Waiting for Darcy
Well, there's a new attempt at Pride and Prejudice on the big screen.
Spoilers in the comments. Chime in when you've seen it.
I can't believe my friend I went with had NEVER seen, read, barely heard of P&P before tonight. I've clearly been a terrible friend to have over looked that. We'll be scheduling a viewing of the mini-series shortly.
I recently went to see a play version which I absolutely adored. It was developed by Book-It Theatre in Seattle and they did not re-write the book into a stage play but rather edited it down. So every word spoken was as it was in the book. There were characters speaking about themselves in third person or narrating a scene but it worked wonderfully!
Can there ever be too much Austen???
posted by K-Lyn @ 11:59 PM
3 Comments:
At 8:21 AM,
K-Lyn said…
So I believe I was in the minority as so many people amd critics have professed their love for this movie. But I'm too much of a purist or something.
I thought this production was neither original nor faithful. I felt as if a favorite book had been given a romance novel treatment. Some moments were lovely. Those where they were faithful to the book worked. But over all they chose to tell a moody love story and did not allow for the class struggle to show when that is really at the core of the novel.
I'm not miserable that I went but I left feeling betrayed and had to run home to the book.
At 1:51 AM,
Neel Mehta said…
I'm not all that pumped for this movie because (1) it feels like some sort of misguided all-star attempt, or (2) Bride & Prejudice stole its thunder.
The miniseries is brilliant. And it's not just Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. The whole cast is terrific. I guess I don't need to see how Brenda Blethyn and Judi Dench tackle Mrs. Bennet and Catherine de Bourgh because a pair of lesser-known actresses already marked those roles as their own.
In related news, MSNBC describes the uphill battle here.
At 10:59 AM,
K-Lyn said…
"An 80-year-old Colin Firth is still far preferable to a 27-year-old Kevin Federline."
True. And a nice article even if there were a few flaws (Wickham was NOT Darcy's friend). But I feel that I should defend Matthew at this point. I went into the movie expecting far inferior performances to be its downfall. I actually bought his Darcy quite easily. I stll prefer a Firthed production for sure but he had nice eyes and some lovely posturing that was very Darcy-worthy.
The problem came from the direction he was given. Same for all the stars. Judi's scene could not be saved from being rest to the drawing room in the middle of the night. And he could never overcome the final scene, nowhere in the book, that made us all what to hurl every time he said "Mrs. Darcy".
Bride and Prejudice is on the list of movies I need to rent when I get Netflix.
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