Masterpiece Classic: Emma

I say this as a Janeite but sometimes I wonder, there have to be other novels out there worth adapting into movies/miniseries instead of always coming back to Jane Austen. I found the timing of this adaptation to be a little strange too because just 2 years ago Masterpiece had "The Complete Jane Austen" with new adaptations of 4 of the 6 novels (see my reviews of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park) but not Emma.

I mean, I'm not really complaining, Austen is Austen, and I actually really enjoyed this new version. I thought Romola Garai was a very good Emma--I liked her much more than both Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale. She had just the right combination of clever and spoiled but also good intentioned. Jonny Lee Miller was surprisingly wonderful as Mr. Knightley. Even though I've loved him in other things, I wasn't sure if he would be right for the part but I'm glad he proved me wrong. I loved the scene where Emma and Mr. Knightley dance. Great acting, because not a word was said! Michael Gambon as Emma's father didn't have much to do but was a nice presence and I was happy to see Jodhi May as Mrs. Weston. She's a regular in these period dramas and is always excellent.

One funny thing to note was that there were two former Edmund Bertrams (Mansfield Park) in the cast. Jonny Lee Miller played him in the 1999 film version, and Blake Ritson (Mr. Elton here) played him in the awful Billie Piper version from 2008.

Other than that I don't know that there's really much else to say about this. The production values on Masterpiece productions are always great, and I appreciated the length of the series (split into 4 episodes in the UK, 3 parts in the US) but it got me thinking that my favorite adaptation of Emma is actually...Clueless. I know, that movie is 15 years old now and I'm not discovering anything new but the more I think about it, the more I realize how inspired the way they moved the story to a 90s high school was. The sister's husband's brother becomes the ex-stepbrother, the secretly engaged suitor becomes the gay boyfriend, the farmer becomes the skateboarding slacker...even the title of the movie is perfect!

Anyway, Masterpiece is re-airing Northanger Abbey and Persuasion over the next two weeks, but after that there look to be some interesting programs coming up, including one co-starring Padma Lakshmi (of Top Chef, how random) and an Anne Frank adaptation. Lots to look forward to!

The Complete Jane Austen: Miss Austen Regrets

Wow, this whole Complete Jane Austen has been kind of a roller coaster, huh? First, Persuasion was alright but ultimately disappointing, then Northanger Abbey was tons of fun, then Mansfield Park was horrible, and now, the latest installment, Miss Austen Regrets was actually really good.

Not based on any of her novels, but a fictionalized biopic of Jane Austen's life, I thought this was really well done. I haven't yet seen Becoming Jane, but I think that movie was more about her younger years, while this one focuses on the last part of Jane's life. She's already a successful author, and while giving advice to her niece, Fanny Price, she looks back on why she herself never found love. It's actually a bit depressing, since we know she never married and died really too young, but I liked the writing and pacing, and I thought the acting was really superb. Olivia Williams plays Jane with a nice wit and independent spirit and you can really see how Austen's novels could have come out of someone like her. There's this part where she reads some lines from Persuasion which I thought was really wonderful. I've never been one for audio books, but I kind of want to hear her read the whole thing!

The Jennifer Ehle-Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice is going to be airing for the next three weeks. This is totally ridiculous as I own it on DVD and can watch it whenever I want, but I'm kind of considering watching it live. I mean, I do want to see what kind of intro Gillian Anderson is going to give for the installments. After that, the series will be finishing up with an old adaptation of Emma with Kate Beckinsale, and a new version of Sense & Sensibility, which I've heard some good things about. So until then, happy P&P viewing!

The Complete Jane Austen: Mansfield Park

So this was pretty much dreadful.

A lot of people complain about the 1999 version of Mansfield Park with Frances O’Connor because it wasn’t very faithful to the book, but I think I kind of loved it because of that. I read the book a long time ago and remember not really liking it too much, especially compared to my favorites, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, so that movie made the story and characters much more fun and interesting. Northanger Abbey starts off by saying that no one would suppose Catherine Morland to be a heroine but really, Fanny Price is much much less likely to be one. It's kind of hard to root for her...she’s shy and quiet and kind of cries a lot. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that...I'm probably more like Fanny than not but I'm pretty sure a book about my life would be pretty dull too.

Anyway, this adaptation seems to have tried to follow the book a bit more closely, but they kind of took all the wrong parts. They took out all the amusing Mrs. Norris bits and completely cut out the part where Fanny goes back to Portsmouth which is kind of an important part of the book, and I feel like for someone unfamiliar with the story, it would be really hard to follow as everyone’s intentions seemed so murky. I guess they did try to make Fanny a bit more likable by casting Billie Piper (who I do like because of Doctor Who but is kind of misused here) and making her run around and smile and laugh more, but she was still basically an uninteresting character. And the ending was just terrible. TERRIBLE. Edmund realizes that he loves Fanny in the stupidest moment ever, when she randomly advises Lady Bertram to use purple thread instead of maroon, and then there’s all this running (what is the deal with these new adaptations and all the running??), and at their wedding Fanny and Edmund waltz in front of everyone with Lady Bertram commenting that oh, they’ve learned a new dance. Um, WTF?

And on a more shallow note, the hair in this movie was just out of control. Why was Fanny’s hair all messy and just hanging down on her shoulders? Didn’t women pretty much always wear their hair up back then? And Henry Crawford and Tom both had pretty unfortunate hair too. And overall, there was sadly a definite lack of eye candy in this movie, definitely nothing compared to Alessandro Nivola and Jonny Lee Miller from the 1999 version. Also, Michelle Ryan, aka the Bionic Woman, played Maria, and she seemed weirdly out of place to me. Can someone point me to something that she's actually good in?

Oh, and what was up was Gillian Anderson’s bizarre and convoluted introduction about how Jane Austen wrote herself into the book as Mary Crawford, except prettier? Where did that even come from?? One thing I will say, though, is that all these adaptations are making me want to read all the books again. Despite how terrible this one was, I now want to go back and re-read the book and see if I still feel the same about it...

The Complete Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey

So despite my kind of lukewarm feelings towards last week's new adaptation of Persuasion, I was really looking forward to this week's Northanger Abbey, because I'd never read the book or seen any adaptation of it, and wow, I was not disappointed. I totally loved it, I think I want to buy it on DVD, and I want to read the book now!

Northanger Abbey is really kind of different from Jane Austen's other novels...it's her first novel, and is supposed to be kind of a parody of Gothic novels. The story is much more light and is really funny. Money does play a part, but there are no family estates being entailed away to cousins because of a lack of female heirs, no fear of destitution, and the main character, Catherine, isn't even really looking to get married. I really liked Catherine...the novel and the movie both start by saying that no one who knew her would suppose her to be a heroine, and that's because she's pretty average. She's 17, one of a large family of 10 children with sensible parents, who gets invited to spend some time in Bath with a wealthy, childless couple from her neighborhood. She's honest and cheerful and smart, and while I usually don't like those kind of girls that don't realize how pretty they are, I really bought it here because she'd never really been "out" in society before going to Bath.

As for the hero of the story, Henry Tilney...I just loved him. Darcy and Wentworth still top my list of Austen romantic heroes, but I think Mr. Tilney's really more the type of guy I'd realistically want for myself. He's friendly and warm and kind of snarky and sarcastic, which I was not expecting at all but was kind of awesome. He and Catherine aren't some great love story, but they're very cute together, and there's really no competition for either of their affections. Another man, John Thorpe, pursues Catherine, but she instantly dislikes him, and for good reason...he's conceited and loud and crass (which is actually kind of amusing because you know he doesn't have any chance whatsoever). I loved the proposal scene with Catherine and Henry...they were both so nervous and excited and was just simpler and happier than the more baggage-filled scenes from Austen's other stories.

And the movie just had so many little moments that really made me crack up, like Catherine's silly Gothic fantasy sequences, and when she and Mrs. Allen first go to the rooms in Bath, and her little sisters squealing "Mr. Tilney, Mr. Tilney" when he comes to see her at the end. Really fun stuff.

The Complete Jane Austen: Persuasion

I was really excited to hear that Masterpiece Theatre was going to be airing adaptations of all 6 Jane Austen novels in the coming months, some of them new, but I kind of had some conflicting feelings, especially about Persuasion, the first one that aired last night, which is possibly my favorite of her novels and the 1995 version of which (with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds) is possibly one of my favorite movies, period. Do I really need to see a new adaptation? How could it be any better?

I kind of felt like this when the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice came out. I had huge allegiances to the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version and was almost annoyed that they made yet another version when what I thought was the definitive one was already made. But in that case, I kind of came to appreciate both because there were enough differences. The miniseries was very complete and was nearly 4 hours long. The theatrical version was of course much shorter and condensed the story quite well. Also, the tone and look of the two versions were very different: the miniseries was a bit more light and whimsical, while the movie was a little...grittier? (If you can even use that word to describe Jane Austen.) My favorite is still the miniseries, but really the only thing I didn't like about the movie version was that terrible "Mrs. Darcy" ending. Yesterday's Persuasion had a pretty terrible ending too, but I'll get to that later.

Anyway, getting to the new Persuasion. I'm not sure that there were really enough good differences here to help me like it. The book is relatively short, so both the 1995 and 2007 versions include nearly all of the same scenes, with dialogue lifted almost straight from the book, so sometimes I felt like I was watching the same script just with different actors. This new one did seems strangely rushed though...too much time spent with Anne staring at the camera perhaps. But yeah, I wasn't really blown away by these actors. I really wasn't too sure about the actress who played Anne, Sally Hawkins. Both and she and the actor who played Wentworth, Rupert Penry-Jones, are much closer in age to what their characters should be, but I just wasn't really feeling them. This Anne was a little too... I don't know, delicate? Timid? I always thought that Wentworth was supposed to see that Anne had changed and was no longer the impressionable girl he knew before, that she was now strong and knew her own mind, which I thought Amanda Root did a wonderful job with, but I didn't see that here. Plus they changed the letter scene, which I don't understand at all. Wentworth was supposed to have overhead Anne and Harville talking about love, that's what drives him to write the letter!

As for the rest of the characters, Wentworth just didn't have enough charisma (even though he was pretty hot), and Mr. Elliot seemed kind of too obviously slimy...I always thought the Mr. Elliot from the 1995 version looked kind of ridiculous with his curly blond hair but you could at least see why Anne would have enjoyed his company. I don't really remember much about the Musgroves or the Crofts or Lady Russell but maybe that's just because I've watched the 1995 version too many times and have those portrayals stuck in my head. I did love love Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter though (yeah, Giles!).

And the ending...oy. I'm not sure who decided that it would be fun to see Anne literally running all around Bath looking for Wentworth. And that kiss was pretty painful. If she knows her own mind now, if she knows she wants him, just kiss him already! And the whole going back to Kellynch thing just seemed kind of random to me. I kind of now have an urge to watch the other version (which I really can since I have it on DVD).

So yeah, that kind of sounds like a lot of complaints. But it was still Jane Austen, and it was still the same story that I really love, so I wouldn't at all say it was a waste of my time. Next up is Northanger Abbey, which is actually the only Austen book I have not read (not sure why, I should), nor seen an adaptation of, so I'm definitely looking forward to it!