I know it's likely in the book, but I just wanted to punch those old ladies mocking Eleanor about her relationship with Edward and how they kept teasing her about "Mr. E" whenever they were in a room together.
Ugh....just classless. Poor Eleanor just wanted to crawl away and die.
It is in the book Emma Thompson wouldn't dream of dramatically changing an Austen adaptation. People back then had nothing better to do.
shareEmma Thompson changed plenty in this adaptation. She left out Mrs. Ferrars, Lady Middleton and Anne Steele. And, more importantly, she made Willoughby into a far more sympathetic character than he is in the book.
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Hardly. Her original script was much longer but had to be shortened. The characters she left out weren't pertinent to the flow of the story. You're sound a little harsh. Emma Thompson handled writing Willoughby's character beautifully. He did a horrible thing but he did really love Mariann and that was made clear in the book and in the film.
shareJulie-30 is correct about the fairly drastic changes the film makes to the story. There are plenty of threads on this board where these alterations have been discussed in detail. One of the most noticeable changes is the omission of Willoughby's confession, but here is a post of mine that lists some smaller ones: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114388/board/thread/237757045?d=255850378#255850378. I also feel that Brandon's characterization (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114388/board/thread/238438471?d=238612784#238612784) and Marianne's character arc (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114388/board/thread/243503314?d=257477239#257477239) deviate quite a bit from how they are presented in the novel. However, I do agree with you that Austen intended readers to understand that Willoughby had some real affection for Marianne: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114388/board/thread/237757045?d=256345329#256345329. Ultimately, though, his feelings for her had no real value, because they did not encourage him to be a better person.
On the subject of the adaptation process itself, I want to point out that Lindsay Doran, the producer, was a huge fan of Austen's Sense and Sensibility:
In 1989, Lindsay Doran, the new president of production company Mirage Enterprises, was on a company retreat brainstorming potential film ideas when she suggested the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility to her colleagues.[4] It had been adapted three times, most recently in a 1981 television serial.[5] Doran was a longtime fan of the novel,[6] and had vowed in her youth to adapt it if she ever entered the film industry.[7][8](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Sensibility_(film)#Conception_and_adaptation)
I met this woman on a plane who asked me, ‘Do you have the basket scene?’ ‘What the hell is the basket scene?’ I said to myself, because the book has left my brain. She said, ‘You know, the basket scene with Anne.’ I said, ‘Oh! I cut Anne out.’ (http://people.com/archive/chatter-vol-45-no-2/feed/)
Having read the book every few months for the last 10 years, I'm aware of the differences, but a film is not going to be perfect. The movie was almost 2 and half hours long, and it covered the main points of the book. I also don't get overly obsessed with anything and don't take these things so seriously, which helps.
shareOh, absolutely. When adapting novels and other lengthy works, filmmakers have to make judicious cuts to the material. I can't speak for Julie-30, of course, but the specific point that I disagreed with was the idea that the S&S filmmakers were reverent toward the source novel. I think the evidence shows that S&S is most likely not Thompson's favorite Jane Austen book (and it's not mine, either -- although it has great characters and interesting themes, I consider it to be deeply flawed, with rather sketchy concluding chapters), so I very much doubt that she held it in such high esteem that she wouldn't have dreamed of making major changes to the story. By all accounts, Doran genuinely loves the novel, but, obviously, even she didn't object to the myriad cuts and alterations resulting from the adaptation process.
At any rate, I have always thought that the S&S film is dramatically different from the book in a number of ways. It never quite veers into unrecognizable territory, but it isn't particularly faithful, either.
"Courage is found in unlikely places." ~ The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Removing the scene with Willoughby at Cleveland is ridiculous. Willoughby says that he wishes his wife were dead. If you go back and read other threads at this board about Willoughby, you will see that more than a handful of people who never read the book firmly believe that Willoughby was a sympathetic character. As someone who has read the book many, many times, I will say without hesitation that John Willoughby is a thoroughly despicable human being.
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