Review

Review Date: 13-November-05
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I remember enough of high school to understand "Pride & Prejudice," which takes place in a world dominated by giggling or manipulative females obsessed with who likes whom. The key to the story is that young Lizzie Bennett (Keira Knightley) is both a part of that world and above it, an independent spirit who cannot be satisfied with the matrimonial expectations standard at the turn of the 19th century. Even as she whispers and passes notes with her four sisters and altar-minded mother (Brenda Blethyn), her eyes are set upon greater attainment than marriage with 5,000 a year. She wants true love between equals, and she's stubborn enough to insist upon it.

One thing they didn't have when I was in high school was the likes of Mr. Darcy (a smoldering dish named Matthew Macfadyen). This delectable but distant personage is Lizzie's indisputable soulmate, but he appears to her at first as an arrogant dullard who could be only marginally improved with the pole removed from his buttocks. Still, Darcy has an air of mystery, which is more than can be said for the simple-hearted swain who admires her older sister (Rosamund Pike) or the criminally unromantic cousin who dares to woo Lizzie herself, so she develops a crush against her better judgment. Thanks to the workings of fate (and the frequent perambulations of the British gentry), her crush is fanned into passionate hatred and then simply passion as the weeks flow by and the drama of making matches unfolds.

I'm sure there were tomboys in pre-Victorian England, but Knightley, that rough-and-tumble beauty of the modern age, isn't convincing enough in her portrayal to carry the film. Jane Austen's words, filtered through screenwriter Deborah Moggach's keyboard, fall clunkily off her tongue, leaving her brown eyes to handle a task that's too big for them. Awkward also is the work of the director, Joe Wright, and his editor, Paul Tothill. Several scenes start with a discordant jolt, and two big moments in the central couple's destiny are so oddly staged they seem like dreams instead of moments of blazing reality. (It's difficult to wallow in the longing when you wonder if Lizzie's about to wake from a nap in the hedgerow.)

"Pride & Prejudice" is apparently one of those stories of which people will never grow tired, yet judging by this latest version there is little reason why. Granted, a good love-hate relationship is always fun, especially between strong-willed hotties, and it's intriguing to glimpse the darker, more serious side to the rituals of Old World mating. But just as Lizzie dismisses these rituals as frivolous, so should the critical viewer regard this film. Knightley's heroine might be more discriminating than the average would-be bride, but she isn't more interesting than one.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.