Pride and Prejudice: "The Frisky Version"

One has to fight off the desire to put one's head in one's hands and weep copiously after reading this article regarding the new version of Pride and Prejudice.

Choice cuts that provoke the onset of weeping:

{...}But then, Wright {Ed. the director} was sent the script to Pride & Prejudice. "I read it in the pub one Sunday afternoon," he recalls, "and by about page 60, I was weeping into my pints of lager. And I was laughing out loud as well and surprised by that."

That's when Wright finally checked out the source material. "I read the novel and I was shocked by what an extraordinary piece of observation it was. How honest and truthful its writing was. I was also shocked by the ages of the characters (Elizabeth is 20 and Darcy is 28). It struck me that these were young people experiencing these emotions for the first time."{...}

He read it at the pub? Are you kidding me? You don't read a script for a Jane Austen movie at the pub! You prepare yourself a pot of tea, pull some biscuits out of a tin and put them on a plate, you settle yourself down in your garden and then you read it. The nerve of the man!

Never mind how you can get to thirty-three-years old and never have read Pride and Prejudice. Never mind the blatant cultural degeneracy that's on display here. That's apparently another complaint for another day.

{...}Wright went with the Darcy he saw in his head, a vulnerable young man with big responsibilities after the death of his parents who suffers from a lack of social graces. "He put on a suit of manhood that didn't quite fit him," he says, "and Elizabeth teaches him how to be a man."

A suit of manhood that didn't quite fit him? What in bleedin' hell are you talking about? Just because your adolescence was extended to your thirties doesn't mean that Darcy was afforded the same luxury. A lack of social graces? You must be joking? Seriously, now. No one can honestly say that Darcy lacked social graces. He was rich enough that the graces molded themselves around him, not the other way round. That's the way it was in those days---and is much the way it is today, still. That was one of the points that Austen was trying to make. Like, duh.

{...}"We had the Bennet giggle," says Knightley of the way she and the four actresses who played her sisters set the mood before each scene. "It's a high-pitched, screaming, chaotic monkey-like giggle that would get us into it. Joe wanted us to always speak over each other so you got the feeling of people who are so used to each other, they don't even listen anymore. I do think it will make it more accessible."

Jane and Lizzie spoke over the others? Now, Kitty, Lydia and Mrs. Bennet. I can understand these characters speaking over one another. But adding Jane and Lizzie to the shrill cacophany of the rest of the Bennets?

Ummm, no. That's just not going to fly.

{...}Most memorably, the movie replaces Elizabeth's view-altering tour of a portrait gallery inside Darcy's Pemberley estate with a stroll through a maze of alabaster nude sculptures, her eyes devouring their voluptuous beauty.

"I have an issue with the book, which a lot of people also have," Wright says. "Why is it, when Elizabeth goes to Pemberley, she finally accepts she likes Darcy? Is it because of his wealth? What I was hoping to achieve was a sense of her appreciating his cultural sensitivity."

Oh, for the love of all that is good and holy. It's not the house that changes Lizzie's mind about Darcy, you fools! Remember Wickham? Remember Wickham laying off a false story about Darcy on Lizzie, wherein Wickham was the hero and Darcy the villain? Remember Lizzie refusing Darcy's first proposal because she thought the story Wickham had fed her was true? Remember the letter Darcy sent Lizzie to set the record straight? Remember the housekeeper telling Lizzie a patently different tale about her master when she toured Pemberly with the Gardiners?

Lizzie's change of heart had nothing to do with the money. If her refusal didn't have anything to do with his wealth, why would her acceptance be any different? Furthermore, this is business about "her appreciating his cultural sensitivity" is complete and utter rot. And I can prove it.

"Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situatied on the opposite side of the valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;---and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They awere all of them so warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberly might be something!

{...}The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking, elderly woman, much less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well-proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of spendor and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.{...}

---Chapter 45, Pride and Prejudice

Given this passage, it's apparent that Darcy would sooner have a gallery of nude sculptures on the grounds of Pemberly as Jimmy Carter would welcome a bunny rabbit into his house.

And then we come to the real problem I have with this article:

The one picture they include of Colin Firth isn't anywhere as good as this one.

Posted by Kathy at November 9, 2005 01:24 PM | TrackBack