Life on my own #31: Jane Austen movies

Inked by Sarah at 11:29 AM

Y’know, I can hardly imag­ine that many girls spend their Fri­day nights watch­ing obscure movie ren­di­tions of clas­sic Jane Austen novels.

This girl? Well, if it was Fri­day, Sept. 7, that’s exactly what she did.

I plucked a BBC ver­sion of Jane Austen’s “Per­sua­sion” from the top shelf of the library’s “P” sec­tion in the DVD col­lec­tion on my way home from work. Some­how, this par­tic­u­lar movie had escaped my notice in the tens of times I’ve poured over the movie sec­tion, won­der­ing what movie to watch this or that evening. Fun fact: I’ve never been to a movie rental store on my own and can’t fathom why any­one would pay to watch a scratched-up DVD.

What makes me gig­gle about these movies, first, is the blurbs. You know, the puffy promo quotes from pub­li­ca­tions that people-wh0-sort-of-care-about-movies are sup­posed to pay atten­tion to. Ergo:

“A fairy tale for adults! A splen­did motion pic­ture!” –from some woman named Geor­gia Brown writ­ing for The Vil­lage Voice. !!s original.

“The best pic­ture of the year.” –from an anony­mous writer at Time Mag­a­zine. Why are you anony­mous, writer? Why not stick your name right there with the pub­li­ca­tion, like Ms. Brown was brave enough to do (notwith­stand­ing !!s)? Oh, maybe because you were over­stat­ing your case. Or maybe you have a name like Cog­glethorp and are just too ashamed to admit it. You’re doomed to a life of anony­mous writerly mis­ery. Hmm, that’s prob­a­bly it.

“Two Thumbs Up.” – from the renown Siskel and Ebert TV movie review show. You remem­ber watch­ing that? For the longest time, I couldn’t fig­ure out which one was Siskel and which one was Ebert. And when I did finally solve the rid­dle, it was because the show changed to Ebert and Roeper. I still thought Ebert looked more like a Gene than a Roger. And Gene Siskel didn’t look like any­thing at all. Or at least more like a Richard or a Bert than a Gene. Yeah, Bert would have done nicely. Maybe that’s why I always mixed up their names?

So. With such splen­didly thumbs-up review blurbs, I fig­ured it couldn’t be too bad.

Gah. I love the book, and even that wasn’t enough to make me desire to watch this movie a sec­ond time. Unhap­pily, it wasn’t even quite bad enough to make it laugh­able, like the Utah ver­sion of Pride and Prej­u­dice. Noth­ing against Utah, not at all. But some screen­writer decided to mod­ern­ize the clas­sic novel and set it amid the cul­ture of the west­ern U.S. Half-baked hilar­ity ensued.

The poor actress play­ing Persuasion’s pro­tag­o­nist, Anne Elliot (clearly a well-bred Anne with an E), looked like she was con­sti­pated the entire movie. For that mat­ter, Anne’s sis­ter Mary could’ve used a face mas­sage, her mus­cles were so tight. My the­ory is, she brought it upon her­self, fret­ting so much about eti­quette and what was “due” her as the wife of Charles Mus­grove. She always did grate on my nerves.

Oh… I just now noticed the “Mas­ter­piece The­ater” nota­tion on the back of the DVD box. I sup­pose that should’ve been a clue to the kind of movie I could have expected.

If only Ken­neth Branagh could get his hands on one of these books… I might actu­ally pay to see that. Not at a movie rental place, though. I still don’t quite under­stand their existence.

Sub­mit­ted by Sarah Einselen

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Sep 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.