blithering in the key of life

Sitting watching a film version of Pride And Prejudice. Keira Knightly looks fetching enough. At least she doesn't look half starved in this one. In fact, there are very attractive stars and costars all round. Nice casting of Donald Sutherland as Mr Bennet. Camera work nearly good. Maybe just a little bit arid. No heart to make us care about the nice colours. This is the problem. And the storyline itself utterly betrayed. Utterly betrayed, I mean, in its tone. For the modern reader Jane Austen's original novel and characters still glisten with wit and defiance and zest for living after centuries. It's nearly impossible to transfer them to the screen without capturing something of the author's own joy at living. But this film has all but accomplished the impossible. The thing is inert. Almost joyless. Because it's a depiction of Jane Austen through the lens of early 21st century atheistic liberalism. It's as though the film makers in their anxiety to make a point about the status of women, have decided to jettison the joyful celebration of life which Jane Austen has crafted into her story. Joy doesn't quite fit with Marxist dialectic apparently. The most famous scene where the bumbling clergyman Mr Collins asks Keira Knightly to marry him was played like an episode of Eastenders. Socialist realism writ large. When Donald Sutherland stepped up to deliver the most life affirming line in literature, to wit: "Lizzie, from this day you must forever be a stranger to one of your parents, for your mother will never speak to you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never speak to you again if you do," there was hope that here at least the film would have to retain some of the zest of the original, but no, the line was delivered with grim vindictive wearisome hackneyed menace. Not even a smidgen of roguish humour. I recall a previous adaptation of Pride And Prejudice was carried out by the famous feminist Fay Weldon back in the 1980's. Fay Weldon was herself enough of an authoress to insist on respecting the vision of Jane Austen. Fay Weldon, as clapped out a feminist as ever lived, delivered a work of art, something that shone with the spirit of the original. Yes, even she opted to retain the joy. Bloody hell. This bunch have run the thing through an ideological ringer. The end result is a bunch of sexy communists trahaising a work of art. Here is the news. Janes Austen is more realistic than anything in Eastenders or Coronation Street or The Communist Manifesto. Jane Austen knew about people, life and real courage, namely the courage to cheerfully say things that no one else is saying and to keep living no matter how tough things get, and to live with joy, dammit all. In this film Jane Austen's life's work has been sacrificed on the altar of flash over substance. Jane Austen has been raped by atheistic liberals. Ah it makes me mad.
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(Tony Clayton Lea in The Irish Times notes: "Bringing Jane Austen's movie to the big screen, director Joe Wright perfectly pitches the balance between glamour and squalor, wit and wisdom.")