Persuasion 2008 - Short Attention-Span Theater

The 2008 adaptation of Persuasion is good so far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.

Though the acting is excellent, and the settings very historical and scenic, it felt like the postcard version of the novel. It's only ninety minutes long, which explains a lot. The adaptation focuses on the romance between Anne and Frederick and the rest of the characters fade into shallow background, a point emphasized by the sometimes off-kilter closeups and fast tracking shots that make the world outside of Anne slightly unreal. There are a few necessary scenes of Frederick without her, but only when utterly needed. This adaptation is definitely about Anne's romantic relationship, not a full picture of how Anne was constrained by her particular time and society and family and how she at last found love within those boundaries.

For that reason, the secondary characters mostly seem a bit cartoonish. True, her father in the novel is a bit cartoonish, but not quite this much. I felt a lot of the warmth and reality of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, for example, was lost in this version. The scene of Louisa Musgrove's accident, in this version, made me snort because it seemed so fake and unlikely; the camera quickly went, again, to Anne and Frederick, who were much more real. All the feeling in that scene came from their faces and posture.

The final revelations were portrayed in a way that was distinctly odd. I call it "Jane Austen cardio workout." Anne ends up running all over Bath before finding Frederick, with Mrs. Smith briefly running in and then out again with her revelations about Anne's cousin. I was boggled with this choice and found it amusing rather than tense.

Like the previous movie version (from 1995), this one was determined to have an outdoor kiss between Anne and Frederick. Okay. I can deal with that. It's a movie. Visuals are needed. The final scene in the 2008 version also had Frederick wearing only a shirt and waistcoat. Outside. For a carriage ride in an open carriage. He looked great, but I kept thinking, if they were being really historical, without a coat wouldn't he be practically naked? Was this an homage to the famous "wet shirt" scene from the 1996 Pride and Prejudice?

All that said, I enjoyed the production and thought Sally Hawkins was excellent in the lead role, particularly in a scene in which she is trying to weep silently. Rupert Penry-Jones was also quite good; though he had less to do, he did it very well without overdoing it.

If all you know of Persuasion is this adaptation, do yourself a favor and go a little deeper with the novel or with the 1995 adaptation with Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds, which I still prefer.

Has anyone seen the 1971 mini-series adaptation? What did you think?

Mansfield Park Revisited, Part the Third

My final notes on my last re-read of Mansfield Park.

Mansfield Park can be read online at Gutenberg.org.

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November 18, 2004

After finishing my reread I confess I'm a bit puzzled about Henry Crawford. Either he was a great actor (it is a plot point that he is a good actor) and managed to fool not only Fanny and Edmund but his own sister, or he's simply inconsistent. I could believe him flirting with the Bertram sisters and playing them off of each other for his own rakehell amusement. I could also buy him trying to change by falling for Fanny, even if that change was not to be permanent. What I didn't buy was that, so suddenly after he'd made headway with Fanny, that he should throw her over and run off with Maria Bertram. After all the effort he'd expended? Even if he'd wanted to make Fanny suffer, he did so in a way that meant he wasn't there to observe it. So far as the book tells you, nobody sees him again, once he and Maria go their separate ways. I feel he's more the slave of the plot than anything else. I felt Austen might have had her tongue in her cheek about Henry, making him a caricature of the Wicked Seducer.

The last chapter, in which Austen narrates how the various characters ended up, amused me greatly. She seemed so obviously to be playing, reinforcing the moral lessons discussed throughout the novel by Edmund and Fanny, and doing so just in the manner that would please her readers, at least those who were reading the novel for those very reasons.

I am pretty sure this will never be my favorite Austen novel, but I've enjoyed the reread.

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Does anyone else have any comments on Mansfield Park?

Mansfield Park Revisited, Part the Second

More on my most recent re-read of Mansfield Park, from several years ago.

Mansfield Park can be read online at Gutenberg.org.

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November 15, 2004

I had a couple more thoughts on the rereading I've done so far. First, Edmund criticizes the behavior of Mary Crawford and blames her upbringing for it; but he never makes the same point about his brother and sisters, who also exhibit poor judgement on several occasions. He does not approve of them acting, or of the play they choose, but he does not bring his mother into the argument at all, even though she is present and his father is not. And in the end, Edmund goes along with his siblings.

Edmund feels entitled to direct Fanny's behavior, but not that of his siblings, so in that way he treats her as poorly as Mrs. Norris does; Fanny goes along with him, but when they met she was much younger, and very alone, and received no attention from anyone else.

The text of the play Lover's Vows which the characters in Mansfield Park plan to enact is very enlightening, if you've never read it before.

November 17, 2004

I've finished the section in which the young people attempt to act the play "Lover's Vows," and the section in which Henry Crawford decides he is in love with Fanny, asks her to marry him, and she refuses him, only to be pressured by Sir Thomas and Edmund, and later by Mary Crawford.

No one in this book understands anyone else; the only two people who are shown to have perfect felicity are Fanny and her brother William, but their bond does not depend entirely upon understanding of each other to flourish, and their times together, though intense, are widely separated while William is at sea. Fanny understands Edmund except in his feelings about Mary Crawford. Edmund, though he shares many opinions with Fanny, doesn't understand her feelings against Henry Crawford at all. Sir Thomas wishes Fanny to be happy, but he doesn't take the trouble to find out what that would really entail; his own thoughts on the matter are sufficient. Fanny is the poor relation in this as in everything else.

While Mary encourages Fanny to marry her brother, she uses as examples two marriages that did not end felicitously, with seeming disregard for how this reflects on the advice she's dispensing; she's too full of the vision of romance, not only where her brother is concerned but also blocked by her romantic feelings toward Edmund.

Everyone in this book is self-absorbed in one way or another.

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More tomorrow.

Mansfield Park Revisited, Part the First

I recently located the journal entries I made when I last reread Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, way back in 2004. I reproduce them here for your enjoyment.

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November 12, 2004

I've just begun my first reread of Jane's Austen's Mansfield Park. It was the last of the Austen novels I read, excluding juvenalia, back in the spring of 1990. The paperback copy I'm reading from is the same one that traveled with me that year to England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The corners of the front cover are a little bent, and something dug into the back cover and left deep dents, probably in the suitcase; I think I finished it early in the trip, because I remember in Paris I was reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and on the plane home I read Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and a Charles DeLint novel, The Riddle of the Wren.

Funny how I remember all that.

November 15, 2004

Mansfield Park was the last of the Austen canon I read, and for me it was the most difficult to get through. Fifteen years later, it still reads more slowly than the others, I think, but I don't mind so much; this time, I'm watching Austen's characterizations with great attention. Many of the characters in this book are not likable, at least not to me, but I understand each one very well through a few key actions and statements. Nothing in this book is random. Every sentence is making the world of Mansfield more and more real to the reader.

In our world, Fanny is a wimp who never speaks up for herself, and Edmund is a wet blanket who proses on about a narrow compass of morals that he thinks everyone should follow; they deserve each other, since they're mostly in agreement about everything anyway. Yet in the world of the book, Edmund and Fanny are the only truly unselfish characters, except perhaps for Mrs. Grant, whom we don't see enough of to really judge.

In the world of each character, they are the center of the universe, and this is as it should be, because isn't that true in real life? It's Fanny's hard luck that she's barely even the center of her own life; yet it's a powerful commentary on Austen's society that Fanny is as she is. Fanny is totally dependent on the charity of others; if she offends, she might be cast out, and she's had no preparation whatsoever for living in any manner other than that of poor relation; there's no Georgette Heyer hero waiting to take her up into his carriage. It's no wonder Fanny is such a shrinking violet. Yet her beloved older brother William makes a career for himself in the Navy, underlining the fact that men had options.

I don't like Miss Crawford, either, but in her own way, in her own world, she at least thinks for herself. It's Edmund's opinion that her upbringing has led her to think poorly; neither he nor Fanny believes Miss Crawford forms her opinions independently, attributing her faults to her uncle and aunt. Individualism is frowned on; behavior must be molded by the past and guided by figures in moral authority such as guardians and clergymen. It's also interesting to note that nowhere in the book do the characters discuss the royal family or Parliament or anyone so far away as being in any way responsible for society's mores. Everything is on the familial level, which might seem shallow unless you consider, as I do, the families to be English country society in microcosm.

I admit I don't have deep historical knowledge of this place and period, but from reading Austen, it's amazing how much I feel I understand.

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More tomorrow!

Mansfield Park can be read online at Gutenberg.org.

Jane Austen Didn't Let Other People Tell Her What To Write

"My Dear Sir,

I am honoured by the Prince's thanks and very much obliged to yourself for the kind manner in which you mention the work. ...

You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

I remain, my dear Sir,
Your very much obliged, and sincere friend,
J. AUSTEN.

Chawton, near Alton, April 1, 1816."

-- Jane Austen, letter to J. S. Clarke

More letters from the Brabourne edition of Jane Austen's letters.