Readers, I watched it.
The backstory: I taught Pride and Prejudice last fall, but somehow I missed the latest version of Austen's novel in the theatres completely. Then I allowed the dvd of the latest cinematic iteration to languish atop the television since late March. Bad cinetrix. Shame finally got the better of me the other night, so I sucked it up and watched Keira Knightley assay the Lizzie Bennet role.
Meh. P&P wasn't bad, but it wasn't the second coming, either, despite the big liquory kiss the nation's critcs bestowed upon it on release. The film, on the whole quite sprightly, felt almost too headlong and rushed in a few places that really do warrant a pause for breath. For example, I didn't miss Bingley's married sister and her buffoon husband an iota, but I did feel something was lost by having Lizzie's aunt and uncle present-- rather than just Mr. Darcy--when she receives Jane's letter saying their idiotic sister Lydia [the always saucy Jena Malone] has run off with Wyckham. See, the star-crossed lovers are meant to be complicit in their shared guilt, not part of a freakin' posse.
And then, of course, there's the controversial "Americans are such simps/The Brits would never stand for such a travesty" final two minutes of the flick. Astute reviewers for the Chicago Reader and the LA Times were right there with the cinetrix, calling out P&P for shamelessly quoting the blocking at the end of Sixteen Candles.
Here's Elizabeth M. Tamney of the Reader:
The scene is beyond sappy, not to mention distractingly similar to the ending of Sixteen Candles: Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), newly married, sit facing each other on a table overlooking the grounds of his ancestral home, exchanging sweet nothings, with the camera slowly moving in on them until they kiss.
And Carina Chocano chimes in:
The film's single false note comes in a post-wedding scene on a balcony at Pemberley Hall that's unfortunately reminiscent of "Sixteen Candles."
But that's not the only 80s movie this adaptation is biting. The cinetrix recommends you dial the way-back machine to the final moments of Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View,* where Helena Bonham Carter's Lucy Honeychurch and Julian Sands' George Emerson, newly eloped, murmur sweet nothings at each other in front of their window at the Pensione Bertolini. Hey, steal from the best, right?
