silverusagi

Oh my. I wanted to like this, I really did. I love P&P so much, so I'm prepared to love anything connected with it. OTOH, I get snarky when they just get it So Wrong. Short version: I hated this movie. Longer version: Even though the 1995 series will always be P&P to me, I was prepared to like this just because it was P&P. But I found that I really have very little to say that’s positive, especially after seeing it a second time...

(Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of the historical details, which is what I mainly complain about.) Clothing and setting: Elizabeth runs around half the time in a brown dress or a dark green one. Are we trying to make her earthy? Wasn’t wearing light colors for morning dresses half the point of showing you were in this class? To show that you didn’t have to work, and were therefore not in danger of stains and such? Second, what is up with Mrs. Bennet’s dress? Someone as concerned with the latest fashions from London would not be wearing the “waistline” waistlines of the last century. And the other Bennet girls are wearing their hair down! Down! There’s a difference between a stray curl and full ringlets going down your back. And it gets worse. Several times, Elizabeth wears her hair completely down, no curls, no ringlets, no nothing. I’m not a fan in general of the hairdressing in this movie. Poor Bingley also suffers. And I swear, Mrs. Bennet looks like the milkmaid sometimes, with her frumpy dresses and her flyaway hair. At the assembly, there are more girls with their hair down and wearing low waistline dresses. I know that sounds like a minor thing, but from the get go, this movie just feels like a different time period and setting to me, not British Regency. The Empire waists and pinned up hair and light colors are sort of defining things, things we expect to see in Austen. Bizarrely, we seem to have low waists for everyday dresses and high waists for the extremely formal dresses. I don’t think it worked like that. Also, Longbourn looks like a very poor house on the interior. A pig walks through at one point! Come on! It’s not actually a farmhouse, even though every house of this period of course kept animals. They’re trying to make the Bennets too poor. The Bennet estate isn’t poor; the Bennet girls are poor. And Elizabeth Bennet spinning around on a swing in the barn, barefoot and wearing an old coat? Does not compute.

The assembly: That’s a huge assembly for Meryton, but I guess that’s a nitpick. There could be that many people living there, though the shots we get of Meryton itself look too huge for me, with stonework that doesn’t seem right for a little country town. And the dance seems much rowdier than it should be, really. Nothing measured or careful here. This might even be the wrong kind of dance, but I’m really not sure about that. The music stops when Darcy and Bingley walk in. Uh-huh. Doubtful. Darcy walks down the room, and everyone stops and bows to him. Geez, he’s not royalty. He’s not even a lord. Elizabeth overhears Darcy’s slur about her because she’s hanging out under the bleachers. Then she publicly calls him out on it.

Netherfield: Lizzie arrives with her hair all the way down! That’s a much worse offense than a muddy hem. Netherfield is appropriately fancy, at least. Mrs. Hurst has been written out. Not a huge problem, except that it makes Miss Bingley come off as a huge bitch, since she has no one to banter with, and is just talking aloud to be mean. It’s not even clear how long Elizabeth and Jane spend at Netherfield. One day, maybe? The ball at Netherfield is pretty well done, I’ll admit. Oh, look, they’re doing a proper dance here, instead of some crazy thing where they all swing around like drunken peasants. But wait, Darcy and Elizabeth pause their dancing banter to stop in the middle of the floor to glare at each other. Yeah, um, no. With this type of dance, that would throw off the other dancer like woah. But Bingley touching the edge of Jane’s dress as they walked was sweet. And Charlotte is believably mercenary. Elizabeth is upset that Wickham isn’t there. If I didn’t know the story, I would have already forgotten who Wickham was, since he doesn’t seem to be an actual love interest here.

Misc scenes: 1) I see no reason for Mrs. Bennet to clear out the whole dining room when others aren’t done eating just so Elizaeth can hear Mr. Collins. Couldn’t she have sent Elizabeth to a different room with him? Elizabeth’s pleas for Jane to stay and her mouthed “Papa. Stay,” were well done, though. 2) I do like that the strong friendship between Jane and Elizabeth is portrayed. 3) But Jane leaving for London the day after she receives Bingley’s letter? Okay. Not to mention that she’s clearly running after him here, instead of going to spend some distracting time with her aunt. Oh, and Jane leaves for London alone, riding on the back of a wagon like a farm hand.

Rosings: The Collins’ house looks much nicer than Longbourn. And Rosings is sufficiently opulent and grand. I’d also like to note that there’s no real sense of time passing here. P&P takes place roughly over a year, but so far, everything seems to be happening boom boom boom. Nor is there a sense of travel or distance. We get a nice scene of Darcy being awkward in Charlotte’s house, but then we get the big dramatic proposal in the rain under a gazebo thing. Which is nice and dramatic, but there’s just something about the whole thing taking place in Charlotte’s sitting room that was just nice. Also, what? Darcy came to Rosings specifically to find Elizabeth? But I did like his delivery in this scene. But later, Darcy comes in to Charlotte’s house to leave her the letter. Um, no. Two unrelated young people couldn’t write letters to each other unless they were engaged, which is why he had to wait in the hopes of seeing her outside in the book. Plus, it’s just weird the way the scene is shot, not to mention that he just creeps up on her. He would have been announced by whoever answered the door. Oh, and the next scene, Elizabeth is home again, which just goes back to that “Longbourn and Rosings are next door” thing. But at least we get of an interior shot of Longbourn that doesn’t look dilapidated.

Derbyshire: Nice opening shot of Elizabeth standing on a mini-cliff. The Gardners don’t seem very couth. And of course there’s no time to establish a closeness between Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardner. Is that the same exterior that was used for the 1995 Pemberley? It looks similar. Weird that the portrait gallery has turned into a hall of statues, though. That’s a lot of statues. The rest of Pemberley is very nice, though. Elizabeth meeting Darcy was super awkward. From behind a door, she sees Georgiana playing the piano and he’s standing there. Way to make her look like a peeping tom, lol. (Really, I prefer the original meeting of him just walking around a hedge.) But Elizabeth gets flustered and walks back to the village alone. Um, what about the Gardners? This is just odd. Also, again, what is with the hideous browns they insist on dressing Elizabeth in? No Bingley at Pemberley, either. We get a weird scene of Elizabeth reading the letter in front of Darcy and the Gardners. The alone time that should have been there between Darcy and Elizabeth was one of their most meaningful scenes.

The ending: 1) The movie continues at a breakneck pace as Elizabeth goes home, Lydia arrives, Lydia leaves. Lydia falls flat here. I’ve said it before, but Lydia is a very hard character to play. But when she’s going on about her wedding, the actress just comes off as trying too hard. She sounds purposely fake and flippant. The thing about Lydia is, she’s not purposeful. She really is that unthinking and shallow. 2) Elizabeth didn’t tell Jane about Darcy’s proposal after she returned from Rosings. So much for that friendship. 3) Lady Catherine shows up in the dead of night. Again, dramatic, but not realistic. 4) The “whole family listening at the door” bit is really getting old at this point. 5) Elizabeth randomly walks out at dawn the next morning. On the Bennet property. And she runs into Mr. Darcy. That’s not odd. What was he going to do, walk to her house and stare at her window like Edward Cullen? And again with the breakneck pace, this is only like six hours after Lady Catherine’s visit. 6) I understand the ending with Elizabeth and Darcy sitting by the pond was tacked on for Americans, who need that final kiss or something. That said, I think Mr. Bennet’s final line is also an awful place to end the movie. Yes, it’s the last line of dialogue in the book, but it’s not the end of the book, and it’s just an awkward ending to a movie.

Casting: Kiera Knightly wasn’t great, but she’s tolerable, I suppose. If the rest of the movie hadn’t been such a train wreck, I wouldn’t have minded. I liked Jane fine, though she didn’t come across as very Jane-like. Kitty and Lydia are giggly enough, but I can barely tell them apart. Mr. And Mrs. Bennet were wrong. Charlotte was good. Mr. Darcy is forgettable, which Mr. Darcy should not be. Mary is oddly perfect, as was Mr. Collins. I’m not crazy about Judi Dench here, and I usually like her. But even the casting that I liked or could have liked, there’s still something just wrong with the whole thing. The writing or directing just makes things off. The whole movie just doesn’t feel like Austen. But you know what? Even looking at it as just a movie, not an Austen movie, it falls flat. I have no idea why Darcy and Elizabeth even like each other. Even as a generic period romance, this does nothing for me. I have no idea who these people really are or why I should care about them. But mainly, I was watching this for Pride and Prejudice and this is not Pride and Prejudice. Movies have to change things, I know, but when you screw with the major scenes—the proposal, Darcy finding her reading Jane’s letter, their eventual coming back together at Longbourn—not to mention the atmosphere, what’s left? I have the suspicion that the filmmakers went about, tying to make things “better,” changing things just to be doing. You want an example of a movie that changed and condensed a ton of things, yet remained so true to the spirit of the book? Look at Emma Thompson’s S&S. And damn, this got long. I sure do complain a lot, huh?