Chasing Pride
The work of Jane Austen has been adapted to screens both large and small countless times, as each successive interpretation of her novels has sought to “complete” their story with a definitive version. Unlike the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the ancient Arthurian myths, which are vast enough to inspire new versions for every generation, Austen’s novels are fixed stories that only need one transcendent adaptation as representation. It’s unlikely there will be another cinematic version of Sense and Sensibility that could top what Ang Lee did in 1996; similarly, 1999’s Mansfield Park was such an astute modernization of the source text that it would be challenging to see anyone but Frances O’Connor in the role of Fanny Price.
Pride & Prejudice may be Austen’s most popular novel, but it’s been tough to crack on screen. Although actors like Laurence Olivier and Peter Cushing had occupied the role of Mr. Darcy, they were caught within adaptations that were crippled by the density of the text. Although Austen purists may have campaigned for an adaptation that stuck as closely to what was written in the 19th century, the truth is that her novels were originally intended to reach a broad (albeit educated) audience; the beloved 1995 miniseries that starred Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, while complete in its coverage of the novel’s various subplots, is largely inaccessible to those that don’t already know the novel by heart.
Focus Features’ ambitious endeavor to craft the first cinematic version of Pride & Prejudice since 1940 was no doubt influenced by the unusual popularity of British heritage films as awards contenders and box office juggernauts. If American audiences had been enamored by the prosaic comedy of Shakespeare in Love or the satire of The Madness of King George, there was no doubt that they’d latch on to a universal story of tormented love, societal pressure, and gender dynamics. Yet, a Pride & Prejudice film also needed the presence of newly-minted stars to justify the costly recreation of a rural England estate, which led the budget to balloon to $28 million; even if its material that would work best if the audience had nothing to associate the stars with other than the characters, a stately period adaptation that starred a group of unknown British stage actors was never going to become a blockbuster.
The genius of Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice is its complete understanding of form, as it's obvious that a 127-minute film could never cram in every detail from a novel that (in standard editions) has between 350 and 450 pages. Although there’s a beauty within the loftiness of the prose, Wright was tasked with creating a film with momentum, in which scenes needed kineticism without the luxury of an interior monologue. Pride & Prejudice has the energy of a coming-of-age romance, as moments of insight, heartbreak, and confusion that feel essential to a young person are given the appropriate spotlight. While Wright didn’t attempt to simplify the material, he also made a film that was just as oriented for fans of Bridget Jones’s Diary as it was for literary scholars.
Although Wright was able to avoid being too enamored with the text to reframe it, Pride & Prejudice took incredible joy in its aesthetics. While the 2005 film offered a more multi-faceted depiction of the economic and political strife in the English Regency era than other interpretations, it was also celebratory with a gorgeous, playful score from Italian composer Dario Marianelli. Like Wright, Marianelli’s background was in the European social realist movement, and not classicalism; as a result, the film has an active interpretation of a historical era that isn’t held back by a false pretense of nostalgia.
The most critical component within Pride & Prejudice was the casting of Elizabeth Bennet; while it was necessary to find an actress capable of representing the naivete of young love, it required an emotional maturity not often seen in young British film stars. It was by sheer luck that Keira Knightley fell into the perfect age range, but had already played a healthy amount of roles intended for performers much older. Although she’d broken out by playing an aristocrat in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and a young bride in Love Actually, Knightley was given the opportunity to play a character within her age range. It also landed her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, a trophy she should’ve won had the Oscars not been enamored by Resse Witherspoon’s impressive role as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line.
Knightley’s performance is expressive, yet poignant; she didn’t oversell the emotional breakdowns that were key to the romantic narrative, but wasn’t afraid to accentuate the blissful hyper-awareness of youth. By comparison, Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy is a stoic, moody heartthrob, who the film points out is just as much a fool for love as Elizabeth. Wright’s aptitude for casting extended to the entire cast of supporting characters; retroactively, it's interesting to note that the ensemble included future stars such as Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Jena Malone, Kelly Reilly, and Talulah Riley before their mainstream breakthroughs.
The high of Pride & Prejudice is one that Wright has chased for over two decades; if Darkest Hour and Atonement were respectable, if unflashy historical epics, Wright’s attempts at more stylized material like Pan and The Woman in the Window have been creative disasters. Perhaps the success of Pride & Prejudice isn’t entirely his, but given that the film’s re-release has been treated with the pomp and circumstance of a Golden Age classic, it's hard to imagine that any current filmmaker could’ve done better.