Pride and Prejudice

This time the title of the post isn't some wordplay or a hint at something. It really is about Pride and Prejudice. Ever since I got a new phone - HTC Desire that used to be Erkki's - I have been spending a surprising amount of time reading from my phone. With iPod of iPad, which can also be used as an eBook reader, it wasn't that simple since we allow Siiri to play with those and there was always the risk of her demanding that it was her turn to play. Saying "a risk" is a gross understatement. I barely finished a few pages on iPod when it was no longer reasonably easy to tell her it STILL wasn't her turn to play with the toy.

Recently I started reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and it wasn't long until I found myself enjoying the odd vocabulary and the peculiar grammar. I googled it and found out it was published in 1813 - that's nearly two hundred years ago. Amazing that something so old can still be so captivating. The dialogue was really enjoyable and the characters so vivid. I finished the book and went on to download and watch two versions of it on screen. First being the movie "Pride and Prejudice" from 2005, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen and the second a 6-episode mini-series, called, lo and behold, "Pride and Prejudice" with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, which was made in 1995 by BBC. This blog post is more like a movie review than anything I've written before.

First of all, I'll say what this book is about. The Bennet family is a family of five young women who barely qualify to belong to the high society. Their father has a manor but since there's no male heir, the manor will be inherited by someone else and the girls are destined to receive only a small dowry. This makes their prospects of a good marriage quite grim. A couple of really rich young bachelors join the neighborhood (Yay! ) , one of them the most pleasant gentleman and his best best friend Mr Darcy who manages to make everyone hate him by not being neither sociable nor polite . Appearances can be deceiving and people start falling in love and so on. All the courting is done properly as it was customary for high society around 1813. No kissing before marriage and even spending any time alone with a partner was something to be very cautious about. Sex before marriage was a far worse fate than death. Although there are more than one marriage formed by the end of the book, it's really a story about Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, the second daughter of the Bennet family, who is very opinionated for a woman of that time but uses all her skill and wit to express her views in a polite and positive way.

In the movie Elizabeth, played by Keira Knightley, is a hysterical giggling outspoken farm girl. Well, no wonder, the entire family is a bunch of hillbillies living in a big house. They don't mind pigs running around in their kitchen or chickens occupying a the area just by the garden door. They don't care about decent fashionable clothing or proper hats. The younger daughters desperately throw handkerchiefs to low-ranking soldiers when in the book they were spending their time with officers at private events. The mother has reddened complexion like the kind you'd expect from a homeless person with alcohol problems and the father is about as gentle-manlike as a rich farmer. I'm sure even regular merchants looked more decent back then. Such a shame really. Keira Knightley was exactly who I pictured as Elizabeth when I was reading the book but the gap between what I imagined and what I saw was too great to forgive. I expected her to deliver her opinions like an unexpected sting that you might not even notice if you're not paying attention. However, she was just impolite and outspoken with no witty subtlety.

Mr Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen looks very similar to what I imagined, although I have to agree with something I read in an IMDB user review of the movie - he looks more constipated than proud. Perhaps it's even more accurate to describe him as suffering from Asperger syndrome. He just looks so awkward but redeems himself so many times throughout the movie that I grew to like his version of Mr Darcy quite a bit. Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC series is seen as the perfect Darcy by so many Jane Austen fans that Matthew Macfadyen never got a fair chance with the fans. I did find Colin Firth very believable and he's seemed both proud and introverted like in the book, but he simply looks nothing like I imagined him. He did a really great job though.

Also, I never did get used to Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth. She was supposed to be quick-witted and opinionated, not a younger version of Mary Poppins. She was so pleasant and friendly like she had just come from Sunday School. Something just wasn't right. Indeed she was a very positive person like in the book but I expected some mischievous smiles and a very young and fresh spirit. She delivered her lines much better than Keira Knightley. In the movie the dialogue from the book seemed so foreign that it felt like I was watching Shakespeare or some school play. In the series the same lines were delivered so believably and fluently that I can't help but think that Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth must be much better actors than Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen.

The family life of Bennets was much nicer in the series, though. Just like in the book, they constantly do their best to seem like they rightfully belong to the high society. The girls are expected to be tidy and conventionally dressed at all times and when there are unexpected visitors the girls have no reason to start running around CLEANING the house like in the movie. They have maids for that!

Amazingly, the most beloved and memorable scenes from both the movie and the series were the kind that never happened in the book. In the movie, Elizabeth and Mr Darcy meet at dawn while they have gone for a walk in their undergarments. This would never have happened in those times and they would have been mortified if anyone saw them like that. In the series Mr Darcy goes for a spontaneous swim in the lake outside his manor and later runs into Elizabeth while soaking wet. That also never happened in the book but is is actually mentioned how improper Mr Darcy looked so it's forgiven. Worst extra scene of all was from the movie - in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep and Elizabeth is sleeplessly in her nightgown, Mr Darcy enters her bedroom without knocking, leaves her a letter without saying a word and rides off into the night. If they had got caught with something as outrageous as that, they would have probably been forced to marry.

It would be fair to say I enjoyed both the movie and the series and was happy with neither. The movie had excellent casting, the best I've ever seen. Most of the people looked EXACTLY like they were supposed to look but it was so accurate that it was bordering on being a caricature of the roles. Mr and Mrs Bennet were the only people who were much better cast in the mini-series. The series was occasionally boring to watch and it had some extra dialogue that could have been left out. The movie, on the other hand, skipped some very nice dialogue because it didn't have time for it.

Over-all I wouldn't really recommend the movie or the mini-series because both had their faults. I wouldn't recommend the book either, only because I don't want to be one of those tedious people who say, "Oh the movie was nothing. You MUST read the book in stead." That is like sooo conceited. But if you happen to see the movie, be sure to remember that the Bennets didn't really live on a farm, okay?