Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Comparing Jane

Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Miss Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in Jane Austen's " Pride and Prejudice"

I am an unabashed Jane Austen fan and my favorite novel of her's is Pride and Prejudice. I've read it about 6 times and I've watched the 1995 BBC film version of it at least once a year.

Earlier, Sarah posted alerting folks of the upcoming Masterpiece Theater showing of "Emma" (another favorite) and I was so looking forward to seeing it, but we were terribly disappointed. So much so that we didn't watch the whole episode.

Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller as Emma Woodhouse and George Knightly in "Emma"

I think in an effort to be original, since there are so many film versions of the story that stay pretty close to the author's words, the screen writers felt a need to shake things up a bit. The film begins in an odd, disjointed fashion. Highlighting at the start, mini-plots from the story that where only given a cursory glance further on in the book. This tactic displaces the genteel tale telling typical of Austen's writing style with a blunt, modern almost crass format that isn't appropriate for the era or this author's offering. There were other issues with the film, like mediocre acting and the character's personas were written in such a way as to almost be unrecognizable. Tisk tisk.

Well, it's a known fact that the only way to remedy the after-burn of watching a bad film is to immediately (if not sooner :) watch a known good film. Since I happened to have a bunch of needle work to do anyway, the girls and I settled down for a good purging...can you guess? That's right! Our yearly dose of P & P came early as I stitched away at canvas fronts for a new jacket. Aaahhh...I feel better now :)

Angela

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I like the movie with Keira Knightley the best. :p

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