Pride and Prejudice

I was named afer three characters from my Mother's favorite novel, "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. Beth is short for Elizabeth, as in Miss Elizabeth Bennet. It is no mere coincidence, then, that I am an Austenite. I have read every single piece of writing Austen ever created, all six novels, her unfinished novels, prayers, letters and poems. I wrote papers on her in college and just recently bought the New York Times' bestseller, "The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler.

Pride and Prejudice is hands down my favorite novel of all time. I've seen some of the most note-worthy adaptations of it on film and tv. So while I am no expert on the topic, I like to think I know what I'm talking about.

This week I bought the most recent adaptation on dvd, yes, the one with Keira Knightley. From the moment I heard of it, I knew it was going to be bad. But I was surprised to find out that it got good reviews and that Miss Knightley even got an Oscar nod for that role. So, against my better judgement, I bought the dvd and watched it with eager eyes.

Only to be severely disappointed with it. I expect nothing but perfection from Austen-adapted movies. It has to be perfect! Meaning, it has to stick to the very spirit of Austen's writing, her time period, her wit and satire. To add dialogue to it is downright blasphemous. Stick to what Austen wrote, no more, no less.

I don't even know where to begin. The whole movie was wrong, wrong wrong! It was poorly cast, poorly shot, poorly developed and I didn't think it was possible for a movie adapted from a novel to have poor writing, but it did.

They botched up the best scene in the novel!!! The part where Mr. Darcy could no longer keep his feelings in check and finally faced Miss Bennett and told her how ardently he admires and loves her. How does one ruin a scene that pretty much sells itself? Well, by adding dialogue that was adjusted to sound modern, in other words, they removed the long sentences and big words, and they had Mr. Darcy blurting out, "I love you."

Apart from everything I've objected to so far, who the hell held the fucking camera?? It reminded me of the way I would shoot a home video - the shot would be shaky and my spaztic movements would zoom in on an object instead of slowly closing in on it. It was amateur-ish and did nothing to add to the dramatic effect of the movie.

Every other Pride and Prejudice movie I've seen was no shorter than 3.5 hours long. This movie was 2 hours long. You know what that means? A lot of really good parts had to be cut. What's worse is that they decided to prolong pointless scenes - there was a whole segment where they were just showing scenery, or showing many people dancing or showing Miss Elizabeth staring at herself for hours. WTF has that got to do with the fucking movie?!?

I seriously have never been so upset with a movie in my life. This is worse than the one done back in 1940 with Greer Garson and Lawrence Olivier. That movie was so off the mark that I couldn't get mad at it. I mean, look at the way they're dressed! It was sooooo the wrong era!!

And Keira Knightley??? I'm sorry, but she is no Elizabeth Bennet. Hell, I'D do a better Elizabeth Bennet than her! I am so shocked that she was nominated, were there no other good female roles up this year? And Judi Dench as Lady Catherine de Bourg was supposed to be intimidating, not creepy! Who did her make-up, what was up with the dark, sunken eyes? She looked like she had spent the night sucking blood from poor Mr. Collins.

And Mr. Bingley was supposed to be amiable and courteous, not a giggling, stammering simpleton. Charlotte Lucas was supposed to be a mild-mannered, rational friend of Elizabeth, not someone who tells Elizabeth to go to hell!

Gosh, I'm so upset here, I'm actually nauseated.

I know this all sounds very harsh and biased. I would love to have someone debate this with me and tell me I'm wrong about it. Tell me what was actually good about this movie, tell me where they actually got it right, tell me that every point I just made was complete bollocks. Please, I beg you, cause I spent $19.99 for this piece of crap. I want to be able to keep it in my dvd collection and not be revulsed everytime I see it there.

Most people would say the best version is the one with Colin Firth. Considering how bad the others have been, I daresay they're right. But, in my humble opinion, there is only one that did the novel any justice, only one version that brought Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to life. The BBC mini-series with Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul: