Hum

2/5

Yeah, so, I just finished watching Keira Knightley’s Pride & Prejudice.  I am a bit reserved in calling it that, because she was merely in it, and not responsible for it; at least I doubt it.  Actually, I’m going to call it, “Focus Feature’s” in order to not tarnish Keira Knightley. But the more I think about it, the more I am annoyed by this rendition of Jane Austen’s awesome book of the same name. “It, it, it.” Yes, yes, yes. I had been told to avoid the Focus Feature version, and watch the BBC TV version instead, by several parties, but I couldn’t get my hands on them, and I figured the Focus Feature version couldn’t be all that bad. Well, it’s not terrible, but it is quite irritating.

To be fair, I finished Pride & Prejudice, the book, not too long ago. I hadn’t really known much about it, other than its fame, and that it was a known “chick book.” I did randomly catch half of a BBC episode of it on TV before I had read the book, and it was immediately charming.  But eventually I read the book, and, to my surprise, I freaking loved it. So, as I  watched the Focus Feature version, I constantly reminded myself to forget about the book, in order to avoid that common trap where the movie is “wrong” in comparison. That worked better than I had hoped, and I found myself getting into and enjoying the movie, even though there were a lot of original scenes that were just downright bizarre.

But, whoa. Not, Matrix “I know kung fu” Keanu Reeves whoa, but WTF whoa.  Half way in, it was obvious the movie had totally changed the feel of the book that made the original story so great. Instead of a balance of pride and prejudice, there was a lot more prejudice, and a lot less pride. I felt it really, really demeaned Elizabeth’s character. Whereas she was a strong, intelligent woman in the book, she now seemed like a needy wench, with an occasional moment of wit, that dropped the ball big time, less due to circumstantial evidence, and more because of gross incompetence. It was almost like watching a movie with a male “hero” character, but from a lesser, accessory character’s point of view, rather than a woman’s perspective on equal footing.

At that point, the movie was just downhill from there. I pulled the sexist card against my own sex and assumed some douche of a man fucked it up. I looked on the back of the DVD, and it was indeed directed by a dude, but a woman did write the screenplay. Though from what I’ve learned, with movies, it’s very possible to fuck things up from any number of angles and personnel. Think Congress, with movies. So who knows. Maybe the screenwriter is more of a Lydia, maybe the director is just an asshole.

That was my biggest complaint. I can tolerate when other things are skimped or skimmed over, because, hey, it’s a movie. Some things just can’t make it. But to fuck up the essence of the book and the main characters, that was just too much. The movie just seemed more like a rich dude’s wet dream. When the movie was shining, it was pretty much lifting delicious text from Austen’s book verbatim. At least there was that.

As for the acting, I’m not a particularly good judge of it and traditionally focus more on the story, (although I can recognize terrible acting) but it seemed like Mr. Collin’s actor was one of the best. Which is kinda sad.

Anyway, I’m tempted to read the book again just so I can mentally scrape memories of Focus Feature’s movie out of my mind.  The movie is seriously BS. I recommend that all Austen fans avoid it.

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This entry was posted by Ron on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:08 am and is filed under Moving Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.