It’s a P&P bonanza! News popped up in my FB that Netflix has a six part mini series in development. Comments mostly skewed towards indignance–“do we REALLY need another P&P?!? Nothing can compare to — version.” Well, it has been 20 years since the “new” one, so I’m psyched for another retelling, especially in mini series form. I’m not familiar with the actress playing Elizabeth, but Olivia Colman was born to be in P&P. Jack Lowden plays a misanthropic, self-centered try hard in Slow Horses, but I somehow root for him anyway. Boom, he’ll be a great Mr. Darcy. I just trust these actors to not go along with a terrible screenplay (see Netflix’s Persuasion). Hooray, more P&P!
Watching old movies in the theater is just luxurious fun. The “new” 20 year old P&P is such a pleasure from beginning to end. The story is so compressed compared to the mini series, though, so it can feel a little like a best hits album. The exposition skips so rapidly from juicy scene to juicy scene; the deep-seeded pride and prejudice don’t really get to simmer. I was telling Ruth that it cuts out too much of the “prejudice” part–I couldn’t even remember anything about Wickham because his part is so truncated.
Seeing it at the theater, though, I also think the “pride” part is not given its full due. I noticed this time around that Darcy doesn’t really own anything about his past pride when Elizabeth returns his love. His past insufferableness is glossed over entirely, and that’s a shame. “You have bewitched me body and soul” is a great romantic line and all, but how has Darcy really changed from knowing Elizabeth?
I had to find my old copy of P&P (Illustrated Junior Library edition, the first classic that my dad got me) to refresh my memory of Austen’s wise and beautiful story-telling.
I have been a selfish being all my life in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. . . . to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
P&P is satisfying to watch because of its happy ending, but it should also be satisfying because the heroes have fully faced their shameful mistakes and wrongdoings and yet are forgiven and sought after.
The P&P bonanza continues next week when we see the Sunny Hills theater edition! 🙂
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