THIS TIME IT'S AN AMPERSAND

Last night we went to see Pride & Prejudice, the umpteenth remake of Jane Austin's classic novel. It's the ninth, according to the Internet Movie Database, but maybe I'm confused because I get all of her novels mixed up: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park, all of which I've seen in the last decade or so. Maybe it would have helped if I had actually read any of them, but I haven't.

I try to avoid the reviews of movies, etc. before I see them, so I won't be, er, prejudiced. But even so, I had heard the buzz that Matthew MacFadyen was no Colin Firth, the Mr. Darcy in the much-acclaimed 1995 BBC miniseries. Well, as an actor MacFayden did just fine, but as a handsome hunk...let's just say that I can't see anyone swooning at the sight of him. But he's good-looking enough that the 10,000 a year income made his Mr. Darcy's attraction understandable.

On the other hand, I thought Keira Knightly was too attractive to portray Elizabeth Bennet. I kept wondering why all the men weren't swooning at the sight of her. Director Joe Wright thought so also at first, but then said her tomboyish attitude was perfect for the part. Well, maybe the attitude is tomboyish, but the face isn't, particularly when it is enhanced by the very light but still noticeable make-up she wears in the film. She was drop-dead gorgeous, as far as I'm concerned, and her beauty always seemed at odds with her role in the film.

All that aside, the movie was quite good. Emma Thompson did an uncredited re-write of the script (though there was a note of "special thanks" to her at the end), and everything flowed quite nicely--right up to the end, when a scene that was added that most certainly was not in the book. Jane Austin never wrote such a gooey, "they lived happily ever after" episode I'm sure. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

The acting was excellent. Brenda Blethyn, who I liked so much in Secrets and Lies, was splendid playing a mother of a completely different era here. Judi Dench was appropriately outrageous as Lady Catherine de Bourg, and Donald Sutherland handled the role of the father of five marriageable daughters in a rather understated way--even his accent wasn't noticeable. Only the odious clergyman cousin, Mr. Collins, fell short. He did not seem quite odious enough to me.

The sets were great, the cinematography excellent, though I'm not too sure of the costumes--Austen wrote the novel in 1797, and I'm not sure the men's fashions of that year were as advanced as the film depicts. And I think I caught a continuity error when Darcy's boots changed from all back to black and brown in one scene.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the film very much. I wonder if they'll ever show it as a double feature with Fiddler on the Roof--both have five poor sisters trying to get married.