http://bit-of-ivory.com/2005/11/14/pride-and-prejudice-a-full-review/ "on which I work with a brush so fine as to produce little effect after much labour" -- Jane Austen Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:57:51 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 http://bit-of-ivory.com/2005/11/14/pride-and-prejudice-a-full-review/#comment-791 Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:05:01 +0000 http://bit-of-ivory.com/?p=749#comment-791 Excellent, excellent review — I have spent the last hour or so reading a bunch of reviews on-line, having now seen the movie twice (American version ending), read the book, and seen the BBC 1980s version (but not the 1995 TV miniseries version) and your review is the best. I was particularly interested to confirm that the animal-ness of the Bennett place (“white trash Bennetts”) was historically not accurate. I also compliment the commenter above (Susan) who notes with excellent logic that the book itself disproves this image, by having Lady Catherine deliberately examine the house and praise it. Moreover, in the book (as I recall) the Bennetts have the higher-class persons to dinner at least once, which those persons would never have done in a virtual barn-house such as this movie presents (and in fact, in the movie, that dinner is omitted; the higher-class persons never come there except at the very end). Thus even if the movie-makers had had some legitimate basis for claiming generally that families such as the Bennetts could have animal-filled homes (and your post below shows they did not), clearly Austen’s Bennetts DID NOT have such a home. Thus, while I felt that the animal aspect gave dramatic contrast to the film’s different classes, thus likely making the film more accessible to larger audiences, it was very contrary to the book.
Readers here may also be interested in the following point, first brought to my notice by a reviewer on amazon.com (Homa Sayyar) of the 1980s BBC version, that Mr. Bennett deserves much blame for his failure to use his intellect to ensure that all his daughters were properly brought-up. As I read the book I particularly kept this point in mind and was surprised at how frequently Elizabeth makes observations along these lines — for example, faulting her father for revealing his contempt for his wife (not the happy couple this 2005 movie shows!) and in particular for thus exposing her to the contempt of her own children. That Austen observation struck me as quite acute: have we not read within the last year of so of studies that show that a good predictor of whether a marriage will last is whether either partner feels contempt for the other? And are not divorced parents constantly told not to bad-mouth the other parent to the children, thereby exposing that parent to the contempt of his or her children? (Ironically, though, I find this point not actually supported in the book itself, because there is nothing in the book to make us feel that any Bennett daughter feels contempt for the mother, let alone that such contempt was the explanation for poor behavior. It is the father’s general lack of attention to his daughters, rather than contempt for their mother, that explains the failings of Lydia and Kitty). Homa Sayyar said no film or TV version had made the point that the father’s failure of duty to his children led to all the problems, yet had the Bennett daughters behaved properly, Darcy would not have separated Bingley and Jane (Eliza thinks this many times in the book after she gets Darcy’s explanatory letter) and everything would have proceeded differently. This 2005 movie, by making the Bennetts a happy couple, and by making their lives so earthy, attributes the poor behavior not to the father’s failure to parent properly as he ought, but apparently just to happenstance.

]]> http://bit-of-ivory.com/2005/11/14/pride-and-prejudice-a-full-review/#comment-790 Mon, 28 Nov 2005 04:50:19 +0000 http://bit-of-ivory.com/?p=749#comment-790 Well said – good review – I agree with a lot of what you have said. But it was the time frame that they had to stick to that distorted the content of the movie. Matthew Macfadyen was very good I thought, with the right look – but was not given time to develop the character properly. Keira was Ok but too thin to be playing Lizzie. Too much giggling from all the sisters. Totally agree about her hair – it was very bad to see those bits of her own hair under the wig. The Bennet home was a pigsty.In the book Lady Catherine walks through the Bennet house opening doors and commenting favourably on the rooms. She couldn’t have possibly thought that about that house.
Donald Sutherland was far too slovenly, unshaven and untidy for Mr Bennet to be real.
Again – I feel the time frame allowed set the tone for this movie and it has missed the boat. But for all that I still quite liked it.

]]> http://bit-of-ivory.com/2005/11/14/pride-and-prejudice-a-full-review/#comment-789 Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:52:15 +0000 http://bit-of-ivory.com/?p=749#comment-789 Good review–pretty much everything I thought. There’s a lot of lapses of logic in the contractions.

]]> http://bit-of-ivory.com/2005/11/14/pride-and-prejudice-a-full-review/#comment-788 Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:45:37 +0000 http://bit-of-ivory.com/?p=749#comment-788 Bravo!

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