letters Cassandra destroyed, there were some comments about being glad to be spared having children, not only because of the danger but because it would have taken her away from her writing.
Jane’s family really supported her writing–both financially and, in the case of her specific household, by freeing her up to spend her day at it–taking care of the housekeeping, etc. for her. She had few responsibilities in the household, and was free to spend her time writing. Blessings to the Austen family for it!
December 3rd, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Mags — hate you for stealing my phrase? Never! I shall enjoy every minute of the lawsuit, as well as the fabulous vacation you will finance! Just kidding; make use of the saying however you like.
Interesting that first script was so good. I hate to even think it but didn’t Emma Thompson get in on this [script writing]? I hate thinking of this even more, but when?
December 3rd, 2005 at 3:16 pm
In an interview with ‘The Times’ in September, Deborah Moggach reveals that in her script she had Lizzie escaping to the hen-house to get away from everyone, but they didn’t do it in the film because hens wander all over the place. Oh what a scene that would have been!! Chaos and very feathery…
December 3rd, 2005 at 4:05 pm
Oops, spelt Lizzy wrong!
December 3rd, 2005 at 5:23 pm
Like many people who have commented here, I don’t object to necessary changes to the novel to suit the differnt medium of film. However, I do object to the kind of changes which essentially altered the society in which the Bennets lived. I don’t believe that the ‘updating’ process which can be applied to Shakespeare (after all, many of the plays he wrote were ‘updates’ of old stories) is possible with Austen, because the predicaments her characters found themselves in were specific to the society of the time. I don’t think the less of her novels for this, nor do I agree with Kaufmann that they work merely an ‘escape’ from the modern world - a bit patronising, that. For that matter, I don’t think you could ‘update’ Dickens, either.
I don’t mean to say that there was nothing good about the film, it was just that it wasn’t really Pride and Prejudice.
December 3rd, 2005 at 7:43 pm
I wish my family would take over my household tasks so I could write!!
December 3rd, 2005 at 11:44 pm
I wish someone would pay my bills so I could write! I’m single, I could live in sloth!
CG, you can update Jane Austen if you place her stories in a different milieu, like CLUELESS or BRIDE AND PREJUDICE. But if you’re staying in the same period, I agree, you need to stick to what she wrote.
December 4th, 2005 at 1:10 am
Well, I’ll be fair and say I was wrong about DM on the basis that her actual script actually incorporated many of my criticisms about the movie. However, who was this Lee Hall- is this person just like an editor? I couldn’t find the name on IMDB. Also it seems that a lot was changed from the original script and I didn’t hear DM complain about it. So I’m wondering whether the script is the final copy or was a starting point to which revisions were added with DM’s consent by either JW or the producers. When I have more time, I’ll try and read it.
December 4th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
…Or just travel with Jane to the long ago & far away!
Mari, professional geiko, photographed in Kyoto. Mari became a maiko (geiko in training) at 16, at which point her life became very different from that of her school friends. Like many of her peers, she prefers the more elite term “geiko” (from the Kyoto dialect) rather than the more generic “geisha.” “I am not attracted to the new contemporary world,” she says.
–caption from today’s NYT Sunday Magazine
Any insurance needs?
December 4th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
About the marriage question: I think it was overemphasized as the only option in the movie. I agree that Jane was not desperate to get married and even considered being single as perhaps preferable, to have time and freedom to write. She loved being with her birth family. Perhaps she even wanted to remain childless to have time for herself-gasp! A woman can choose not to be in a couple and have children? Seems Jane preceeded Virginia Wolfe in the “room of one’s own” concept…I found this in Penelope Hughes-Hallett’s Illustrated Letters of Jane Austen, ‘My Dear Cassandra’, p.11:
“The unmarried Jane Auten’s dependent state finds echoes in the plight of various impoverished spinsters mentioned with compassion and concern in her letters. ‘Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.’ Strong, perhaps, but not sufficiently so; and in another she emphasised this. ‘Anything is to be prefered or endured rather than marrying without affection.’ She herself gave the impression of preferring a single state in a number of ways. ‘Good Mrs. Deedes!’ she remarked to her young married niece, Fanny Knight, with earthy realism, ‘I hope she will get the better of this Marianne, and then I would recommend to her and Mr. D the simple regimen of separate rooms.’
December 4th, 2005 at 6:41 pm
Mags
Thank you very much for the link. I ordered the long version of the script today.
December 4th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
I’ve been following all this back-and-forth with great interest.
I’ve read P&P, oh, probably 100 times over the years, seen P&P 1995 or parts of it countless times, and have now seen the 2005 version 12 times. I admire the new film for its commercial viability; at its completion this afternoon, I wanted to raise my fist in the air and cry out “Hail Jane” when her name appeared on the screen. I resisted the impulse. (See, I do still have some sanity left!)
The film wasn’t perfect. There are parts of it I would have changed had I the power, but they weren’t so essential that they marred my enjoyment. I am probably less discriminating than some of you here and more so than the general population, but it is more important to me that lots of people are flocking to see this film, that it is a box office success, than that I or anyone else find it perfect.
Some of you might have cringed at what I heard at a screening at a NJ mall cineplex last weekend. During the first proposal scene, when Darcy stared at Lizzy’s lips and started to move in, a man in the audience shouted “Kiss her!”
I am embarrassed to admit I did not cringe. I grinned!
December 5th, 2005 at 9:33 am
When I saw it for the 6th time yesterday, I went with someone for whom it was the 11th time. We giggled in anticipation of situations we knew were going to be entertaining, and we paid special attention to the people around us who (it was obvious) had not read the book. They loved it. There was applause at the end. Hopefully, this inspires them to read the book.
When we walked out, my companion filled me in on the previous day’s JASNA festivities (I had been unable to attend), and told me that she was the only person in the room who defended the movie. We talked about how different things offend different people. Lots of people are up in arms that (for example) Lizzy didn’t wear gloves at the Netherfield ball. Contrary to what some may think, lots of us who liked the film noticed right away that she wasn’t wearing gloves and knew that she should have. But, for whatever reason, it didn’t bother us.
Chacun à son goût.
December 5th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
Julie, a propos gloves: I’ve read an interview with KK in which she tells how fun it was to contribute to the image of the “rebellious” Lizzy by not wearing gloves at the the ball. She said that not many will notice the difference (!!) but it was something she felt would tell the connoisseurs that her character was bold and ahead of her times (?). I’m assuming that she isn’t lying about the gloves missing by design. How ironic that most of those who did notice didn’t appreciate it as a very “Lizzy thing to do” and the rest, as predicted, didn’t care.;-)
December 5th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Like others I hope Janeless people who see the movie are drawn to read the book. I read in an interview that Matthew Macfadyen had finally read the book and declared it “brilliant, just brilliant!” Join the club Matt. What would his performance have been like if he had read it before?
December 10th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
What were everyone’s thoughts on specific scenes that took place in the movie compared to the book? What really stood out to you? What did the movie specifically leave out? I look forward to hearing your opinions.
December 10th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
That sounds like an essay question on a final exam. There’s plenty of discussion in these threads about the differences between the book and the film.
December 26th, 2005 at 3:06 am
Loved the book and can’t get enough of the new movie. But also watch Colin Firth when I can. I guess I can’t have too much of Mr. Darcy. What a delicious character!!!