Joe Wright’s adaptation of Austen’s much-loved classic aims for a naturalistic approach to the material. Keira Knightley’s Lizzie Bennett is girlish, prone to giggling and sulking. It’s not a bad performance – far from it – but she’s not well served by Deborah Moggach’s script. The focus is almost entirely on the romance between Lizzie and the proud Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen; he’s no Colin Firth). Moggach concurs with popular academic opinion in highlighting Lizzie’s longingly long tour of Pemberley as key in changing Lizzie’s opinion of Darcy. However, this switch in feeling just doesn’t sit right with the rest of the movie and any pleasure to be had in the interactions between the two leads is from the novel.
The liberties that Moggach takes with Austen’s story is certain to anger purists. Wickham is reduced to a handful of scenes and the devastation that Lydia’s elopement has on the Bennetts is glossed over. What really impresses here is Wright’s direction, which conveys a feeling of intimacy which is far removed from the chocolate box visuals of other Austen adaptations. Whether it’s Lizzie and Jane talking underneath the covers at night, or the long shot through the movie’s first ballroom sequence, Wright’s direction at first seems at odds with the period setting but does, finally, make a sort of sense. As we see Knightley stomping through a muddy backyard after her best friend Charlotte has informed her that she is to be married to the uptight, unwittingly humorous Mr. Collins (a particularly well-observed turn from Tom Hollander), it’s clear that Wright is clear to highlight the gulf between Lizzie’s romantic expectations and the very real possibility of her family’s inherent poverty.
An interesting, if flawed, adaptation of a popular novel. Wright’s flourishes were to seem ostentatious in his second movie, Atonement, but this proved an effective stepping stone for Knightley as the yoof’s answer to Helena Bonham Carter.
The liberties that Moggach takes with Austen’s story is certain to anger purists. Wickham is reduced to a handful of scenes and the devastation that Lydia’s elopement has on the Bennetts is glossed over. What really impresses here is Wright’s direction, which conveys a feeling of intimacy which is far removed from the chocolate box visuals of other Austen adaptations. Whether it’s Lizzie and Jane talking underneath the covers at night, or the long shot through the movie’s first ballroom sequence, Wright’s direction at first seems at odds with the period setting but does, finally, make a sort of sense. As we see Knightley stomping through a muddy backyard after her best friend Charlotte has informed her that she is to be married to the uptight, unwittingly humorous Mr. Collins (a particularly well-observed turn from Tom Hollander), it’s clear that Wright is clear to highlight the gulf between Lizzie’s romantic expectations and the very real possibility of her family’s inherent poverty.
An interesting, if flawed, adaptation of a popular novel. Wright’s flourishes were to seem ostentatious in his second movie, Atonement, but this proved an effective stepping stone for Knightley as the yoof’s answer to Helena Bonham Carter.
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