Part II, which is not so much about P&P, actually.

Posted on | June 11, 2009 | Comments

In my more pretentious and pompous years (I like to think that I have grown less pretentious as I’ve gotten older — I still have clear ideas on what is and isn’t culturally worthy, but my tastes these days follow their own path and not some dictated-from-on-high cultural fascist institution or individual) I was dead set against putting 20th-century spins on classic works of literature, in the interest of . . . purity, I guess.

I was convinced that contemporary filmmakers couldn’t possibly understand the context or spirit of something that had been written 100, 200 years ago. That they weren’t smart enough (see: “my more pretentious years,” above) to fully comprehend the social, cultural, economic, and political contexts of the time period in which Shakespeare or Austen or . . . who else gets adapted to within an inch of their lives . . . maybe it’s just those two. At this point the idea that the socio-political aspects of a story written in 1601 or 1815 could have any significance to my own time didn’t really occur to me. I was pompous and pretentious and also a little clueless.

At this point in time Kenneth Branagh basically ruled over all Shakespeare adaptations, and they’re stunning and gorgeous and brilliant, and he didn’t feel the need to transfer Henry V or Much Ado About Nothing to modern times¹. So when Baz Luhrman did Romeo + Juliet, the plus sign alone set my teeth on edge.

Then again, the Ian McKellen Richard III that came out a year before was brilliant, I thought. So maybe that’s just a matter of preferring Ian McKellan and Annette Bening over Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes and really, in the mid-90s, I do think that’s a reasonable, if not wholly airtight mentally sound choice.

Thing is, I’m having a hard time trying to reconstruct these almost 20-year-old arguments, which seems to me means that I really didn’t have a leg to stand on back then, and was only holding my position out of stubbornness. Every time I proffered this argument someone would readily refute it — all they really needed to do was invoke West Side Story, and I would be forced to concede the point. And then Clueless came out and I was forced to admit that I didn’t know a damn thing. Especially since, as many many people have heard me pontificate, the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma — a period adaptation — comes very close to failing completely to capture the spirit of the book. (What saves it is the very wise choice to end the movie as the book ends. With the obligatory wedding, yes, but more importantly, with Mrs. Elton’s critique of Emma’s wedding dress. [Oh, dear. Spoiler?] It’s a “perfect” moment marred by this vulgar character, and it’s brilliant, and I can totally see some filmmakers or studios not wanting to have it in the movie. So I’m glad it’s there.) ²

And Clueless remains, to this day, my absolute favorite Austen adapation. Sense and Sensibility is a close second — yes, over the Colin Firth P&P. You know why? Because Emma Thompson wrote a script that’s actually — hard-core Austenites, read no further — better than the book. I may think this because I read it long after I had read the brilliance that is Emma and Persuasion, and S&S is an earlier novel and while it shows the promise that later novels deliver . . . it’s just not as good. Period. But Thompson’s script is pitch-perfect and even adds things that seem SO very Austen yet aren’t in the book at all. (P.S. get the DVD and watch Thompson’s acceptance speech after winning the Golden Globe for best screenplay. She channels Jane Austen, I swear to god. I love her.) (P.P.S. Emma Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran do a DVD commentary ranks as one of my all-time favorites, so the DVD is worth getting just for that.)

My point here, to bring it back to Pride and Prejudice, is that I’ve grown way more relaxed about tweaking classic literature — as long as it’s thematically sound and done thoughtfully and done well, then have at it.

(You see where this is going, right?)

Love’s Labours Lost is a different story ↩
And I’m going to need to rewatch this. Polly Walker was Jane Fairfax? I have no memory of this. Also, must watch the Kate Beckinsale Emma as well, which according to Netflix came out the same year as the Gwyneth version but I have never seen. There may be an Emma post soon. ↩

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