In vain I have struggled, it will not do. I must be allowed to speak my truth.
The 2005 version of "Pride & Prejudice" is a complete trainwreck, as far as adaptations go, and it drives me. Insane. The 1995 version is RIGHT THERE. It is flawless. It is exactly what Jane Austen intended P&P to be. The 2005 version misread the entire premise and committed to that misreading through the whole thing, while also demosntrating a complete misunderstanding of how class and money worked in Regency England. It is ahistorical, ridiculous NONSENSE and I must be allowed to speak.
First: what the FUCK is going on with the Bennett household? Chickens and other livestock running through the house?! Are they INSANE?! The Bennetts may not have had much money, but they were a GENTEEL FAMILY, Mr Bennett was a GENTLEMAN. They would have kept up their house in the exact same way any other nearby genteel family would have, with any livestock being kept safely NOT INSIDE THE HOUSE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. It would have been an UPROAR if that had happened. The writer(s?) and director completely conflated "money" and "class" - YES, they were poor, but they were of a certain CLASS, which means they led a certain way of life, and it did NOT involve livestock running through the fucking house, are you kidding me.
Second: Mr Darcy.
SIGH
Look. The entire fucking point of Pride & Prejudice is that both Darcy and Elizabeth start out kind of as their worst selves: he's prejudiced, and she's too proud. They hate each other on sight for (to them) legitimate reasons. What happens is that, through meeting one another, misstepping, and saying terrible shit to each other, they learn that They Were Wrong, Actually. That's the whole point. Darcy legitimately starts out as A TOTAL DICK. HOWEVER, the way the 2005 version plays him, he's just some, what, misunderstood woobie? And Elizabeth comes across as a complete fucking bitch who tramples on this poor man's heart? NO. NO!!!! That's MISSING THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT. She has REASONS to hate his guts, because he's an ASSHOLE, and he IS an asshole who LEARNS!!! She learns, too - not to be so proud that she misses legitimate points that might be made or disregards what she's seeing for what she THINKS she's seeing, etc - but like. Darcy is LEGITIMATELY AN ASSHOLE at the start, and she SHOULD turn him down, because that proposal did NOT come from the heart, it came from every bad instinct he has (and he has many).
I understand that it's a beautiful film, and the 1995 version is very much an of-its-time BBC version, but consider this:
- the script is nothing short of brilliant, it is Jane Austen at her best
- the cast is FANTASTIC: Jennifer Ehle is absolutely perfect, Colin Firth is incomparable, and Alison Steadman as Mrs. Bennett is an absolute triumph (did you know she was, like, only ten years older than Jennifer Ehle at the time? And YET). Everybody in that cast is absolutely SCRUMPTIOUS
- so MANY hours of delicious storytelling that takes its time and is incredibly faithful to its source
I'm not saying you have to be fully faithful to the source material, at all. Emma Thompson took MANY liberties with Sense & Sensibility, but the thing she got absolutely right are the CHARACTERS and their motivations. And that's exactly what the 2005 version gets wrong. And if you mess with the characters & their characterizations, you will end up with something that does not resemble the source material in any way or make any sort of sense. The 2005 version fundamentally does not make any sense to me, because the throughline of learning from your mistakes is all but missing. And that is the heart of the novel to me. A friend recently told me that she figured out a way she COULD enjoy this version, which is to believe it's an entirely different story altogether, and that tells you everything you need to know. At its core, the 2005 version is not "Pride & Prejudice" - not really. It's...something. But it's not that.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
