It is a truth universally acknowledged that Hollywood has had a long-standing love affair with Jane Austen. Although, according to the IMDb, a one hour television version of PRIDE & PREJUDICE appeared in 1938, it is the 1940 film version of the same novel, starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, that seems only the tip of an iceberg we still have not glimpsed half of yet when it comes to Jane Austen and Hollywood.
The mid- to late-90’s and the first part of the current decade brought a surge of adaptations to screens both big and small, with A&E’s PRIDE & PREJUDICE mini-series starring Colin Firth in a wet shirt, an oft-overlooked (except by die-hard Austenites) but stunning PERSUASION starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, the Miramax-produced EMMA starring Gwyneth Paltrow, the Ang Lee-helmed SENSE & SENSIBILITY starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet (in one of her earliest film roles), the semi-controversial MANSFIELD PARK starring Frances O’Connor and Jonny Lee Miller, a Bollywood musical entitled BRIDE & PREJUDICE starring Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson, a “latter-day” (read: Mormon) PRIDE & PREJUDICE starring Kam Heskin and Orlando Seale, and yet another PRIDE & PREJUDICE starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.
Though I could spend a ridiculous amount of time debating the positives and negatives of each of the above named adaptations (believe me, you don’t want to get me started), I’m only going to draw attention to one. Namely, Patricia Rozema’s 1999 MANSFIELD PARK, which I called semi-controversial.
I will admit, right here and now, that I absolutely
loved this film. After six hours (more or less) of Colin Firth, it is my favorite Jane film. After admitting it, I wholeheartedly believe that there are so-called “pure” Austenites out there who would put me down as not a true fan. (And I have come across some of these people online at a supposed open forum for all things Austen, but a place that is in actuality rife with the kind of snobbery I can only believe that Jane herself would have abhorred.)
Rozema’s MANSFIELD PARK is not a straight-up adaptation of the novel, but rather a conglomeration of the book and Jane Austen herself. The author’s juvenilia become heroine Fanny Price’s own works and some of Austen’s wit and even a little of her own personal biography are incorporated to create a more compelling lead character. Although the film is my second favorite, the book itself is probably one of my least favorite. The heroine is a rather sickly, passive sort of girl, to whom everything happens while she does nothing, and who is always so steadfastly irreproachable in her actions that she is ultimately boring and, frankly, annoying.
One may believe that similar liberalities in storytelling are taken in BECOMING JANE, which purports to be a biographical tale of a young Miss Jane and a seemingly profligate young Irishman named Tom Lefroy. Jane’s brief and ill-fated love affair with Mr Lefroy, we are to believe, serves as the inspiration for her novels (most notably Pride & Prejudice) in which her heroines “after a little trouble” have “all that they desire.”
It does not take much digging, either in a literary class or on the good old world wide web, to discover that Jane Austen remained single for the entirety of her 41 short years. She did, in fact, know and socialize with Tom Lefroy, and he is mentioned in a couple of her letters:
To Cassandra Austen, Saturday 9-Sunday 10 January 1796 “Mr Tom Lefroy’s birthday was yesterday.”
“You scold me much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs Lefroy a few days ago.”
“After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove--it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.”
To Cassandra Austen, Thursday 14-Friday 15 January 1796 “I look forward with great impatience to [the party at Ashe], as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.”
“At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over--My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.”
These few scant references are either very little to go on or the minimum amount of fodder needed to provide a fertile imagination with the stuff of great, sweeping, star-crossed romances. And it is the latter that is given to us in this film.
A young Miss Jane’s tranquil country life is turned topsy with the arrival of Mr Lefroy from London, the metropolitan cousin of a neighboring friend. Each instantly dislikes the other. Also on hand is Mr Wisley, a wealthy, but somewhat reserved, suitor for Jane’s hand whose interest is promoted by his domineering aunt, Lady Gresham. And from here on out the story greatly resembles that told in Austen’s
Pride & Prejudice (originally titled
First Impressions).
American Anne Hathaway, taking on the role of a beloved British authoress, is charming and likable, if not really a revelation. But it is Scottish-born James McAvoy that brings a youthful exuberance to the role of Tom Lefroy, and does everything in his (considerable) power to display to advantage those breeches and high collars along with a set of roguish curls and bright blue eyes that are simply essential for the promotion of romance.
If you need to be warned to not take the story weaved in this film as a gospel of Jane Austen’s life, take heed now. And maybe read a book or two, familiarize yourself with the term “fiction.” It is true that Jane’s sister Cassandra destroyed many of the author’s letters after Jane’s death. Is it such a stretch of the imagination to suppose that those letters contained professions of feelings that Cassandra believed Jane would not want revealed to the wide world? There is no harm in imagining a romance for one of England’s most beloved authors, a love affair that combines all the best of what we know about her and what she gave to us.
The picture is warm and the sound is clear, with a subtly entrancing soundtrack.
