PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005) | Jane Austen Month
A collaboration between Dominic and Mary Morlino!
Welcome back to Austenland! I was too ambitious thinking I could squeeze a whole Jane Austen Month into the latter half of June. Thus, Jane Austen Month will conclude in July (luckily, JAM is more a state of mind than a strict time frame). I’m excited that we’ve made it halfway, and I’ve been looking forward to these last two reviews!
The novel Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s second novel to be published, after Sense and Sensibility. It was originally titled First Impressions and was written in the late 1790s when Jane Austen was only 20-21; she then heavily revised it in the years before its publication. Though the title Pride and Prejudice has thematic relevance, it was intentionally chosen to be similar to Sense and Sensibility. It was published in 1813, as usual anonymously: the title page simply says “by the author of Sense and Sensibility.” For the first and only time in her career, Jane Austen sold the copyright (for £110). This proved detrimental to her, since the book would become financially successful like Sense and Sensibility.
The film Pride and Prejudice was directed by Joe Wright (in his feature directing debut!) and written by Deborah Moggach. It stars Kiera Knightley as Lizzy and Matthew Macfadyen as Darcy. It also stars Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Tom Hollander, Donald Sutherland, and the one and only Dame Judi Dench. It was produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who are responsible for more popular and successful British films than you can count. It was released by Focus Features in fall 2005, and earned $129 million worldwide on a budget of $28 million. It received four Academy Award nominations: Best Actress (Knightley), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.
As far as connections to the previous movies, guess who helped with script development? Emma Thompson! I remember reading at some point that the hilarious moment when Lizzy enters and exits the room crying after learning about Lydia and Wickham was one of Emma Thompson’s contributions.
I really like this movie.
It’s not the version of Pride and Prejudice I grew up with - that would be the five hour 1995 BBC miniseries, which my sisters and my mom were super into. I pretended not to like it, until I didn’t care about admitting that I did. And that version is quite excellent in its own way! It's funny, it’s full of likable characters, especially the two leads, and it’s well-made. But being a five hour miniseries, and one that meticulously adheres to its source material, it can drag sometimes. I’m just not really a TV guy. I love being able to sit down and have a complete, contained artistic experience. I love stories that are, to paraphrase Aristotle’s Poetics, neither too long nor too short.
Which brings me to the film and its script by Moggach. I remember seeing it at least once as a child, but certainly no more than once. It was roundly criticized by the aforementioned women of my family, and by other fans of the miniseries and novel - sometimes for good reasons, but often not. As an adult viewer, and as someone who values the storytelling efficiency of a film, I can’t help but appreciate this adaptation. I love the ruthlessness with which it cuts extraneous characters, for example. Can you seriously look me in the eyes and tell me that it’s vitally important for Charlotte Lucas to have a younger sister? Or for Bingley to have two sisters and a brother-in-law instead of just one? The movie moves with a tremendous briskness and sense of rhythm that I just love.
It might be at times too brisk, even. One of my only real problems with the movie is how quickly the Lydia/Wickham affair happens. I felt this problem in previous viewings so I kept track of the timestamps this time. Lizzy gets the letter and finds out the news at around the 1:30:00 mark; then the two are discovered and married around the 1:35:00 mark, then they leave the movie around the 1:39:00 mark. Only ten minutes from start to finish! There’s no time to let the gravity of the situation sink in. As a point of comparison, the miniseries gets this one right. If I recall correctly, they spend at least twenty-five or thirty minutes on that, and the time feels agonizing. I can totally understand the rationale for condensing it: Lydia/Wickham isn’t even the primary subplot (that would be Jane/Bingley) so they didn’t want to spend too much time on it. But since the movie is only 2 hours total, and since the affair is so dramatically intense, I would’ve preferred more attention there.
Joe Wright’s direction is incredibly strong and confident for a first-timer. Whoever made the decision to give Pride and Prejudice to a filmmaker untested beyond TV made the right call. I love his sense of timing in little moments where he can just let the movie breathe. There’s the famous “hand flex” moment, obviously, but my favorite little moment is when Lizzy in swinging around on the swing, and right after Charlotte tells her that she’s engaged to Mr. Collins, she takes a moment to think and swings around one more time before talking. I also love right after Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzy and all the Bennets rush into the room, when the camera zooms in on Mary as she gives a wistful little smile to Mr. Collins.
The vision that Wright is able to execute through his department heads is stunning: whether it’s the worn, lived-in look of the sets and costumes, from Sarah Greenwood and Jacqueline Durran, respectively. Or the gorgeous golden light that gives the whole movie a sun-kissed look, from cinematographer Roman Osin. Or the lush and understated music from composer Dario Marianelli, which easily sits alongside and yet is distinct from the great music from the miniseries.
Here are just a few ways that music subtly supports the storytelling: the “Dawn” theme that represents the Bennet home is played by Georgiana at Pemberley, implying that Lizzy feels at home there. The same intense music plays right before Darcy proposes and right after the Wickham revelation, contrasting the two men who in Lizzy’s eyes, have now swapped places as villain and hero. Finally, the same epic piano music plays when Lizzy is most in her element at the cliff and when Darcy walks through the mist to unite with her, implying that they’re now about to achieve their hearts’ desires.
The cast is uniformly good. I especially love Kiera Knightley’s spontaneous, genuine laughter, the one or two moments of real human pathos from Brenda Blethyn’s Mrs. Bennet, Tom Hollander’s delightfully cringe Mr. Collins, Judi Dench’s Lady Catherine in the big confrontation with Lizzy at the end, the sweet simplicity of Talulah Riley’s Mary, and Carey Mulligan stealing almost every scene she’s in. What a cast!
Although somehow there are no Harry Potter actors in this movie?! I’m shocked and offended.
On to Mary’s Corner!
Mary’s Costume Corner
Ah, the 2005 Pride & Prejudice. This movie is so divisive, but in this household, we love it, flaws and all. I grew up watching it frequently with my sisters, and we all agree that that hand flex beats a wet Colin Firth any day.
Now, on to the costumes! Jacqueline Durran – the designer for Atonement (the green dress!), the new Little Women, etc – has made plenty of striking choices, some of them extremely effective and some of them just pretty odd. For P&P, I think a lot of her style choices feel superficial and sometimes even boring. I love a good subversive move, but I really think these fell flat, particularly with the Bennet family. They all look out-of-style (except for Jane sometimes), with strange silhouettes, some sloppy hair styles, and a wide range of fashion history. I think Durran wanted to underscore the reality that the Bennets were not, on the whole, particularly well-bred or well-to-do, but I think her vision faltered here and mostly just caused a more jumbled view of this kind of society and the role etiquette really had.
I’d like to go through a couple of the more jarring choices to illustrate this point, and then I’ll throw in a few of the elements I actually do appreciate. Firstly, Caroline Bingley’s LWD – little white dress – at the ball, amounting to little more than silky lingerie. I think the motivation was to show her as a hot, popular girl, but the overall effect just feels so scanty and modern, and really detracts from her place as an elegant woman of society who would’ve adhered strictly to the norms. Next, Lizzy’s large, long men’s coat. As a girl who’s always loved wearing her dad’s huge old coats, I get where this could fit for Lizzy’s care-free and realistic character, but I think having her wear it to show up at the Bingleys’ to visit a sick Jane actually takes away from the thoughtful and well-bred aspects of her nature (aspects she had to work hard to foster and preserve given her upbringing). I think it’s a shame to say that Lizzy wouldn’t have cared at all about how she’d appear to the Bingleys – not because she values their approval, but precisely because she values herself. Some other choices like the particulars of the waistlines, inaccurate hairstyles and foundational garments, and weird mash-up of decades also contribute to a general blurring of what would’ve been pretty clear and understood at the time. If there was a little more subtlety in the design, I think these absolutely could’ve been unique and illustrative costumes that still operated within a well-known world and time period.
Now a couple unusual choices I actually like! I love the gentle, earthy tones that Lizzy usually wears, and I like seeing some more durable and well-worn materials on her. I love that Mary is stubbornly in dark clothing all the time, no matter the pastels that her other sisters wear. I think Caroline’s little silky French twist style hair is really pretty and is an ahistorical choice that works well without drawing away too much from the story or character. And I’ve always found the scene where Jane does Lizzy’s (inaccurate) hair for the ball to be simply beautiful and sweet, and another example of messing with the norm without messing up the whole.
On the whole, I still love this awkward, silly, beautiful movie, and I think it has a wonderful score. Will absolutely always want to watch it with my sisters.
Score: 8 out of 10. Beautiful and well-made but with a few flaws. The line “don’t you dare judge me, Lizzy” takes the score down at least a whole point.
Value for a Catholic audience: Good!
Previously:
Next: Emma (2020)!
Interesting and rather comprehensive take! I have only seen the full movie once, and that was in the past year, and it was with a group that was all negative about it (we cleansed our palate afterwards with some of the miniseries), but it is satisfying to see the odd decisions called out while still being fair to the decisions and elements that do deserve complimenting :) It can be difficult to acknowledge a movie to be awkward or flawed while still enjoyable!
I could