Jane Austen movies make me weak in the knees. It happens every time…there's the lovely but misunderstood girl (Emma Woodhouse of Emma, Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, Cher Horowitz of Clueless) who pines after the rakish cad (the Mr. Darcys of the world)…there's the sprawling English estates where peacocks strut around topiaried gardens…there's the manners, the social graces, the cutting remarks which can send a tender debutante withering away into lifelong spinsterhood with a single, sniping syllable. Let's face it, you just can't beat Miss Austen for early-19th-century Peyton Place antics.
And you just can't beat the recent big-screen adaptations of her prim-and-proper novels for some of the best old-fashioned, heart-palpitating romance--the kind of movies they talk about when they say, "They just don't make 'em like they used to."
The truth is, they are still making 'em like they used to and, in some cases, they're even better than the studio system products of Hollywood's Golden Era. Want proof? Go rent Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion or--the most recent Austen offering--Mansfield Park. The 1818 novel Northanger Abbey is coming soon to a theater near you, too. It's almost more than my poor, swooning heart can bear.
And, yes, I'm proud to say that I'm one of those guys who'd rather watch two hours of love-tortured 19th-century heroines than two hours of 21st-century Hong Kong chop-socky. In the video store, I'll bypass Jet Li and head straight for Jane Austen. Doesn't make me less of a man or more of a namby-pamby--hey, I like John Wayne, baseball and beer as much as the next red-blooded testosterone-laden fellow--it just means there's a soft, mushy spot on the surface of my heart which starts to flicker and tingle when I sit down to watch Gwyneth Paltrow fumble her way through the well-mannered society of 200 years ago.
And boy oh boy, was my heart palpitating during Mansfield Park! This is an absolutely delightful production of Austen's 1814 novel, a work which has been called her most solemn and moralistic book. To be sure, you won't find the carefree, light-as-croissant tone of Emma or Sense and Sensibility, but the result is still the same--an ending in which everything works out to fairy-tale perfection and you walk away with a dopey grin on your face (at least I do).
This is also a version of Jane Austen which bears the marks of thoroughly modern moviemaking. Characters speak directly to the camera, there's a bit of hand-held camera work, lesbianism is implied and there's a scene with brief nudity (to the best of my knowledge, the only instance of bare flesh in a Jane Austen adaptation). Still, Mansfield Park remains faithful (in spirit if not letter) to its source. Jane Austen can rest easy in her grave.
Director Patricia Rozema moves briskly through a complex plot which is burdened with equally-complex family relationships (something common to the Austen movies). What I'm about to describe can get a little tangled, so hang on to your parasols!
Young Fanny Price (played by Hannah Taylor Gordon as a child and Frances O'Connor as an adult) is sent from her squalid home in Portsmouth to live with wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park, a gorgeous country estate. The difference between the two places is pretty obvious--the Portsmouth shack has cockroaches, Mansfield Park has freshly-groomed horses and manicured lawns. Later we learn something even deeper about the family's circumstances: Fanny's mother married for love and ended up bitterly poor but spiritually rich; her sister married for money and became Lady Betram, the unhappy mistress of Mansfield Park. Fanny, we suspect, is the kind of girl who'd marry for love even if it meant washing laundry for an ever-growing brood of children.
Once she arrives at Mansfield Park, Fanny is given the cold shoulder and a small apartment in the attic. She spends her days dreaming up fantastic, lurid tales which she recounts in letters to her sister back in Portsmouth. Here is where avid Austen fans might start doing double-takes because the Hollywood Fanny differs from the Literary Fanny. Rozema has cleverly made the character into a hybrid of the novel's heroine and its creator, basing some of the actions and dialogue on Austen's own letters and journals. The result is a thoroughly warm, witty and completely lovable heroine (this is also thanks to O'Connor's outstanding performance, one that outshines even those of Gwyneth Paltrow and Emma Thompson).
Back to the story…Because of her lower-class background, Fanny is treated as an outcast by most of the family: Sir Thomas Bertram (playwright Harold Pinter), the drug-addicted Lady Bertram (Lindsay Duncan), and cousins Tom, Maria, and Julia. In their eyes, she's just a notch above the family servants. Some of the movie's cruelest moments come when Fanny gets coolly snubbed during social engagements.
Only Edmund (Trainspotting's Jonny Lee Miller), the Bertrams' second son, treats her like a human being. He's attracted to her forthright attitude (150 years later, she might have been called a feminist) and her sly way of putting people in their place with carefully chosen words. Her tongue, says one character, is "as sharp as a guillotine." Fanny smiles and takes that as a compliment. Over the years, Fanny and Edmund become close friends and, although Edmund seems to be oblivious to it, Fanny falls in love with him.
Enter Henry and Mary Crawford (Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz), a snobbish, upper-crust brother and sister who arrive from London in search of wealthy bachelors and bachelorettes to marry. To Fanny's dismay, Mary sets her sights on Edmund, and he does nothing to fight her off. Meanwhile, although Henry initially flirts with all the eligible young women at Mansfield Park, his attention settles on Fanny. Our heroine doesn't seem too sure, however--especially given Henry's apparent shallow character. She's seen enough of the romantic goings-on around Mansfield Park to be too quick to give her heart to a man. As she observes, "Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business."
Eventually, all the romance does get maneuvered in the right direction--the good people get their rewards, the bad people get their comeuppance--and, as the beautiful score by Lesley Barber swells, so do our hearts. By the time one character (I won't reveal who) says to another, "I've loved you as a man loves a woman…as a hero loves a heroine…as I have never loved anyone," my own heart was brimming over with bliss.
This is a movie for all romantics--man or woman--to cherish and savor. But, as Fanny herself warns, "Beware of fainting fits. Beware of swoons."
Based on the novel by Jane Austen, Mansfield Park is a sexy, entertaining comedy about a spirited young woman (Francis O Connor) sent away to live wit...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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