Pros:
New Jane Austen film--yay!
Kate Beckinsale--tres ha-ha!
Cons:
Chloe Savigny--oh, hell no! Yag.
Mehs:
Whit Stilman--assorted asshattery of a career. Still, the trailer looks very funny--not especially Austenesque--but acceptable. A good time, as these filmgoers are wont to say. We approve ... marginally.
Quite the contrary, I think it is extremely Austenesque. This is the Jane Austen of her letters, of her nephew's Memoir, and of her novel Lady Susan.
Looking forward to it!
I saw it at Sundance and it felt like PARTS of Austen....but not the whole. Something was missing. My two cents anyway.
shareWhat "parts" of Austen do you mean? This is a serious question.
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Thank you Random. It bugs me that so many people out there think that Austen was this prim, proper, uptight Victorian who oozed sweetness and light. She was nothing of the kind.
First off, she wasn't even Victorian. Victoria and Jane's lives didn't overlap at all. Jane died before Victoria was born. Jane Austen lived her entire life during the reign of George III.
Second, Jane had a wicked sense of humor. She loved snark. She made fun of everyone and anyone. Including herself. She wrote Lady Susan when she was in her teens. Yes, you read that right. This is a sophisticated comedy and it was written by someone under the age of 20.
Third, Austen's novels are filled with satire, premarital sex and extramarital sex. She makes fun of rich people and poor people. She's an equal-opportunity insulter. The woman read Fielding's Tom Jones, which is also filled with sex and satire. I recommend that anyone who thinks that sex was invented in the 20th century needs to read Tom Jones (personally, I've read it twice -- it's a favorite of mine) and anything by Rabelais (16th century Frenchman) or Chaucer (14th century Englishman).
And I also recommend that people read Austen's letters. They are laugh-out-loud funny. And some of them are also very mean. She could be merciless.
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You're welcome. I found the OP rather odd, akin to the kind of smug, self-congratulating critique represented by David Niven in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
shareConfession time -- while the movie is fun, I actually preferred the TV series with Pat Crowley.
And, to add to what I said before, I remember a woman over at Pemberley.com who you could tell was practically in tears when she typed "but Jane Austen was a NICE author!" or words to that effect. The rest of us had to set this woman right -- Austen was anything but. She skewered everyone, from royalty on down.
As an aside, why did Kate Beckinsale get so much plastic surgery done? She was lovely before it.
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Hi - this is interesting. Can you elaborate on Jane's letters or direct me to them? I've read in more than 1 source that upon her death her surviving sister, Cassandra, burned all her letters. I'm keen to read any that are in print. Thx.
shareCassandra did not burn all of Jane's letters, and I cannot think of a reputable source that would have said that she did. She burned a whole lot of them (and redacted others), but not all.
There are several editions of the letters in print. Any search at Google or Amazon will give you a variety of options, including annotated editions.
In the meantime, check this out: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablets.html
Pemberley.com also has some quotes from Austen's letters, and many of them are laugh-out-loud funny:
"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."(this one is one of my personal favorites)
-- letter of December 24, 1798
"We found only Mrs. Lance at home, and whether she boasts any offspring besides a grand pianoforte did not appear. ... They will not come often, I dare say. They live in a handsome style and are rich, and she seemed to like to be rich, and we gave her to understand that we were far from being so; she will soon feel therefore that we are not worth her acquaintance."
-- letter of January 7 1807
"You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve."
-- letter December 24 1798
[On Mrs. Deede's giving birth to another child:]
"I would recommend to her and Mr. D. the simple regimen of separate rooms."
-- letter of February 20, 1817
[On arriving in London:] "Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted."
-- letter of August 1796
My favourite example in that line is when Jane commented on the news that a neighbour of theirs, whose husband wasn't famous for his good looks, has given birth prematurely to a dead baby, due to having had 'a fright', unspecified:
"I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband."
The sheer casual cruelty of that is something you'd expect her Lady Susan to say.
I'm glad you mentioned that particular quote. It's one of my favorites. 😉 Yes, Austen sometimes displayed a very twisted sense of humor. I also get a kick out of her mockery of Mrs. Musgrove's "...large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for" in Persuasion.
"Courage is found in unlikely places." ~ The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
Jane Austen and her works are the definition of "Regency". Who thinks Regency is Victorian? Only the numb. I don't know of a single Jane Austen aficionado who would recognize the person you claim "many people" think she is. You successfully knock down something that barely even exists.
shareIf you read enough reviews of Austen-based movies, you'll see that a whole lot of people out there think she was a Victorian.
As I pointed out, at the Pemberley.com website (and, alas, in my own JASNA chapter) there are people who have only read or seen P&P and they are shocked and appalled that Austen could be so vicious. They have never read Austen's letters or Lady Susan or the History of England or anything by Austen that, in their minds, wasn't primarily a romance or a comedy of manners dealing with a few families in a country village. Yes, Elizabeth Bennet can be light, bright and sparkling, but the book that features her is filled with biting social commentary that not everyone sees.
To paraphrase Austen herself, you are not taking into account differences in situation and temper. Not everyone out there is as "on top of things" as you are.
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I strongly agree. As a history researcher I've learned to just keep my mouth shut and expect no one to be on top of things at all, and to be pleasantly surprised when they are. In my experience most Americans call anything in a long skirt "Victorian," think "the 1800s" means the same as "Victorian" and refers to a single time period with unchanging manners, dress and technology, have never heard the word "Regency," and despite tons of exposure to tidbits of 18th century history (e.g. the founding fathers, 1776) have no clear notion of when the Revolution occurred, nor the Civil War. Really, no idea. It's all a vague "in the past." I had a conversation with a well-educated professional the other day in which I mentioned visiting Gettysburg and she asked me to remind her, was that a WW1 battleground, or what?... This was a person I'd expect would go see a Jane Austen film and find it wonderful. But completely and totally devoid of any historical context.
shareDon't paint all Americans with the "dumb" brush.
There was a study recently showing that Brits believe that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. I've read articles in British papers whose authors don't understand how honorifics work - I've seen the Ciuntess of Grantham referred to as Lady Cora and theDowager Countess referred to as Lady Violet.
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Not at all. Plenty of Americans aren't dumb. I just don't expect people to know about history, or to care about it, and when they do it makes me happy to have someone to talk to about it :-)
shareYes, Elizabeth Bennet can be light, bright and sparkling, but the book that features her is filled with biting social commentary that not everyone seesThis delicious arpeggio of viciousness, culminating in the satiric evisceration of Sir William Lucas, has few equals, even in Pope.
Their table was superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was uttered that did not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson expressed her fears of Miss de Bourgh's being too hot or too cold, or having too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the other table. Lady Catherine was generally speaking—stating the mistakes of the three others, or relating some anecdote of herself. Mr. Collins was employed in agreeing to everything her ladyship said, thanking her for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many. Sir William did not say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes and noble names.share
@Julie-30
Spot on -- thanks!
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There's a lot of flirting, courting, and attraction in Austen's novels, but they are not "filled with premarital and extramarital sex." Regarding Austen, there seem to be two opposing ideas that are popular. The first, and older notion is that Jane was a prim Georgian spinster. The other, which has become widely adopted by those who want to fit Austen into a modern mold, is that she was a man-despising, sex-obsessed, wise-cracking, snarky sort of early nineteenth century Dorothy Parker. Neither viewpoint is accurate.
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How come can Sevigny be a Con? She´s always a Pro to me.
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I must say that Tom Bennett's entrance scene as Sir James Martin was wonderful. Can you imagine if that was done on the first take? Just to get through that, false exits, and all.
shareTom Bennett was fantastic and I'd see it again just to watch him.
Why ain't you at the garden party you heathen?
Pro:
Clever wit and some really funny lines. Kate played her part marvelously.
Cons:
Some cringe-worthy moments, I agree with another poster that Kate had a little too much dialogue. One can only take so much narcissism in one sitting.
Mehs:
Would have liked to see a better connection between Reginald and Frederica. The majority of their screen time consisted of her being frightened out of her mind. I wanted to see them talking openly and at ease so it felt natural more at the end instead of rushed. All we get are some long walks to watch.
I agree about Chloe Sevigny. Whit Stillman, the director, loves her. God knows why. They could have hired a fun and entertaining British character actress to liven up Alicia Johnson's scenes instead of that dull as dishwater Sevigny. Stillman actually changed Austen's story to customize it for Sevigny, changing Alicia from English to American.
Another con: Those ridiculous character 'plates' or stills explaining who and what everyone is in the story. It as just bizarre.