No one does Europe better than Europeans, or Jane Austen better than the English. Yet apart from Colin Firth’s hugely popular TV production and Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood makeover, Pride and Prejudice hasn’t hit the screen since Greer Garson swooned for Laurence Olivier in the 1940s (note: 2003’s disastrous collegiate update doesn’t count). Time then to revisit the quieter world of poor Mrs Bennet, distraught mother of five beautiful but terminally unmarried daughters. Visiting aristocracy gets her corsets in a kerfuffle when dashing Mr Bingley takes a shine to the eldest and his friend Mr Darcy makes eyes at sister Elizabeth. However, before things go well, things go terribly wrong and it seems Mr Darcy is behind much of the misery visited upon the Bennets.
Pride and Prejudice is as fine an example of 19^th century manners as has been written and director Joe Wright is almost up to the challenge. His is a handsome production that wastes no time telling the story. Plunging in with all the distressingly lively hysteria of an all-girls schoolyard, Wright takes his equally handsome cast of Kiera Knightly, Matthew MacFadyen and Brenda Blethyn through their paces. Donald Sutherland and Dame Judi Dench are agreeable support. They check all the boxes but never fully shake a stiffness that turns into mannered grace. There’s an upright tone that tempers Austen’s passion with an air of actors not fully comfortable as characters, robbing the production of some romance.
Although this lacks the sheen of similar period pieces, this Pride and Prejudice still has a sensibility that makes for better than average time at the cinema.
// COLIN FRASER