And seeing romantic love as "impossible within convention" MISSES THE ENTIRE POINT of pretty much Jane Austen's entire oeuvre. ESPECIALLY Sense and Sensibility, but Pride and Prejudice too. The only couple in P&P that operates outside convention is Lydia and Wickham, and they're hardly a model!
Hee! I love the icon! And you're right--that particular trope is common enough to need the trademark.
It really does miss the point in kind of a spectacular way. Why make an Austen film and then go out of your way to undo all the stuff Austen does? (Like conceiving of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as deeply in love with each other, which I remember someone--the screenwriter maybe, or Donald Sutherland--saying. Er, what???)
And I know, it's supposed to be all "look how vulnerable and unguarded they are!" but all I can see is "dear lord, why are you people not dressed properly, did you just walk through town like that?"
YES. That was my reaction too. As skirmish_of_wit pointed out, if you remove the conventions from P&P, you've deviated far enough from the novel that it should not longer rightly be called Pride and Prejudice.
Once I happened across an HBO special on the making of this film, which I watched because, I don't know, I'm a masochist? And it was all about as tone-deaf as I expected it to be, but one thing that one of the Working Title producers said interested me: that one way to look at their decision to make P&P3 would be to say, "They brought you Four Weddings and a Funeral, they brought you Bridget Jones, and now they're bringing you the story that started it all."
And that was when the penny dropped: they wind up feeding all the cliches that have sprung up around the romantic comedy *since* Jane Austen wrote the novel back into the story. They put in the stuff that people who don't know Austen *think* is in Austen, but isn't--and the result is this odd, dissonant movie.
And that was when the penny dropped: they wind up feeding all the cliches that have sprung up around the romantic comedy *since* Jane Austen wrote the novel back into the story.
I think you've hit it right on the head. One of my friends who does not like Austen saw it and loved it far more than the 1995 adaptation, which she apparently completely disliked. One of the aspects that she liked the most was the attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth from the beginning which isn't in the book at all. I can see why they put it in, and I can even see how, in the context of the film, it worked very well. But it wasn't Pride and Prejudice.
I honestly believe that if they'd given the film a different title, I would have really enjoyed it. Because, as a stand-alone film, it was visually gorgeous, had a reasonable enough story, and have I mentioned the pretty? It just isn't Austen.
I suppose I should have known from the tagline: "Sometimes the one person you can't stand is the one person you can't live without" (or something to that effect). It's a pretty traditional romantic comedy staple, the attraction that's immediate to both parties even though they try to fight it or are oblivious to it--but you're right; it isn't Pride and Prejudice.
I went to see the movie once (out of the three [!] times) with someone who'd read the novel but wasn't incredibly familiar with it, and he definitely got lost a few times (particularly with regard to Lydia, I seem to recall; I don't think that plot was telegraphed especially well). So it makes me wonder whether the movie would have worked as a stand-alone film. I don't know.
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YES. YES YES YES. I called it " the hackneyed Romantic Precipitation Scene (TM)" when I first saw the movie.
And seeing romantic love as "impossible within convention" MISSES THE ENTIRE POINT of pretty much Jane Austen's entire oeuvre. ESPECIALLY Sense and Sensibility, but Pride and Prejudice too. The only couple in P&P that operates outside convention is Lydia and Wickham, and they're hardly a model!
(Yeah, I just edited this to change my icon.)
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It really does miss the point in kind of a spectacular way. Why make an Austen film and then go out of your way to undo all the stuff Austen does? (Like conceiving of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as deeply in love with each other, which I remember someone--the screenwriter maybe, or Donald Sutherland--saying. Er, what???)
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YES. That was my reaction too. As skirmish_of_wit pointed out, if you remove the conventions from P&P, you've deviated far enough from the novel that it should not longer rightly be called Pride and Prejudice.
Reply
And that was when the penny dropped: they wind up feeding all the cliches that have sprung up around the romantic comedy *since* Jane Austen wrote the novel back into the story. They put in the stuff that people who don't know Austen *think* is in Austen, but isn't--and the result is this odd, dissonant movie.
Reply
I think you've hit it right on the head. One of my friends who does not like Austen saw it and loved it far more than the 1995 adaptation, which she apparently completely disliked. One of the aspects that she liked the most was the attraction between Darcy and Elizabeth from the beginning which isn't in the book at all. I can see why they put it in, and I can even see how, in the context of the film, it worked very well. But it wasn't Pride and Prejudice.
I honestly believe that if they'd given the film a different title, I would have really enjoyed it. Because, as a stand-alone film, it was visually gorgeous, had a reasonable enough story, and have I mentioned the pretty? It just isn't Austen.
Reply
I went to see the movie once (out of the three [!] times) with someone who'd read the novel but wasn't incredibly familiar with it, and he definitely got lost a few times (particularly with regard to Lydia, I seem to recall; I don't think that plot was telegraphed especially well). So it makes me wonder whether the movie would have worked as a stand-alone film. I don't know.
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