Pride & Prejudice (The Movie)

Here's something you won't see often on Books. Lists. Life.- a movie review. I'm not a big movie watcher. I always feel like there is something else that I could be doing with my time and I absolutely hate to pick a movie up in the middle (my husband has no problem channel surfing right into a movie.) However, one of our good habits is to do all the laundry on Sunday and my part of it is putting it away. (Mike usually does the all day long running up and down stairs to swap laundry.) For the last 5 months, I've been watching Idol Recap on the TV Guide channel while I folded clothes, but Idol is over now so I had to find something else to watch. When I finished Persuasion a few weeks ago, I knew I wanted to watch a movie version. I had to see that last scene played out on screen. So I put a library hold on the movie and for good measure added Pride & Prejudice AND Sense & Sensibility. Sunday night I put Persuasion into the Playstation (what? you don't watch all your DVDs on a Playstation??) and.... nothing. It didn't work. So I watched Pride & Prejudice.

My library didn't have the 1995 A&E/ Colin Firth version of P&P, so I had to make do with the 2005 Keira Knightly version. (I am still on the lookout for the longer one, but I don't want to buy it.) This version was still 2.5 hours long and it doesn't take me quite that long to do laundry, but by the time I was done I was hooked. It's been a couple of years since I read the book now, but it seemed like it followed the plot pretty well. It mostly glossed over the bits with Lydia and Wickham and the parts with Mr. Collins, but I wasn't really bothered by that. I think it is possible that Keira Knightly did a good job as Elizabeth Bennett, but I was completely distracted by her previous role as another Elizabeth, in which she uses the same accent. It is possible that if you hadn't seen her previous work hundreds of times, you might not notice. (There is a reason I call my son "The Pirate".) I was annoyed by her giant grin and I didn't completely buy that she'd fallen for Darcy.

There seems to be unanimous agreement that Colin Firth is THE perfect Mr. Darcy, but I have to say, Matthew Macfadyen does a pretty good job. He does a great job of being misunderstood and a fairly decent job of being in love with Elizabeth. He wasn't hard to look at either.

I think the longer one would be better because it would give the characters more of an opportunity to show the slow falling in love. Despite being over two hours, I don't think it was long enough to really show their early dislike or their change of heart. Overall, a good movie, but not the best it could be either.

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Persuasion by Jane Austen

Ok, so a couple summers ago I decided that I'd like to read all of Jane Austen. I started with a re-read of Pride & Prejudice, which was even better than I'd remembered. I read Sense & Sensibility which was also good, but not so good as P&P. Then I started Persuasion and it lingered and lingered. I'm reading them all in my email via Daily Lit, so it was easy to just forget. A couple weeks ago I decided to pick it back up. To my amazement, it wasn't hard to fall back into. Sure, I'd forgotten a few of the supporting cast, but they kinda all blend together in Austen anyway.







Persuasion is about Anne Elliot, a 20-something spinster whose looks are fading and whose family is running out of money. Her father spends more than he has so they have had to rent out their home and move. Anne goes to visit friends in Bath (of course she goes to visit someone, they always do in Austen novels!) and while there runs into Captain Frederick Wentworth. Some 8 years or so in the past, Anne and Captain Wentworth had fallen in love, but a family connection persuaded Anne that it was an undesirable match due to his station and Anne called it off. Now Anne is thrown into a situation with Captain Wentworth where he is actively seeking a wife, and they are forced to pretend the past never happened. A previously untrustworthly cousin shows up to court Anne soon after his first wife's death and Anne spends a lot of time wondering how honest he's being and if she wants to consider marrying him. There's some other stuff going on, but we all know the real story is about the romance, right?


Anne and Captain Wentworth are both perfect, of course, except for the fact that she dumped him so long ago. Handily, we can blame that on someone else. I really think Captain Wentworth could give Mr. Darcy quite the run for his money! The two spend the entire book circling each other and thinking about the past and wondering if each is noticing the other. Being Austen, there are a lot of big scenes about other people and you really have to pay attention to notice the parts that are about the romance. It's subtle in parts, but it's there in the details. If this were a modern romance it'd be much more in your face and obvious. The two of them slowly fall back in love and near the end is perhaps the world's best ever love letter. The scene surrounding the love letter is perfect- each of them is hyper aware of the other and is evesdropping on the other to look for clues of the other's feelings. You can feel the tension in each of them (not tension in the room between people, but the inner turmoil and desire.) It's perfect and delightful and I saved that installment to read again and again.


I think prior to the ending this was going to be my 3rd choice (of the 3 I've read) but now I'm madly in love with it and think it's a close tie to Pride & Prejudice for my favorite. I need to find a copy of the movie, because I'd really like to see that last scene played out.




This leaves me Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northanger Abbey. I hope it doesn't take me three years to wrap them all up.



(I did not like any of the covers, so I went with the modern looking one.)


Persuasion by Jane Austin
Penguin Classics
1818
272 pages

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Austenland by Shannon Hale

I admit it, I've become something of a Jane Austen fan in the last year. Along with half the reading world it seems. Books about Austen abound. There are books about her books, books about her, books that retell her books from the standpoint of another character. It started when I signed up for DailyLit and choose Pride and Prejudice (my review here) as my first choice. I'd read P&P before but it was in high school and I didn't remember it so well. This time around I discovered just how witty and sharp Austen is and immediately requested Sense and Sensibility (my review here). I read that one last fall and made the decision to try and read the remaining novels in 2008.

One of the many books that play off Austen is Austenland by Shannon Hale. Jane Hayes is 32 and single. She's obsessed with finding her own Darcy and is unable to find the perfect man because of this. Her great aunt dies and leaves her a non-refundable trip to Pembrook Place. Pembrook Place is a resort where guests give up all trappings of modern life and live by the Rules of Austen's time. It comes complete with costumed actors, clothing, dance lessons, and fake eligible bachelors. Jane (who becomes Miss Erstwhile at Pembrook Place) is to stay for 3 weeks and is determined to get over her Darcy fixation for good.

It was very hard for me to buy into the whole concept of living in that time and pretending to fall in love with the actors. I don't have a problem with living history (I worked at a museum with costumed actors for years) but the idea that at the end of the 3 weeks she should fall in love with one of the actors was hard for me. Fortunately for me, the idea was often hard for her to fall for as well. Jane alternates between having a blast pretending to live in that time and feeling like a fool for pretending. If it hadn't been for this awareness on her part, if she'd gone for it full speed, I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much. The actors are well done, rarely breaking character and when they did it was subtle. There was one who surprised me at the end- I really truly didn't see it coming. I felt a bit of the P&P references were a bit heavy handed. Mr. Nobley was clearly Darcy, it couldn't be more obviously done. Overall it was a good read and I'm a bit tempted to keep it until after I've finished up the rest of Austen's novels but I think I'll pass it on for now.

There are tons of references to Austen's books, of course, and it just inspired me to read them even more. I have Emma and Northanger Abbey on my shelves and Persuasion waiting in email. I'm not sure which I'll tackle next. PBS is showing the movies this winter and while I'd like to see them, I think I'll wait and only watch the ones I've already read.

Review cross posted at We'd Rather Read.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility is my most recently completed book from Daily Lit. This is my second Jane Austen and I'm not really sure why I chose this one to be next. I admit that for the first half of the book (literally) I was not enjoying it. The dialog didn't snap like it does in Pride and Prejudice, it just seemed like so much set up for what wasn't gonna be much of a payout. I have some hairbrained idea that I want to read all of Austen though, so I persevered. At almost exactly halfway something happened that made me perk up, and from there the book got much better. The dialog never matches that of P&P, but the story redeems itself.

Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters, one calm and logical, one passionate. As with P&P, the sisters are trying to get married to the right men. Of course there are rules to be followed, society to contend with, social class and inheritances, all the trademarks of P&P. The ending is suitably romantic, if a bit rushed. I need to find the movie versions of both.

Next up for Daily Lit is Middlemarch. I've read the first couple of installments and it's completely different from Austen. I am kinda regretting not moving on to Persuasion to keep the momentum going, but have almost all of Middlemarch waiting for me, and have barely started getting Persuasion. I like to have most of the book on deck before starting it. Anyone here have an opinion on Middlemarch? How about Persuasion?

Pride and Prejudice by by Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I first read Pride and Prejudice my senior year of high school. I remember enjoying it, but skimming lots of it. This time around, I read every word. I can easily see why so many people list this book in their top five or top ten or top one. I'm not going to lay out the plot, if you don't know what P&P is about, it's because you aren't interested in the first place. Everyone who could want to know, does. I was struck by the writing- there is not one extra word anywhere in this book. Every sentence is perfect, the dialogue is exactly right. My favorite character is Mr. Bennet.

And no, it was on the list. I got this one via email from www.dailylit.com so it didn't count. I read it at times that I couldn't read a paper book. I've signed up for Sense and Sensibility next.

Now I just need to find time to watch the Colin Firth version of the movie.