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Pride and Prejudice (2005)
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Review by Gabrielle Pantera and Robin Rowe
Like many people, we're great fans of the BBC mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice. We were eager to see the new feature film version with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett and Donald Sutherland as her father. We had the pleasure of seeing the film at a special screening at the Screen Actors Guild with Keira Knightley there in person to chat about the filming of the movie.
At the screening the audience laughed a lot. The script is very good and quite funny. It has some new jokes, but is still close to the book. It was shot entirely on location. The Bennet's house (Chatham) was "between owners" and the cast was told to make it their own, lived in it with their own bedrooms there. Keira said that experience and the unusual amount of rehearsal time they were given helped the cast in taking on their roles truthfully. So they would become familiar with the house and it's cubby holes Keira and the other actors were instructed to play "sardines", a form of hide-and-seek. Darcy's home (Chatsworth) is as lovely in the film as in real life. The indoor statue area is part of Chatsworth.
Keira said she'd been obsessed with the book since she was seven, when she had listened to it as audio tape. She said she had watched the BBC version for two years in endless loop. She was concerned she might do a Jennifer Ehle imitation, that is, play Elizabeth Bennett by heart from the BBC version. To avoid that she studied the book -- which she hadn't read since she was 14 -- and memorized every role in the screenplay. She said her knowledge of everyone's lines could be quite annoying to the other actors!
Keira cross-referenced everything in the script with notes in order to know what she was supposed to be feeling. She said she had the book with her at all times, that it was a tremendous help to know what she was supposed to feel.
Keira did a wonderful job with the role of Elizabeth. Matthew MacFadyen did a great job as Darcy, although he doesn't eclipse Colin Firth's signature performance in the BBC version. Of all the actors who auditioned with her to get the role, Keira said Matthew was the best Darcy because he played the role with "vulnerability instead of with a stick up his ass"!
Keira said her favorite scene in the movie was Darcy's first proposal to her, when he gets the set-down from Elizabeth. This scene was also the audition piece for Darcy which Keira read with many actors before they found MacFadyen. The director told Keira to try different pacing and distance, to read it really fast and stand close. A touching moment in that scene came not from the script but naturally from the close proximity of the actors. It's the scene where the rain didn't cooperate, and they brought in machines. It's a great scene.
The number of characters in the whole movie is cut to about 18 in comparison to the more populated BBC version. There's a bit more character development in the main characters, but Caroline Bingley (Kelly Reilly) and Lady De Bourgh (Judy Dench) get very limited screen time. The movie is quite cinematic. However, in two different scenes we noticed Keira had lipstick on her teeth. Another annoyance, the score went beyond melodramatic to distractingly loud. Since we were viewing an early screening, these nitpicks will hopefully be fixed in the version you see.
Regarding the dresses, Caroline Bingley appears in a red Empire-waisted dress that is gorgeous! However, those with a knowledge of Regency England will be disturbed to see her later in a dress at the ball at Netherfield with no sleeves. The way the Bennets were dressed was rather outdated and frumpy, but didn't detract much from the story.
We enjoyed the movie and will go to see it again when it's released in theaters. However, it's night and day in comparison to the BBC version. The new version is darker, more like Persuasion in its mood. Where it was quite sunny in the BBC version (except for the scene with Jane on horseback), Keira is in the rain a lot. She said that the rain was deliberate, that the production brought in rain machines to produce rain even when it was sunny.
Overall, the new version has more humor and is more cinematic, but has less charm than the BBC mini-series version. A must-see for Jane Austen fans.