Reviewing Jane: I Shall Be Miserable If I Have Not An Excellent Library

 

Year: 1995
Director: Simon Langton
Cast: Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth, Crispin Bonham-Carter
Run Time: 5 hours 27 minutes

Now now, you didn't think that watching every single available motion picture based on Jane Austen would end the marathon, did you? I've steered clear of series, web series, and miniseries adaptations because I do value my time somewhat, as hard as that may be to believe. But I couldn't leave this marathon dormant without exploring the reason almost everything we've covered even exists: the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice. 

The miniseries, which ran for six episodes between September and October 1995, became an instant worldwide phenomenon, selling out the entire run of 12,000 video sets within two hours, going on to sell an additional 58,000 by the end of the week despite the fact that, in the words of a BBC spokeswoman, "viewers [were] able to tape the episodes at home for free." Jane Austen has always existed in the popular consciousness (certainly if this wasn't the case, we wouldn't have had a lush production of Sense and Sensibility, a modern teen adaptation of Emma, and a considerably less lush mounting of Persuasion hit that very same year), but if all the material before and during 1995 was the foundation, Pride and Prejudice was the fucking massive skyscraper bursting out of it.

Speaking of massive skyscrapers, we couldn't have panned down, Mr. Langton?

Yeah yeah, the plot of Pride and Prejudice. Let's not waste too much time on this. Lizzy Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) has a gaggle of unmarried sisters, Jane the eldest (Susannah Harker) falls in love with new rich neighbor Mr. Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter), whose best friend Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth, who would go on to play another Mr. Darcy in Bridget Jones' Diary, one of the aforementioned many films that owe their very existence to this miniseries) is kinda mean to her. They fall in love eventually because fixing a man is the ultimate romantic fantasy!

Also yes, Crispin Bonham-Carter is related to Helena Bonham-Carter (they're third cousins), because there are only like five families in England.

We have a lot more ground to cover than usual, so let's get cracking. I'll be reviewing the series as a whole rather than as individual episodes, because they were all directed by the same man and also because the way the story is sliced into sixths seems pretty arbitrary. The benefit of this structure is getting to spend a lot more time with the cast of characters, most of whom are splendidly performed. 

One person you'll wish you has spent less time with is Mrs. Bennet (Alison Steadman), whose cartoonish pantomime buffoonery does get a little grating by the finale despite being a pretty accurate depiction of the character as written. But the other cartoon character of the piece, the sniveling reverend Mr. Collins (David Bamber) is by far the best iteration of that particular role I've seen. And trust me, I've seen many. Timothy Spall owes his entire career to this greasy, conniving, skin-crawling performance. 

And obviously I should go no further without talking about Colin Firth. I'll admit I'm not a devotee to any particular iteration of Darcy (in fact the only Austen hero I give a particular rat's ass about is Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility because I ship him and Elinor real hard), because the men in these stories are uninteresting pretty objects to be presented to the heroine once she has completed a romantic journey (Jane Austen, my feminist queen!). But Firth really nails the "standing in corners brooding" angle something fierce.

Unfortunately, I think the biggest liability in the cast is Lizzy Bennet herself. Nothing against Jennifer Ehle's skills. In fact, I think she imbues her Lizzy with the most real, tangible wit I've seen in any iteration. You can see the cogs turning in her mind when she's about to crack wise. But she has a certain movie star stiffness that drags you out of the story, which recalls Greer Garson's portrayal in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice. She has the advantage on Garson that she's not a clear decade and a half older than her character, but you wouldn't know that by the way she carries herself. Ehle is giving a Movie Star performance, all glittering eyes and catlike poise and best sides turned to the camera just so. You can see the artifice in her acting, and while that works in certain circumstances, those circumstances do not include a period piece that demands a kind of realism from its leads (if not its side characters) to properly ground them in the Regency era.

See that face she's giving? I hope you like it, because you're about to see a LOT of it.

Another benefit of the miniseries format is that the screenwriter is not obliged to cut all the comedy bits in favor of heaving romance. Finally we have someone who looked at the novel and said, "why not both?" And this Pride and Prejudice is quite genuinely funny, despite everything implied by stiff, starched BBC sets and costumes. 

The romance, on the other hand, does unfortunately suffer a smidge from some truly dreadful 90's TV moments. Episode 4 in particular is very ill-used by goofy-ass cross-dissolves to flashbacks of scenes we just saw and alarmingly clunky superimposed shots of Darcy's face. And while I appreciate its attempts at jazzing up the many scenes of characters reading letters, the way that characters react in perfect timing with the voiceover reading the letter is more disconcerting than compelling.

But what Pride and Prejudice needs to get right, it does: have two beautiful people eye-fucking over a pianoforte. So really, who could complain?

TL;DR: Pride and Prejudice is delightful with fleet pacing despite having the longest run time of any Austen project we've covered, even the Bollywood ones.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 980
Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)
Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)
Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Love Is A Battlefield

Year: 2015

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Fifty Shades of Grey is one of only two wide-release movies this year so far directed by a woman (the other is Selma, which was released in early January after bombing its Oscar-qualifying run in November). So there's that.

It's also the first movie ever to be based on a fanfiction. At least, the first movie not made in a Minnesota basement. It's true. E. L. James, author of the wildly successful smut trilogy, originally wrote it for the characters of Edward and Bella from Twilight, which explains the Washington setting, the romanticization of stalker behavior, and the deceased romantic lead.

Oh wait. This just in - the character of Christian Grey is, in fact, performed by a living man. Please excuse my mistake, it's a little hard to tell.

I thought it was a Weekend at Bernie's-type situation.

If you've been on the Internet for more than twelve seconds over the past couple weeks, you probably know the intricacies of the plot more intimately than your own name, but humor me for a second while I run through it. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a dowdy lit student who travels to Seattle on the behalf of her under-the-weather journalist roommate (Eloise Mumford) to interview business magnate Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). After tripping into the room and crashing to the floor like she's in an X-Games adaptation of a Katherine Heigl movie, she piques his attention. 

As she fumbles with the pre-printed sheet of interview questions, he hands her a pencil of such prodigious size and girth that it stretches the limits of phallic symbolism, ripping the space-time continuum and sucking Jamie Dornan's penis into a black hole, preventing it from ever being shown onscreen. Of course Miss Steele sucks on the pencil, which she doesn't even need because she's using a recorder. Also she never actually asks more than two questions, requiring him to send his answers in an email. 

The reason I've spent so much time describing this one scene is that it's a perfect representation of the themes and motifs of the entire film. Namely: wildly misguided sexual imagery, the insipid non-structure of the plot, and a mysterious predilection for 90's technology. 

I mean, really. Anastasia is the last woman on earth still using a flip phone, and Christian sends her more emails than a Nigerian prince. I suppose we shouldn't expect technological realism from a 51-year-old fanfiction smut author who worked under the name "Snowqueen's Icedragon," but presumably screenwriter Kelly Marcel (of Saving Mr. Banks) has met actual humans that don't sport frosted blonde tips and Walkmen. It's a mystery far more vexing and intriguing than the wan drama that plays out during the film's overlong running time.

What are his motivations? What lies behind those eyes? Where did he get that jacket?

Anyway, Christian eventually reveals to Anna that he is a dom, the controlling partner in a BDSM relationship (which, if you're truly interested in the topic, is far better explored... well, anywhere else, but especially here). He wants her to sign a contract and become his willing submissive partner, turning over the decision-making in their sexual relationship to him and allowing him to punish her with flogs, ropes, and other toys from his "playroom."

The bulk of the film is about Anastasia testing the limits of her willingness to enter into this type of relationship with a man as aesthetically stimulating as Christian Grey. 

According to the philosophy of Russian Formalism, there are four categories into which the functions of human action fall: the practical (serving immediate use), the theoretical (serving general or unspecified use), the symbolic (serving in the place of another object or activity), and the aesthetic (serving no purpose whatsoever, existing for themselves for pure contemplation and perception). In order for an object to achieve true artistic value, it must first divorce itself from all useful attributes to attain the status of pure aesthetic. Considering that his character has no practical use (his motivations and desires in no way shape the plot), theoretical use (he has no value to other people, serving only his needs), or symbolic use (the idea of characters serving a "theme" is beyond the scope of E. L. James' literary prowess), he is an object of pure aesthetic. Therefore, Fifty Shades of Grey is a work of art. Just a little tidbit to bust out when you're cruising the bars.

The book (unfortunately the first in a trilogy) is notorious for two things. 1) Depicting a typical abusive relationship tarted up as vanilla BDSM erotica, and 2) terrible, terrible writing depicting a variety of superfluous sex acts (including something unspeakable with a tampon) sprinkled with phrases like "inner goddess" and "double crap." It's misleading, malnourished dreck, but it's provocative dreck and as such has a huge following.

Fortunately and unfortunately, the film adaptation tones down both of these aspects. In the plus column, Christian Grey is still a controlling, manipulative boyfriend, but the film shifts the tone a long way away from idealizing abuse. The downside is that, in turning down the volume on every single characterizing aspect of the book (especially the atrocious parts), they removed any particular reason to see it.

People came to see some godawful smut, dammit, not some watered-down trifle with little sex, vaguely cheesy but unfunny dialogue ("laters, baby"), and non-starter drama. I always expected there to be walkouts when I went to see this film in the theater, but not because it was so extravagantly boring.

The sex scenes are sparse, repetitive, and framed with absolutely no sense of danger. And when we're not watching Grey lightly spank Anna with his silk flog du jour (literally the only thing he does, despite his playroom wall looking like the dental tools from Little Shop of Horrors), we're feasting our eyes on leaden, conflict-free drama like "I'm going to visit my mom" or "let's fly in this impractical helicopter to an Ellie Goulding song" or "Rita Ora has two lines in this movie," all rendered through exhausting spinning camera shots.

"Let's have vague, thrusty, barely R-rated sex."

By far the film's biggest fault is its complete lack of sex appeal. Fifty Shades of Grey is almost anti-erotic, and I don't just mean in the "BDSM is unappealing to many people" kind of way. Johnson and Dornan strip down at regular intervals to hump like mindless, alabaster automatons going through the motions to make their sacrifice to the gods and goddesses of softcore bondage. Their lack of chemistry is downright appalling. Mother Theresa has had dreams more erotic than this film.

Now, let's be fair to Jamie Dornan - the character of Christian Grey is more or less impossible to play. This role could vanquish even the most accomplished actor. This man has no past or future, and no particular reason to be drawn to this specific woman. He is literally just a penis, which, incidentally, he is not allowed to show. It's a conundrum.

I want to make it clear that I'm not blaming him for the failures of this film as either a work of cinema or a tawdry piece of erotica. No, that buck should be passed directly to Hollywood, who robbed the source material of its already extremely limited appeal in an attempt to force it into a toothless, mass-appeal framework.

The whiteness! It burns!

But do you want to know the really sad thing about Fifty Shades of Grey? It's really not that bad. It might be a terrible adaptation of a terrible book, but that double negative means that it's at least something you can be capable of sitting through. It may be boring, unerotic, and bland, but it's not, like, the worst thing ever. Which, in some eyes (mine), would have made it the best thing ever. It's noncommittal in both directions, so it's even more completely useless.

The one bright spark to come out of this whole sodden mess is an unexpected talent: Dakota Johnson. She has a quiet spark that brings a bubbling humor to Anastasia Steele, anchoring the film in a decently pleasurable register for a surprising amount of time. I can honestly say that I would rewatch the film for the sole purpose of seeing her cast her spell, particularly in Anna's unforgettable drunk scene.

Oh, also there's exactly one impeccably shot moment - a meeting in which Anna and Christian discuss the contract, silhouetted through a soft red light that's unmistakably beautiful.

Oh, and they do a much better job of making Anna seem dowdy and average than they ever managed to do with Bella Swan. So that's something.

Look at me, I'm a human woman!

All things considered, Fifty Shades of Grey has enough to just barely squeak by as a non-hateable experience. But it's an utter failure at each and every feat it attempts. It's not offensive or sinful, as its puerile declaimers are saying. But it's also completely devoid of even the erratic, warped spark of its source material. One to miss.

TL;DR: Fifty Shades of Grey is non-erotic and dull, but spruced up somewhat by Dakota Johnson's lively performance.

Rating: 4/10

Should I Spend Money On This? It made enough. Leave the poor thing alone.

Word Count: 1563
Reviews In This Series
Fifty Shades of Grey (Taylor-Johnson, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (Foley, 2017)
Fifty Shades Freed (Foley, 2018)