Reviewing Jane: Those Who Have Not More Must Be Satisfied With What They Have

 

Year: 1990
Director: Whit Stillman
Cast: Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Chris Eigeman 
Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

In the history of Jane Austen on film, there have been only two directors who have adapted her work twice. The first is hardly worth acknowledging, because it's David Winning who brought us the malodorous Hallmark adaptations Unleashing Mr. Darcy and Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen. The second is certainly more interesting: Whit Stillman, who mounted the excellent novella adaptation Love & Friendship in 2015, originally made his debut upon the indie scene 25 years earlier with the extremely loose Mansfield Park adaptation Metropolitan. While it's easy to see his roots in his first feature film, let's see how he measures up against his future self, shall we?

We're doing this Looper style!

There's really not much plot to talk about in Metropolitan. It follows a group of preppy debutants in Manhattan through a series of parties and dances in the span of about a fortnight leading into and out of Christmas. It opens when poor but self-satisfied college student Tom Townshend (Edward Clements) is invited to a party and ingratiates himself among the upper crust, which includes his ex-girlfriend Serena (Ellia Thompson). Fellow prep Audrey (Carolyn Farina) clearly has the hots for him. At least, it's clear to everyone but Tom. 

She will NOT have a good Christmas, my friends.

Metropolitan is one of the few modern Austen films to hit before the watershed year of 1995 that brought her back to pop culture like a roaring hurricane. So naturally it takes quite a different shape, one that surely influenced the similarly indie outing Ruby in Paradise, which is also so loose an adaptation that it requires characters to specifically discuss Jane Austen in order to draw any sort of parallel. It's a film singularly unconcerned with anything other than character, willing to dispense with plot in order to simmer in a light stew of minutely variable personalities.

To be fair, that probably is the closest connection the film has to Mansfield Park (other than a poor person hanging with annoying rich people). It wants to paint these characters with as fine a brush as possible, though the satire is a little less pointed and - let's face it - funny than it is in Austen's novel. I'm perfectly willing to concede that maybe I just wasn't in the mood or perhaps am not highbrow enough to appreciate what is going on here.

I can handle a film that's just conversations, but when it's just conversations and those conversations are only with people I find uniquely irritating that unspool unbated in every single scene, it's certainly more of a struggle. I get that we're not supposed to like these people. But the whole point of watching the movie is to unscrew their brains and see the way they idly toy with one another and snootily bloviate about intellectual topics they have no actual insight into before being batted about the tide of reality like a deflated beach ball. This last part is perfectly enjoyable to watch, but until then it's pretty excruciating.

Notice how almost all of these screenshots look exactly the same.

I can see the DNA of Love & Friendship loud and clear, at least, especially in Stillman's facility with guiding actors through lengthy scenes of complicated, interlocking dialogue (it's certainly easier to watch in a period piece than a modern milieu). But with everything else, they required the sharpened instincts of a more veteran director. Metropolitan is flabby and tiresome, hitting its point too often and too hard without attempting to do much of anything else.

Or maybe what I'm most bothered by is its transparent interest in being an early Woody Allen movie, something that has somewhat lost its flavor in recent years (and decades) I daresay. I have a lot of baggage against this one, so if you need to place my non-recommendation into context, let's just say that it's not particularly interesting to any self-respecting Austen fan. Or even a self-hating Austen fan. There are certainly worse Austen movies out there, and those ones even have something to do with the novels!

TL;DR: Metropolitan is content to sink into quietude, which is its right, but I don't have to like it.
Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 720
Other Films Based on Mansfield Park
Metropolitan (Stillman, 1990)
Mansfield Park (Rozema, 1999)
Mansfield Park (MacDonald, 2007)

Reviewing Jane: Every Moment Has Its Pleasures And Its Hope

Year: 2007

Director: Iain B. MacDonald

Cast: Billie Piper, Blake Ritson, Hayley Atwell

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

Mansfield Park is my least favorite Jane Austen novel because it has the least dynamic heroine and the most outdate social mores (the drama of an entire colume hinges on the performance of a mildly licentious play), so I can't say I was particularly excited to sit through my second helping after the supremely boring 1999 adaptation. And seeing how the TV adaptations (usually for BBC or Masterpiece or both) as a rule tend to be worse than the theatrical efforts, so how could this have possibly gone right?

Well, casting someone I'm aware of certainly helps. Hey, it's that lady from the one season of Doctor Who that I watched!

In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price (Billie Piper) is a poor young woman who has been raised in the titular country mansion with her rich relatives the Bertrams. Over the course of the past eight years or so she has fallen helplessly in love with her cousin Edmund (Blake Ritson), and we're actually meant to root for them to end up together, so that's another fun thing about 1800's literature. The Bertams' lives are turned upside down with the arrival of siblings Henry (Joseph Beattie) and Mary Crawford (Hayley Atwell), a lothario and a gold digger respectively.

While the Bertram sisters Maria (Michelle Ryan) and Julia (Catherine Steadman) battle it out over Henry despite Maria already being engaged, Edmund seems to be falling for Mary, much to Fanny's chagrin. She spends the entire summer being constantly reminded of her low place in the social hierarchy, subject to the ever-changing whims and vices of the rich folks around her.

And those vices include more than just saucy plays, let me tell you what.

So given everything Mansfield Park had going against it, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be the most entertaining iteration of the story, including the novel itself. I wouldn't dare to suggest it was better than the Austen text, but it's certainly more popcorny and delightful. Everything in the movie is something that can be found in the novel, so it's not exactly reinventing the wheel, but it arranges those elements in a way that's immensely satisfying. It draws out the emotional and humorous flavors of the story while cutting away all the fat that makes the book a bit of a dry read. 

They do fiddle with the character of Fanny a bit (which is necessary to sell her to a modern audience), giving her a bit more inner fire and rebelliousness that makes certain scenes gel poorly, but let's face facts that it would be extremely boring to watch her sit in corners and patiently observe the other characters like she does in the novel. And I adore that the film's approach seems to be "what I did over my horny summer vacation" (the eye fucking in this movie, and at one point thumb-touch fucking, is off the charts).

Also, apropos of nothing, no Jane Austen leading man has had more Hot Topic-looking bangs, thank you 2007.

The clarity of the narrative also allowed me to emotionally invest in the characters in a way I never had before, even if the performances aren't necessarily something to write home about. Hayley Atwell provides a terrific, snippy antagonist and Billie Piper is game for the material, even if she does seem constantly on the verge of tears. But aside from them, nobody rises above or sinks below "adequate," though Joseph Beattie could have helped make some of his scenes a little less muddled if he leaned more into mustache-twirling villainy.

And I should hope by now that I've explained my theory about the importance of the dance scenes to any Jane Austen adaptation. Mansfield Park's ball is no exception. Their line dancing is sometimes stilted and occasionally makes them look downright maniacal, but the filmmakers take advantage of the whirl of motion to catch us up on the dynamics between the characters, with Fanny coming in between but failing to divert the connection between Mary and Edmund. There's also an excellent closing dance at Fanny's wedding that visually highlights the way she finally feels like she belongs to the world of the Bertram rather than merely observing it from the sidelines unable to truly take part in it. 

I still hold out hope that the same year's Persuasion starring Sally Hawkins will be my favorite of the TV adaptations because it stars Sally Hawkins who I love, but I certainly can't complain about the effervescent treat I was given in Mansfield Park. Much like Fanny Price herself, this outing proves that greatness truly can come from anywhere regardless of fortune (or budget).

TL;DR: Mansfield Park is a surprisingly fun romp through the hornier side of Jane Austen's novels.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 815

Other Films Based on Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park (Rozema, 1999)

Mansfield Park (MacDonald, 2007)

Reviewing Jane: A Quick Succession Of Busy Nothings

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 1999

Director: Patricia Rozema

Cast: Frances O'Connor, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola

Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Mansfield Park has been described quite rightly as Jane Austen's most controversial novel, though not for the steamingly erotic reasons the marketing of the 1999 film would seem to suggest (and don't get your hopes up folks, suggestion is all there is). Mansfield Park is essentially a morality play, Austen's most po-faced and didactic work in her entire short career. The way it enforces the etiquette and strictures of Regency society can be punishing to modern readers, and requires a lot more context than most of her other work. It is not a novel for the impatient, so adapting a film from the story necessarily required a lot of adjusting and rearranging. Let's see how they did!

So far, so busty.

Mansfield Park tells the story of Fanny Price (Frances O'Connor), a poor young woman who was sent at the age of 10 to live with her rich relations: the tyrannical imperialist Sir Thomas Bertram (the playwright Harold Pinter), the lazy opium addict Lady Bertram (Lindsay Duncan), and their children, the entitled drunkard Tom (James Purefoy), the well-mannered nice guy Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller), and prissy, boy-crazy daughters Maria (Victoria Hamilton) and Julia (Justine Waddell). In the book, Fanny Price is a bland, passive character who is tossed around by these careless, larger-than-life personalities.

That didn't really work for making her the protagonist of a movie, so they have her a personality, and that personality was literally Jane Austen's. In a montage they show Fanny writing most of Austen's juvenilia (her early, posthumously published work), and they force her into the "anachronistically modern girl sarcastically fighting against the foibles of her time" mode in which most portrayals of Austen or her most beloved character Lizzy Bennett can usually be found. This completely and utterly destroys any reason this particular story had to exist, but whatever. Their lives get tangled up in lusty and romantic twists and turns when the seductive brother and sister Henry (Alessandro Nivola) and Mary Crawford (Embeth Davidtz) come to visit. Drama ensues.

They're certainly dressed for it.

We do really need to dig deep into the character of Fanny Price. She's the moral center of the book, and while there's no denying that she's a boring stick in the mud, there's literally no point to the story if she's not boring. She's supposed to be the steady center amidst the chaos of youthful licentiousness and adult hypocrisy whirling around her. By making her interesting, the story loses its lynchpin and the wheels rattle off, sending it all crashing to the ground.

It doesn't help that the other changes made to the material are entirely superficial, like adding a fresh coat of paint to a wall that's full of sledgehammer holes. As I already mentioned, this film was billed as a sexy, steamy romance, that element mostly relegated to a pair of scenes that require an extremely  liberal reading of the source material to mutate Mary Crawford and Fanny's relationship into a bizarrely sublimated lesbian affair. It's nonsense that exists only to be provocative, and it barely succeeds at that because of the way it pulls its punches, demurely hiding behind its implication.

The other major embellishment on the source material is the addition of a much more prevalent angle on slavery. In the book, it is only mentioned Sir Thomas Bertram has property in the South American colony of Antigua, though readers at the time would probably be aware he held slaves. But that fact is drawn into the light here, making his slave-driving an important facet of the narrative and the drama between his character and Fanny Price. Unfortunately, Mansfield Park completely fails to make any point about slavery and the way the family profits from it. It's just one more ingredient to some overbuild melodrama, and the big conflict about it (involving some way-too graphic depictions of rape and torture) is resolved offscreen, so it's obvious once again that the filmmakers were too shy to actually go through with their bold reinterpretations.

I mean, what's the point when we could be watching straight white people almost kiss?

Really, Mansfield Park is a thorough waste of time. But there's at least a spark of what the film could have been. It's still funny, as almost any Jane Austen adaptation has to be - at least briefly. The standout character is the same as the novel: Sheila Gish's manipulative, self-indulgent Aunt Norris. Her pert little reactions to hugely tragic situations are amusing to be sure, and any scene with her in it seems to perk up a bit, even visually speaking. She is present for most of the visually creative moments Mansfield has to offer. In fact, perhaps the best is a smash cut to the death of Mr. Norris, as described by Fanny in a letter to her sister (these letters, which are presented by Frances O'Connor speaking directly to the camera, are the only other times that the movie actually tries to accomplish something stylistically unique).

These sequences are few and far between, but the movie has the gall to end on a beautiful series of tableaux that gently break the fourth wall as we follow each of the characters' fates in the epilogue. When Mansfield Park actually uses the medium of cinema to breathe life into one of Austen's most lifeless novels, it accomplishes a great deal, but unfortunately they're mostly content to have the narrative crumble around them just like the walls of the titular manse.

The romance here isn't even compelling. Whereas in the novel, we see Fanny pining for her cousin throughout the entire story (gross), here her more active character causes him to pine for her, which deflates every scrap of drama that is supposed to be created by his fervent, blind interest in Mary Crawford. I'm not here to complain that they changed details from the novel. This is what movies do. But did they have to change the detail that fundamentally fuels the entire romantic conflict? It's monumentally fatiguing. Every choice that was made in this adaptation was the wrong one, and the budget doesn't provide for sets and costumes lush enough to redeem it by at least allowing you to sink into cozy period domesticity.

I obviously have a lot of patience with these things, so please don't take my warning lightly. Don't waste your time with this one.

TL;DR: Mansfield Park is a waste of time, embellishing a book that's not that interesting in a way that makes it even less interest.

Rating: 5/10
Word Count: 1140
Other Films Based on Mansfield Park
Mansfield Park (Rozema, 1999)

Mansfield Park (MacDonald, 2007)