Comments | tempestsarekind: I am all astonishment!

tempestsarekind

I am all astonishment!

Nov 06, 2007 17:09

A college friend of mine is teaching an Austen class at her university, and against her wishes, she had her students watch the recent film of Pride and Prejudice, the one with Keira Knightley (P&P3). (Apparently some of the students had decided to take the class because they'd really liked the movie, so she made it a part of the syllabus.) This ( Read more... )

p&p3, pride and prejudice, austen

Comments 7

anonymous November 6 2007, 23:24:31 UTC

There was no pig in the house. I think you let your prejudice cloud your judgement.
And while many good things can be said about the 1995 BBC mini series, it wasn't exactly subtle.

tempestsarekind November 7 2007, 03:41:13 UTC

Really? *This* deserved an anonymous comment?

As you may have deduced from my tone, I don't own the film, so I can't go look. But plenty of reviewers mention the pig in the house. I suppose we could all of us be wrong, but it seems unlikely. Here's one (which is quite positive about the film, actually):
http://www.slate.com/id/2130026

And here's an article from JASNA's online edition, which states that "In later scenes, a pig is seen in the passage" (fourth paragraph under "The Opening Sequence").
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no2/dole.htm

I also never said P&P2 was subtle--especially when Davies is throwing wet shirts around willy-nilly. I just don't happen to think it's a worthwhile endeavor to speak of films as supplying something that the novel left out, which seemed to be the students' main praise for the recent film.

lareinenoire November 7 2007, 09:53:15 UTC

There was definitely a pig. Admittedly a very brief shot, but it was certainly there. And most of the reviews I read remarked upon it.

lareinenoire November 6 2007, 23:28:39 UTC

I actually had a fascinating but slightly disturbing moment the other week when I was talking to a friend from my faculty (who I happen to think is absolutely brilliant and am in complete awe of) and she admitted to hating Jennifer Ehle's take on Elizabeth Bennet. She claimed she found her 'smug', and she actually preferred Keira Knightley -- which is heresy in my mind, but she thought Keira was more 'real'. That, and she actually really liked the fact that there was chemistry between Elizabeth and Darcy from the start, which was very surprising to me ( ... )

tempestsarekind November 7 2007, 03:52:33 UTC

I know a few people who think Jennifer Ehle is rather smug as Elizabeth. Maybe I didn't notice. But then, I think Elizabeth *herself* is quite smug, and readers tend to forget that. "And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason," her own realization that she has the exact same thoughts about Mary King as Lydia does, that sort of thing.

I liked Judi Dench (though not her appearance at the Bennets' in the middle of the night!), and Rosamund Pike as Jane, as well.

she actually really liked the fact that there was chemistry between Elizabeth and Darcy from the start

That *is* surprising! That would make it an entirely different kind of story!

Students really do need to understand that a film is a completely different medium from a novel or even a play.And that's the real issue here. I don't actually have a problem with the fact that they like one version over another, but they don't seem to understand that the film and the novel are doing totally different things. Adding more ( ... )

lareinenoire November 7 2007, 09:58:13 UTC

I can see why people would find her smug -- it didn't occur to me to think of her performance that way since for me she literally embodies Elizabeth, although you're very right about the character being smug as well. She's so rarely wrong about things, and everybody thinks so, and so forth.

That *is* surprising! That would make it an entirely different kind of story!

It would. And while I could see why that sort of story would be appealing, it would be for different reasons, and I wouldn't call it Pride and Prejudice. ;)

Adding more romance is a decision the filmmakers have made, a way to tell a story--it is NOT a corrective to Austen's novel.Maybe if you try to introduce film as a sort of critique of a text, that might help? That's the way I've come to view film, actually. Much like criticism, it emphasises some aspects and diminishes others, and it's literally and figuratively a lens through which a story is viewed. Admittedly you are getting the combined viewpoint of a director/screenwriter/producer/test audience/what have you, ( ... )

tempestsarekind November 7 2007, 15:24:37 UTC

And while I could see why that sort of story would be appealing, it would be for different reasons, and I wouldn't call it Pride and Prejudice. ;)

Hee. Exactly.

I think being emphatic about the critique element of film is a good idea. I haven't had this problem too much with Shakespeare--partly because I haven't done all that much with film in class, but also because I think people are more used to thinking about how different actors decide to play Shakespeare's characters. (The problem I have is that my students want to have conversations about character motivations that can really *only* be decided in performance, and not what we can talk about with just the text.) But I think the idea of critique could be really helpful--especially in getting them to think beyond like or dislike of a film.