The Devil is in the Details
Awards season trundles on, and P&P3 has been nominated for six BAFTAs, including Outstanding British Film of the Year, Best Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Makeup and Hair, Special Achievement by Debut British Director, and a Best Supporting Actress nom for Brenda Blethyn.
We found an amusing tidbit from the Golden Globes:
My friend Sydnie called me Monday from Beverly Hills, where she was escaping the Seattle rain and had promptly rented a convertible. “Pammy, the Golden Globes are next door to my hotel tonight!” she said breathlessly. “Wish I had you here because I have no clue which stars are which.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no, that probably was not in fact Jane Austen she had spotted outside the Beverly Hilton. Maybe she meant Keira Knightley, the nominated star of the Austen-penned “Pride and Prejudice.” Gotta love her.
Sydnie, if you’re reading this, you’ve won a free session with the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness. See the Editrix to collect your prize(s).
The Editrix’s hometown newspaper is representin’ for the Janeites with an editorial by Paula Marantz Cohen, a professor of English at Drexel University and the author of Jane Austen in Boca and the upcoming Jane Austen in Scarsdale. Professor Cohen makes us feel all warm and fuzzy by reiterating a point we keep trying to make in discussions about the film: getting bogged down in the little details of costume and art direction misses the larger point of whether or not the film represents the book it is purporting to adapt, not to mention whether it represents the things that keep us reading Jane Austen’s novels 200 years after their publication.
Many reviewers will commend a Jane Austen adaptation if it looks authentic - which seems to translate into containing a lot of mud, having characters with bad teeth, and showing the plight of the servant class. But just because country balls in regency England were headache-inducing affairs, does that mean that we have to experience them that way?
When there is too much scenery, costume, and decor to look at - however accurately and interestingly these things are portrayed - the singular human interaction inevitably recedes into the background. Austen’s novels are not historical documents but novels of manners. The visits, dinners, and balls are important as conduits for relaying essential character. Only the fools and villains in Austen’s novels pay too much attention to surface detail.
We find that in a well-researched and presented historical film (for instance, MASTER AND COMMANDER), the details do not distract us from the story, because everything is as we expect it to be. When the details are “modernized” or incorrect or just plain weird, it can be distracting from the story.
However, in the discussion that has gone on about this film, there has been a lot of attention paid to nitpicky details and less to the larger picture, in our opinion.
(Thanks to our Janeite Spy for the tip about the Cohen editorial.)
January 20th, 2006 at 3:00 am
I have a sneaking suspicion, that BAFTA took all the things I most disliked about that movie and gave them their nominations.
The only thing missing from their list is Polish subtitles, which should get the “Most Creative and Least Accurate” Category. 
Overall I liked the film (not as an Austen adaptation but as a late XVIII century melodrama) but the screenplay, the makeup and costumes (!) and the direction were NOT the contributing factors (to say the least). And of all the actors - why Brenda Blethyn!!?? The score, cinematography, Tom Hollander’s great comedic turn, Matthew MacFadyen’s and Keira Knightley’s on-screen chemistry - those were the performances to reward (if you had to reward anyone, that is).
January 20th, 2006 at 7:48 am
I really can’t get worked up about snarking ‘Plastic Buttons On Darcy’s Breeches’ P&P anymore. Apart from having an attack of mad laughter when the ‘Best Makeup and Hair’ and ‘Best Costume’ nominations were announced on yesterday’s breakfast news on the BBC. Agree with your point on the details. If they are right, then they do not distract. And country balls were not ‘headache-inducing affairs’, as long as one dances period dances, with period posture and manners, with period music (and dare I say, period instruments). Trust me. And flick through a copy of Playford’s English Country Dances.
P.S. And the buttons WERE plastic. I saw them myself in a corner at Chawton! Oh, the pain!
January 20th, 2006 at 9:40 am
I love the last line in the quote by Prof. Cohen
“Only the fools and villains in Austen’s novels pay too much attention to surface detail.”
Ha ha ha… It’s not so much that it’s bad to pay attention to the details, but rather the surface details are not the POINT of any Austen novel. Gritty Realism TM (even if it had been accurate) would not have been enough to make it a successful translation from page to screen. It seems the makers of P&P3 fell into the same trap as Mary Crawford, and broke my heart (yes, that makes me Edmund, but work with me…) by totally neglecting the thematic integrity of the book.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:21 am
What a good joke from BAFTA! Nominations from best costume, best makeup and hair, best adapted screenplay, and also for debuting British director. Areas where IMNSHO P&P3 stinks. Well, to each its own.
January 20th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Totally off topic, but I got a set of the old BBC’s for Xmas (watched immediately, off course) and had to immediately re-watch P&P’95 (tape two going in as we speak) and I *must* ask: why is it Mar-eye-ah, not Mar-ee-ah? They don’t say Jul-eye-ah.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:09 am
Yes, but So-pheye-ah. (In P2.)
I don’t know WHY it’s that way, but I think it’s just a British thing.
January 21st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
why is it Mar-eye-ah, not Mar-ee-ah? They don’t say Jul-eye-ah.
I think they were using more of a French pronounciation, like with Mama. I don’t know why either, but have assumed that it was a pretentious, we-are-so-cultured kind of thing. As for Julia, it really doesn’t lend itself to that kind of pronounciation–it would sound like the poor thing was named after the month of July. It sounds much prettier in its classic form.
January 26th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
One of my great grandmothers was Louisa, pronounced Lou-eye-za. I have always preferred it to Louisa.
But I have always also felt that people get to pronounce their named however they want, including my friend Lucia, pronounced Loo-sha.
January 26th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Make that, I have always preferred Lou-eye-za to Lou-ee-za.
January 28th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
“My friend Sydnie called me Monday from Beverly Hills, where she was escaping the Seattle rain and had promptly rented a convertible. “Pammy, the Golden Globes are next door to my hotel tonight!” she said breathlessly. “Wish I had you here because I have no clue which stars are which.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no, that probably was not in fact Jane Austen she had spotted outside the Beverly Hilton. Maybe she meant Keira Knightley, the nominated star of the Austen-penned “Pride and Prejudice.” Gotta love her.”
LOL! I recently had a similar experience…when I asked a friend of mine whether she had seen Pride & Prejudice yet, her response was “Yes, but the song and dance numbers were distracting”. When I tried to clarify that I wasn’t referring to Bride & Prejudice, but the British P&P production that just came out, her response was “Really, there’s a British remake of an Indian musical?” That pretty much was the end of the conversation…she’s a college grad from the UC system, so don’t know how she missed 18th-19th century English Lit…(we just go hiking together)
Btw, I’m new to the site, just want to go on record that I absolutely love this movie version of P&P!!! I first read the book when I was 10 or 11, then again when I was 16, so Mr. Darcy is officially my first love ever. This movie made me remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time…has me sighing and daydreaming like a teenager…I’m definitely buying the DVD and signing the petition for a director’s cut. More please!!!