Jane's spinning in her grave
reviewed 7 Nov 99 21:31:04 EST
Mansfield Park is the latest big-screen adaptation
of a Jane
Austen novel. It also happens to be the first Austen novel I ever read,
and I remember being especially exasperated by the protagonist, Fanny
Price,
who was irritatingly dim and meek. In this adaptation, however, Fanny
is
spunky, sharp-witted, and beautiful, which undercuts most of the
emotional
tension of the book. That's not all that's changed: all the important
scenes
from the book have been stripped away, along with most of Austen's sly
wit and keen eye for social and human dynamics. What's left -- rather,
what's replaced those qualities -- are broad, slapsticky gags,
inconsistent
characters, and anachronistic behavior. Not to mention some bizarre,
meaningless
sidebar about slavery on the family's Antigua plantation.
I thought I was being annoyed by this film because it was
straying so
far from the book, but then I came to realize that it's legitimately
stupid
on its own terms. It's painfully obvious which lines of dialogue came
from
Austen's pen and which were written by writer/director Patricia Rozema.
Rozema also evidently had some difficulty judging how much film she had
left in the camera -- the various story lines are abruptly cut off and
artificially wrapped up with a few lines of voice-over, as if she
suddenly
realized she had only two minutes of film left instead of twenty.
Even if you're a fan of period pieces, I can't recommend this
one.
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