Jane Austen January

Jane Austen January: Miss Austen Regrets

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

For the month of January, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I watched a movie adaptation of Jane Austen books for our link up for Jane Austen January (you can find the link to our past posts at the top of the page).

Erin has been unable to participate the last two weeks so this week I watched Miss Austen Regrets (2007) by myself.

I enjoyed this movie over any of the others we watched. The movie was the semi-biographical (biopic) story of Jane Austen — not the polished, proper, and fantasy versions we see in her books (though there is a great deal of realism in them as well). Of course, there was a lot of fiction in this movie as well, since there isn’t a ton of information known about Jane’s real life.

This movie follows Jane later in life, exploring why her chances at love like she wrote about were never fully realized. Those chances either slipped away or she pushed them away according to the movie and other accounts. Taking creative license, mixed in with some truth, the movie weaves in the story of Jane’s niece with her own. Fanny Knight a wide-eyed young woman who has romanticized love partially because of her aunt’s books.

Through Fanny and Jane’s interaction, we are led through a bittersweet journey that carries the viewers through a series of regrets by Jane, that she may or may not have really had in life.

The story was beautifully presented, not because of beautiful settings or scenes, though there were those too, but because of the emotions, we lived with a woman we know very little about other than what we read between the lines of fictitious prose. That prose within novels she wrote became so popular there is now a new cinema adaptation of her work every other year and thousands upon thousands of fan fiction based on the books she wrote and released in her short 41 years.

When this movie ended, I actually had to pause to process it all and to stop crying over the ending.

There is way too much about Jane’s history to share in one blog post or in one movie so this movie specifically focused on Jane’s later life and this blog post will do the same. One thing I should mention is that we don’t know a lot about Jane’s personal life because her sister burned tons of letters Jane sent to her. Some historians believe Jane wrote thousands of letters to her sister Cassandra over the years, but in the end, only about 150 survived and many of those were redacted or cut apart to keep certain information out of the public eye.

Some historians surmise that Cassandra wanted to protect the privacy of her sister. Jane was known to be very blunt and straightforward in her commentary and it is possible she was a bit opinionated about some in the family or others the family knew and Cassandra didn’t want people to see those comments. Or she might have wanted to protect Jane’s love life from a curious family and public.

Either way, some vital information that would have shed even more light on who Jane was in her personal life is no longer available.

What we have in Miss Austen Regrets is a fictionalized telling of what Jane may have been like, what may have happened between her and her family, and how she may have felt as she became ill.

I think that Jeremy Loverling who directed it and Gwenyth Hughes, who wrote the screenplay, did an amazing job weaving an imaginative story with a bit of historical facts that we do know mixed in.

One of the biggest messages of this movie, starring Olivia Williams as Jane, is that we shouldn’t confuse fiction with real life. This point is driven home several times but first when Jane tells her niece, portrayed by Imogen Poots (that’s an unfortunate last name, right?), “”My darling girl. The only way to get a Mr. Darcy is to make him up.”

The other message is that a woman should marry for love not for protection and wealth, like when Jane tells her niece, “Fanny, do anything but marry without affection.”

She tells Fanny this when Fanny asks Jane for advice on a man who she feels will propose to her – John Plumtre, who was played by a curly-headed blond Loki – er, I mean Tom Hiddleston. That was a bit shocking to me because I’m used to an older Tom with darker hair but here he was – all in his young, blond glory and totally out of character for me as an anxious 17th century man.

Jane tells her niece she likes to flirt and that’s why she never married. Viewers can tell there are a variety of reasons Jane never married and one of them is because she’s afraid she will no longer be able to write if she is married and taking care of children.

Later Jane runs into a man – Rev. Brook Edward Bridges, played by Hugh Bonneville — who reminds her that he wanted to marry her and would have cared for her, her sister, and her mother. He’s such a tender character and he becomes even more tender when he sees she is not feeling well later in the movie. It is clear that he has always loved her and still loves her, even though he is now married to someone else.

I had to find out more about him so I did a deep dive online and found this article about letters between Cassandra and Jane that hints Edward did propose at one time. It also mentions Edward’s wife who Jane wrote: “for her health, she is a poor Honey—the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well—& who likes her spasms & nervousness & the consequence they give her, better than anything else” 

She used Edward’s wife as the basis for the sister of the main character in Persuasion – a woman who used her supposed illnesses for attention.

Ironically, Edward Bridges passed away five years after Jane at the age of 46. His wife lived another 40 years, despite all her “ailments”.

If rumors are true and similar to what happened in the movie, Jane didn’t have an easy go of it with her difficult mother who always held a grudge against her for not marrying someone wealthy to take care of them.

Watching this movie gave me an entirely different impression of the woman whose books I have resisted because of her fans who have what I saw as a silly obsession. Whether some aspects of the movie are true or not, I can now see that there were most likely many elements of Jane’s own life that she used for her books. Some of those were joyful moments, some heartbreaking, but all made up her life and allowed her to give readers a tiny glimpse into her life through her novels.

If some of what was shared is true, I think Jane believed that someday she would find love like she’d written about before her death. Before she could, though, she became sicker and too weak.

I have to agree with what Walter Scott wrote in his diary in 1926 after rereading Pride and Prejudice for the third time.

“That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!”

We really did lose her too soon.

If you want to read about where this made-for-TV movie (which I thought was better than most movies on the big screen) was filmed you can read the post from Joy from Joy’s Book Blog. This concludes our Jane Austen January. Thank you to everyone who participated in it! I hope you will check out the links at the link up above. The link party closes on Saturday.

Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it?

Jane Austen January: Emma (1996 Theatrical version)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 13 Comments

This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s books for Jane Austen January. We are also offering a link-up for anyone who wants to discuss the movies, or anything else Jane-related, on their blogs.

I feel like Erin and I batted maybe not zero but around five this week by choosing to watch Emma. Both of our choices really weren’t very good and both of us agreed we didn’t want to see the 2020 version at all. We did want to watch the 2009 BBC miniseries but it would have been about four hours long.  It might have been worth it to not to have to see the fifteen minutes of the 1996 televised version that I had to suffer through, however.

The 2009 version stars Romola Garai and to me it is very well done. Mr. Knightly is a mix of charming and playful, Emma is still a brat but shows a transformation more so than in the Paltrow version, and the characters are better developed. Of course, they had time to develop characters since they had two hours more than the other movies.

(Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that I have not read the book so I can’t say if any of the movies keep in line with the book or not.)

So, as I mentioned, Erin and I both abandoned our first choice of the 1996 televised movie with Kate Beckinsal after only about 15 minutes for me (maybe less for Erin. Ha.)

My word that version was so dull – in the acting and in their outfits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where everyone wore brown and white against a set of more brown and white. Ew.

Now, as for our decision to shift our choice to the 1996 big screen version with Gwyneth Paltrow, I want to say up front that I am not always a fan of Americans doing British accents – especially in period pieces.

I don’t know what that is about but I guess it takes me completely out of a story knowing that the actress is really from California and not Sussex. It seems less refined somehow, which is funny since people from Sussex aren’t necessarily all refined either.

I have also been taken out of a story when a British actor is doing a Southern accent and I know there isn’t one Southern thing about him.

With that one complaint about Gwenyth not actually being British behind us, lets get to the rest of the movie.

First, the story of Emma.

Emma is about Emma Woodhouse, a young woman who is constantly meddling in the love lives of other people. She lives with her hypochondriac father and they are both often visited by their good friend Mr. Knightly.

Emma’s meddling sometimes is successful and leads to marriage, but other times, it leads to heartache, confusion, and people being hurt. It also keeps Emma from focusing on her own love life, which is beneficial to her because she doesn’t have to commit but hurtful to the men who fall for her.

Emma uses various schemes and tactics to keep some couples apart and bring other people together. She’s actually very manipulative and it takes most of the story and her being told by Mr. Knightly – a man who is a close friend of the family and almost like a brother to her – that her schemes are ruining people’s lives.

Like Pride and Prejudice, this movie had a lovely dance scene between Emma and her friend, Mr. Knightly. One of those where their attention is on each other and no one else. It was a lovely scene.

Unlike Pride and Prejudice (2005) the scenery isn’t as pretty in this movie to me. For example, at one point Emma and Mr. Knightly are shooting arrows and the pond behind them is covered in algae. The director couldn’t have set the shot up better to remove that from the background or had the body of water treated? I felt completely shallow, but I couldn’t even pay attention to the argument happening between the two because I was staring at the dirty, green water.

The movie was directed by Douglas McGrath.

He wanted Gwyneth Paltrow, according to Wikipedia, because, “she did a perfect Texas accent. I know that wouldn’t recommend her to most people. I grew up in Texas, and I have never heard an actor or actress not from Texas sound remotely like a real Texan. I knew she had theater training, so she could carry herself.”

Um..okay? I guess that’s a good reason to cast her?

Anyhow, it did not surprise me at all that Harvey Weinstein the co-chairman of Miramax at the time gave the movie the greenlight but said Gwenyth had to be in the movie The Pallbearer first.

She then had a month to herself while recovering from wisdom-tooth surgery to research for the part by studying horsemanship, dancing, singing, archery, and dialect.

If you don’t know the story behind Weinstein, you can look it up online but needless to say he was a big jerk who manipulated and physically attacked women but also controlled actors and actresses careers.

I thought it was interesting to read that the characters of Mrs. Bates and Miss Bates in the movie were played by an actual mother and daughter – Phyllida Law and Sophie Thompson.

Thompson revealed that it was a coincidence that she and her mother were cast alongside each other, as the casting director had their names on separate lists. She was actually one of the funnier and more refreshing characters to me.

I had to giggle when I saw Ewan McGregor as Frank Churchill and apparently, he cringes and giggles a bit as well for the same reason – his hair.

He told The Guardian that he chose to star in Emma because he thought it would be something different from his previous role in Trainspotting (a movie about a heroin addict).

“My decision-making was wrong,” he said in the interview. “It’s the only time I’ve done that. And I learnt from it, you know. So I’m glad of that – because it was early on and I learnt my lesson. It’s a good film, Emma, but I’m just… not very good in it. I’m not helped because I’m also wearing the world’s worst wig. It’s quite a laugh, checking that wig out.”

When I looked online for reviews of this movie, I found that most people generally liked it, including Roger Ebert who called it “a delightful film–second only to “Persuasion” among the modern Austen movies, and funnier, if not so insightful.”

Back in 1996, though, some college students called the film obnoxious. I had to laugh at the review of the review by Ebert when he wrote that the young student’s review was “posted on the Internet.” Ah, the early days of the Internet.

The college student wrote: “a parade of 15 or 20 or 8 billion supporting characters waltzes through the scenes. Each is called Mister or Miss or Mrs. Something, and each of them looks and acts exactly the same (obnoxious).”

I don’t know if I agree that the movie was that bad, or that there were really that many characters to keep track of.

I do agree that some of them were obnoxious – including Emma herself but we also have to remember that Emma was supposed to be young (21) and still learning about herself and how not to meddle in the lives of other people.

Ken Eisner, writing for Variety, said of Gwyneth that she shone “brightly as Jane Austen’s most endearing character, the disastrously self-assured matchmaker Emma Woodhouse. A fine cast, speedy pacing and playful direction make this a solid contender for the Austen sweepstakes.”

Ebert also liked Gwyneth in the role, writing, “Gwyneth Paltrow sparkles in the title role, as young Miss Woodhouse, who wants to play God in her own little patch of England. You can see her eyes working the room, speculating on whose lives she can improve. “

If you want to read about the different versions of the Emma adaptations yourself, you can see some comparisons at the following sites:

https://scottcahan.com/2020/06/27/emma-movies-which-is-the-best/

https://screenrant.com/emma-movies-adaptations-ranked-worst-best/

https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/celebrating-the-fauxscars-why-the-2020-emma-outshines-the-1996-adaptation/

or watch this video:

or this one:

This was the last of our book adaptations. Next week we will be watching Miss Austen Regrets, which focuses on the life of Jane Austen.

Erin didn’t get a chance to write about Emma today as she isn’t feeling well, but if you want to share your thoughts on the movie(s) or book Emma, or anything else related to Jane Austen, you can add a link to our link-up HERE.

Have you seen this version of Emma? Or the 1996 television version?

Let me know in the comments.

Jane Austen January: Pride and Prejudice

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s books for Jane Austen January. We are also offering a link-up for anyone who wants to discuss the movies, or anything else Jane-related, on their blogs.

Last week we watched Sense and Sensibility. The week before I watched Persuasion.

This week the movie was the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice.

First a little bit about the story of Pride and Prejudice for those who might not know what it is about. The story follows Elizabeth Bennett and her three sisters – one older and two younger. Her older sister is beautiful and sought after by men but Lizzie is a bit mouthy and supposedly plainer, though I can’t tell in the movies since both girls are always beautiful to me.

During the book and movie, Elizabeth learns about the natural consequences of judging people without knowing the full story. Her father is the owner of Longbourn estate, but his property can only be passed to a male heir. Since his wife also lacks an inheritance, his family will become poor when he dies. Therefore it would be necessary for one of the daughters to marry someone wealthy so the entire family can be supported.

Mr. Bennett’s wife is obsessed with finding a rich heir. This obsession makes her, and two of her five daughters, very overbearing and lacking in social skills. Their overbearing behavior gets them into trouble often and one of them will get into a lot of trouble later in the movie.

With the idea that a wealthy marriage is needed, there is a lot of excitement when two wealthy bachelors enter the scene – Fitzwilliam Darcy and Charles Bingley.

I will admit that Erin had to practically drag me kicking and screaming to this particular movie adaptation after we agreed that the 1995 BBC mini-series, while superior in many ways, was simply too long to watch for our blog posts. It’s almost six hours all together.

In my mind, Colin Firth is the embodiment of Fitzwilliam Darcy and I struggle to see anyone other than him in this role so I really didn’t want to watch it for this buddy watch at first. I was like a pouty child, folding my arms over my chest and saying, “But I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”

In the end, she didn’t make me. I agreed to it.  

I will say that after watching this 2005 version for the second time, I’ve decided Matthew Macfadyen does an okay job as Mr. Darcy. He often reminds me of a pouty emo teenager from the 1990s instead of Mr. Darcy, but he grew on me as the movie went on.

I am not a huge Kiera Knightly fan but she also grew on me as Lizzie Bennett and while I found her rude and snotty at times, she had a lot more life in her than Jennifer Ehl did in the 1995 version. What I lied about Ehl, though, is her subtle eyebrow raises or expression that showed her feelings more than anything she could have said.

After watching the 2005 version again (I first saw it a few years ago), I’ve decided I don’t hate it as much as I thought I did. There are parts of it I might actually like a bit better than the 1995 mini-series.

For one, I find the actress who plays Jane in this version (Rosamund Pike) a bit prettier than the one in the 1995 version.

No matter which version I watch, though, I have to say that I don’t always like Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet. I know some see her character as being independent and bold and standing up in the face of oppressive patriarchy but I find her a bit rude quite honestly. Like a commenter said on my Instagram this week – I am actually shocked that Mr. Darcy speaks to her at all with how haughty she is.

That doesn’t mean I don’t like her at all, though, because I realize that the story follows her social development and her changes as a person. I do like that she stands up for herself and that she isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

I also like that she progresses from a bit of a stuck-up young woman with very high standards to a woman who learns from her mistakes of judging too quickly and believing the stories of people who she barely knows.

One thing I liked about the 2005 version is that it seemed livelier when the time for mutual affection shall we say. In this movie, we actually saw it, unlike the 1995 version where Lizzie and Mr. Darcy were very, very reserved when they finally shared their real feelings. I know that reservations are the theme of the time these books took place, but there was a bit more exuberance at the end of the movie from 2005 than in the one from 1995 without making it crude or out of line.

Included in this story are the characters Caroline and Charles Bingley, rich siblings, who come for a visit to the Bennet’s area and cause quite a stir in the little village because they are – uh – I guess because they are rich. I have no idea why people are so thrilled with them otherwise. The people of the village are also thrilled with Mr. Darcy because he is even richer but he looks at all of them with indifference and possible arrogance.

It’s so weird to see Kelly Reilly in the role of Caroline Bingley because I’m now more familiar with her as Beth in Yellowstone. I had to look at her more than once while rewatching this because I couldn’t place her at first.


She has the same smug look in both shows because both characters are smug and arrogant.

As for the man who plays Mr. Bingley, Sam Woods, I kept cracking up because he was like a cross between Ed Sheeran and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Another character who emerges as an antagonist in every way is Lt. George Wickham.

At one point, Wickham leaves Elizabeth with a sad tale of how Mr. Darcy treated him abominably when they were young, leaving him out of a will because Mr. Darcy’s father liked Wickham better than Mr. Darcy.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie you know what that is all about. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll let you find out but will say that something seems very off with that story, of course.

There is humor in the book and movie and in the movies that humor break is with Mr. Collins.

Oh my. What can we say about Mr. Collins? He’s the vicar who will inherit their family’s land so he’s interested in marrying one of the daughters, which will help the family remain in their home. Sadly, Mrs. Bennet is hoping for Jane to marry rich Mr. Bingley so Mr. Collins sets his eye on Lizzie, who is horrified at the prospect. Rightly so.

He’s the character with the infamous lines, ““What a superbly featured room and what excellent boiled potatoes! Many years since I’ve had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should I compliment the excellence of the cooking?”

The standout performance for me in this version is Judi Dench as Catherine De Bourgh, Mr. Darcy’s aunt. She’s the perfect “bad guy” and, as usual, like with any movie she’s in, practically steals the show.

Like other Austen stories, there is a lot of ins and outs, misunderstandings/slight of hands, whatever you want to call it. There are also a lot of unsaid things that cause issues and heartbreak and confusion.

Also like other Austen movies, there is a lot of beautiful imagery and amazing cinematography both inside and outside.

One scene that stands out for me is the dance scene between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy. At one point everyone around them fades away and it’s just them focused on each other, which, of course, we know what that means – that they only see each other. Sigh.

Even people who haven’t seen this movie probably have seen the outside scene of Mr. Darcy walking through the mist with his coat open, his white shirt unbuttoned and looking, I guess, sexy. I wasn’t as thrilled with that scene as other women but that’s probably because I’m not as big of a fan of Macfadyen as I am Colin. When Colin came walking out of that lake, as subtle as it was, I must admit I swooned a bit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about just Google Colin Firth walking out of the lake in Pride and Prejudice.

I saw an interview with him this week and apparently, he was supposed to be shirtless in that scene, but the BBC didn’t approve of the movie being that suggestive.

As with every Austen book/movie, I find myself frustrated at how women were treated and how they had to rush to marry someone rich or who was an heir to a fortune, to ensure that they had a place to live.

Of course, I know that’s how it was back then and I like how Austen fought against that idea in her books. All great authors challenge societal “norms”, in my opinion.

Looking online this week for what others thought about the movie, I learned that this movie is not as close to the book as the 1995 version. For one, there was less focus on any subplots and more focus on Lizzie and Mr. Darcy’s romance in this movie. I hope to read the book in the spring, so I will see more of what an article in Screen Rant meant when it wrote that.

The director, Joe Wright, also changed the time period from 1813 to the 1790s because he liked the idea of the French Revolution going on at the same time since the revolution created an atmosphere of fear within the English aristocracy. I really don’t like when the entire time period or location of a book is changed for the movie, but I guess it works okay for this movie because I had no idea what the date was supposed to be.

An article on Screen Rant by Amanda Bruce mentioned what I did about the movie, which was that Keira Knightly’s version of Lizzie was more feisty – I actually would call it more snotty than feisty, but  . . . Ms. Bruce can have her opinion and I can have mine.

Bruce didn’t exactly approve of the portrayal as a whole shown by how she wrote: “Knightley’s Elizabeth is comfortable pushing back on her parents — and in one scene, even shouting at them — while Austen’s Elizabeth might be headstrong, but she is never immature.”

The 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, Bruce wrote was, “grounded in realism” and blended “traditional period-film traits with a modern approach.” 

I mentioned above that I liked the ending of the 2005 version because there was more affection shown between Lizzie and Mr. Darcy. Another article on Screen Rant mentions that the end of the 2005 version was different in the United States than it was in Great Britain.

I almost wrote what the differences were but I’ll leave that off and let anyone who hasn’t seen this version or any version figure that out on their own. Apparently, the Great Britain audiences didn’t appreciate the extra affection shown at the end of the movie, which was extremely clean, just to clarify, despite what a comment by my daughter suggested.

“Eew, they’re sucking each other’s faces off,” she said, but that did not happen. As with many Jane Austen adaptations, there is nothing gratuitous in the film that will make you put your hands over your child’s eyes.

Have you seen this adaptation?

Have you read the book?

Did this adaptation meet your expectations?

Next week Erin and I are watching the 1996 TV adaption of Emma with Kate Beckinsale. Next week we will be writing about Miss Austen Regrets.

To read Erin’s impressions of this movie, visit her blog: https://crackercrumblife.com/

Jane Austen January: Sense and Sensibility (limited spoilers)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

This month Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching movie adaptations of Jane Austen books.

First up is Sense and Sensibility.

Sense and Sensibility was the first Jane Austen movie adaptation I ever watched. I started it, thinking I’d hate it but ended up falling in love with it.

I’ve now watched it three or four times.

I’ve decided to “live blog” this one as I watch it, similar to how I wrote about Persuasion and again I will not provide spoilers in case you’ve never seen the movie or read the book.

Erin joked that last week’s post was like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 post and I liked that comparison so consider this a blog version of Myster Science Theater or Rifftrax.

Before I start I will relay a couple paragraphs from Wikipedia about the basic plot of the book and film:

“It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16½) as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret (age 13).

The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they are forced to leave the family estate at Norland Park and move to Barton Cottage, a modest home on the property of distant relative Sir John Middleton. There Elinor and Marianne experience love, romance, and heartbreak. The novel is set probably between 1792 and 1797 in Sussex, West England.”

So the movie opens with a man dying and he wants his second family taken care of and asks his son, John, to take care of his second wife and three daughters.

We know right away that the promise the son makes to his father on his father’s deathbed will not be kept because he already looks swarmy.

Op, yep. Swarmy to the core and his wife is even worse. She has the most evil ideas and a very pinched face. It’s no surprise her name is Fanny.

As we get to the young ladies who have been left behind, Marianne is playing a very sad song on the piano and we will be introduced to the humor injected into the film by Emma Thompson and her perfectly timed sarcasm and whit.

She asks Marianne to play something different because the music is making their mother weep even more over the death of their father.

Marianne tries a different song but it’s even more depressing than the first.

“I meant something less mournful, dearest,” Emma’s character (Elinor) quips from the other room.

It’s so funny to watch a family mourning yet feeling a bit like you want to giggle over the behavior of Marianne and the over dramatic mother who is flustered because they are being kicked out of their home by the cold and heartless half-brother and his wife.

It was an awful time, though – where men inherited everything and daughters were kicked out of their homes. These women will go from wealth to poverty very quickly which will be a shock to them but in some ways, I think they will be better off poor, without the stuck up rules of the rich back then.

Oh. Hugh Grant in his prime. Hello. Playing Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s brother.

Good grief those high collars look ridiculous, though.

He’s so polite. Unlike his sister. Odd how they were both raised in the same family and he is so much nicer.

Gemma Jones, Elizabeth Spriggs, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, James Fleet, Greg Wise

And he and Elinor – well, I promised no spoilers but, well, the fact they get along so well is certainly making Edward’s evil sister very, very upset. It’s making Elinor’s mother hopeful because she’d love to get her house back again or at least a very nice house.

Honestly, they’re both a bit conniving. The whole idea back then that men could only marry those who were in their “class” is so disgusting and annoying. I love that Jane knew that and instead writes about marrying for love and not prestige.

Barton Cottage. Sigh. It’s so cute. So much nicer than those big, drafty mansions. Well, then again, they are shivering and grabbing extra blankets in the cottage to show how drafty it was as well.

Sir John offers the women the cottage. He is Mrs. Dashwood’s eccentric cousin with an even more eccentric wife.Yes, Sir JohnOr as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.

Or as I remember him – Siegfried Farnon from the original All Creatures Great and Small show from the 1980s or 70s. Whichever. I used to watch it on PBS with my mom.

Ah. Colonel Brandon. Strangely attractive even though I’ve never had a thing for Alan Rickman.

Not sure how I feel about him looking at Kate Winslet. He’s probably old enough in real life to be her father. He’s probably supposed to be younger in the movie. Or not. Who knows. It was a different time.

The cinematography and scenery in this movie is so beautiful – like most of the Jane Austen movies. Sweeping landscapes and towering Victorian mansions, beautiful dresses, handsome men and women.

Enter another handsome character – John Willoughby. Alas, he might not be as dashing as we think. We will have to watch and see.

Hugh Laurie. I totally forgot he was in this. He’s the guy who played House and the man who my son says is weird to hear with an English accent and that he thinks that Hugh’s English accent is actually fake.

I can’t figure this Willoughby out. He seems so delightful and interested and invested in the family, not just Marianne, but … there’s something just not right. He wants Marianne and her family yet – I won’t say. You’ll have to watch the movie.

Again, though, the rules of class and who you could and could not date back then were just ridiculous.

Poor Elinor. She is the only stable one in the whole family it seems. Holding it all together.

Everyone around her seems completely crazy.

Lucy Steele. She breezes in and just adds to the crazy. You’ll see. Completely delusional.

I pretty much want to throttle Marianne through this entire movie.

Robert Ferrars. Eek. That is all.

Were people really this uptight in the 1700s or just the British? I know they weren’t always uptight but these period dramas just make them so…proper. I’m drawn to the characters who aren’t very proper in these movies.

Elinor seems proper in some ways, but real in others.

There are a lot of confusing twists and turns in this one.

A couple people need a good slap across the face.

One needs a right shake and wake up call, but she’s young so I’ll try to cut her some slack. Plus, there are a couple of scenes where my heart just melts for poor Marianne. She had such high hopes and fell so hard only to be rejected in such a public way.

An aside – get Colonel Brandon some blasted blankets too! He’s an old man! He could catch his death. My goodness.

Alan Rickman was such a good actor too. At one point when Marianne finally notices him – his expression from hesitant to touching. Sigh. Just swoon-worthy.

I won’t spoil the ending so I will wander off here for a bit to discuss the history of the book and some behind-the-scenes of the making of the movie.

The book was published in 1811 and was Austen’s first novel. It was not published under her name but instead, the title page simply read: written by “a lady.”

It was published in three volumes to begin with and the cost to publish them cost more than a third of Austen’s annual household income. She paid for the books to be published and barely made a profit off them. She made $178 on the 750 publications sold, which would be about $6,358 today. As a self-published author myself, I certainly feel her pain and relate/

I did not know until this week that the screenplay for the movie was written by Emma Thompson and she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for it. She was 35 at the time the film was made.

According to Wikipedia, Thompson spent five years between other projects working on the screenplay. Thompson had never written a screenplay before so many studios were not interested in taking on the project. Showing a bit of a novice writer she was, she almost lost the entire project in a computer failure.

From Wikipedia, “As Thompson mentioned on the BBC program QI in 2009, at one point in the writing process a computer failure almost lost the entire work. In panic Thompson called fellow actor and close friend Stephen Fry, the host of QI and a self-professed “geek”. After seven hours, Fry was able to recover the documents from the device while Thompson had tea with Hugh Laurie who was at Fry’s house at the time.”

The film was directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese director and Lindsay Doran, the producer, chose him because of his past films about complex families. He was not familiar with Jane Austen at all.

In an interview, Lee said, “I thought they were crazy: I was brought up in Taiwan, what do I know about 19th-century England? About halfway through the script, it started to make sense why they chose me. In my films, I’ve been trying to mix social satire and family drama. I realized that all along I had been trying to do Jane Austen without knowing it. Jane Austen was my destiny. I just had to overcome the cultural barrier.”

In case anyone is wondering about Thompson’s age compared to how old Elinor was supposed to be, that was a concern brought up by Thompson herself. For one, she wanted Natasha Richardson and her sister Joely to be cast as the sisters, not herself, but Lee and the studio wanted Thompson because she was becoming well known as an actress.

Thompson finally agreed but they increased Elinor’s age to 27 instead of 19 to make the idea she was a spinster more believable to modern audiences.

I think the very ending is very fitting and serves a certain person right. If you’ve seen it let me know what you think in the comments.

In case you are interested, here is Emma accepting her Golden Globe for the film.

And here you can watch the making of the film:



If you have YouTube Prime you can also watch the full movie here:

If you want to read Erin’s impression of the movie, you can read her post on her blog.

Up next week we will be watching the 2005 edition of Pride & Prejudice.

Have you seen this version of Sense and Sensibility? What did you think of it?

Jane Austen January: Persuasion

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

I’ve already mentioned here that I have not read any Jane Austen books but I have watched Jane Austen movie adaptations.

This month I will be watching three of those adaptations with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs but this week I watched Persuasion by myself to kick off Jane Austen January. If you want to get in on the movie-watching action or share posts about Jane in any capacity, you can add links at the link up, which you can find at the top of the page.

Today, I thought I’d offer you a little bit of a blow-by-blow of my thoughts as I watched the 2007 version of Persuasion but without spoilers. In other words, I will not share the ending of the film, even though it should be obvious how it ends because it is based on a Jane Austen book.

As the movie starts I can tell there are going to be a lot of close-ups on the actress who plays the main character – Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) and she will provide us many drawn-out contemplative and heartbroken expressions.

I also realize she’s the mom from the live-action Paddington movies. I realize this because she reminds me very much of the wife of a former pastor of mine and because my daughter loves the Paddington books and movies and we just watched Paddington 2 two weeks ago.

I already like the main character, though I do wish she had some more lines and less lackluster expressions. (Luckily – this changes later.)

Oh my, her father and sister are — how shall I put this? Horrid.

They are horrid.

Wait. Isn’t that the guy who was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I only watched a couple of times) and Jonathan Creek and a bunch of other stuff I probably saw him in but can’t remember.

I don’t stop to look his name up but later my husband tells me his name is Anthony Head. I promptly forget what he told me and two hours later I look it up again.

Here are some exclamations I made each time the man opened his mouth as Sir Walter Elliot: “Wow.” “Okay then.” “Well, he’s certainly a jerk.” “Good. Leave her behind because who would want to be with you anyhow?” “Yikes. Pompous much?”

The sister, Elizabeth, deserves a lot of the same exclamations and she receives those and a couple of “yikes.”

Now the father and sister are leaving and their house will be rented out by someone who is not a nobleman but a mere commoner, as Sir Walter Stucky Up Face says. That makes him very sour indeed.

Our main character is being left behind – not of her own will, of course – to stay with her hypochondriac sister Mary Musgrove. Lord have mercy, this woman is a piece of work.

We’ve already heard before Anne stayed behind that the house that Anne grew up in but will not be able to stay in because her father has leased it out to commoners will be visited by a Captain Frederick Wentworth (Rupert Penry-Jones – what a very British name, eh?)

Cue yet another long, shocked yet subdued expression by Anne. Alas, she has met him before we learn as she talks to her godmother. It isn’t a spoiler to say that the captain wanted to marry dear Anne but her father and godmother forbade it.

Oh, Anne’s mother is dead, by the way. Just figured that out.

Is this sister for real? She’s sick? Now come on. Really?

Oh. I see. She’s only sick when she feels like it and not when fancy-dancy people come to visit and want her to go see other fancy-dancy people.

Listen, lady, your kid just fell out of a tree. Don’t you think that is more important than some fancy dinner?

Anne doesn’t think the dinner is more important. She’s staying home with your kid and cares more about your kid than you do.

Oh, so we learn that he sisters didn’t know of the proposal once long ago from the captain but of course, this hypochondriac one wouldn’t have known since she only thinks of herself.

The captain is dreamy by the way.

I can see why Anne wanted to marry him.

Everyone has got to be clueless to miss the swoony looks they keep giving each other and how sad the captain looks as he looks at Anne.

Oh. They are clueless because they are so incredibly self-centered.

Seriously, 20 minutes in and all I can think is how awful and selfish all these people are.

All except Anne, of course.

Here is where I will cut off my internal dialogue and leave a screenshot of what I told Erin about my thoughts as the movie neared the end:

The novel Persuasion was originally written in 1817. There are at least four movie adaptations of the novel with the latest being last year. I have not heard good things about the latest. I’ve heard the best things about this adaptation.

The movie was part of three movies released in 2007 by ITV. The other movies were Mansfield Park and Northanger Abby. According to Wikipedia, Hawkins wasn’t sure about playing in the movie when asked but after re-reading some of Jane’s books, including Persuasion, she fell in love with her again after last having read her in high school. She even went as far as reading about Jane herself to learn more about the woman behind the book.

She told The Independent, “Jane was an incredible woman. She was only in her early forties when she died. I became convinced that Persuasion was about her own love life; Anne Elliot took the wrong advice and left the man who turned out to be the love of her life. She is the type of woman you’d like to be: reserved, refined, funny. I totally fell in love with her.”

This was Penry-Jones’ first period drama. In an interview, he said, “In modern drama, everything is so overt. In period drama it’s all held in. You have to find ways to show the feelings straining beneath the surface.”

(An aside by me: he did a remarkable job with this.)

I found it interesting when I read on Wikipedia that the costumes made for the movie, along with those used in Miss Austen Regrets (which Erin and I will watch at the end of the month) were eventually sold by the Jane Austen Centre at an auction. The costume designer, Andrea Galer allowed the items to be sold but said it was a hard thing to do because she had loved designing those costumes so much. The costumes were already on display at the Jane Austen Centre, which is located in Bath, England and focuses on Jane’s time in Bath and how it influenced her novels, including Persuasion. Galer sold them to encourage others to get in touch with the materials that used to make clothes since she used a lot of those to design the costumes.

I have to be honest that it felt a little weird to read that they were sold on Ebay of all places. I’m not sure who the proceeds benefited but I would guess the center.

Have you seen this version of Persuasion or the others? Which was your favorite? Have you read the book and what did you think of it?

Next week Erin and I will be watching Sense and Sensibility and will write about it on Thursday.

Here is our complete list:

Movies and the dates we will be writing about them:

Sense and Sensibility – 1995 (January 11th)

Pride and Prejudice -2005 (January 18th)

Emma – 1996 (January 25th)

Miss Austen Regrets (February 1)

Getting Ready for Jane Austen January

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 25 Comments

Hey, can you come here for a minute? Yeah, lean in close. I have a secret to tell you that might shock you.

I’ve never – whoo-boy. Can’t believe I’m about to say this.

I’ve never read a Jane Austen book all the way through.

Wince.

I know! It’s a big-time reader sin – especially when you are a female.

I have the books on my shelves and intended to read Pride and Prejudice last year but never got there. Now I’m in the middle of A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens and Little Women by Alcott and I have two ARCs to read before February so I probably will not read a Jane Austen book in January.

I will, however, be watching movies based on Jane Austen’s books with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs during the month of January. If you want to join in, we are inviting you to do so and to add any blog posts you write about Jane or the movies to our linky. The link up will be at the top of my page starting next week.

(As an aside, our Comfy, Cozy Christmas link up is still live if you want to add any Christmas-themed or related posts here.)

Here is the list of movies we are watching for the month and I do want to note that for Pride and Prejudice both of us prefer the 1995 BBC mini-series but it is much longer than a movie so we opted for the 2005 movie with Kiera Knightly and what’s-his-face. Sorry, but I don’t acknowledge anyone other than Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Even from the short bit I’ve read of the book, I know that he simply IS Darcy. (Edited to add that I originally called him Mark Darcy here because I was thinking of Bridget Jones’ Diary apparently. Wahahaha!)


Movies and the dates we will be writing about them:

Sense and Sensibility – 1995 (January 11th)

Pride and Prejudice -2005 (January 18th)

Emma – 1996 (January 25th)

Miss Austen Regrets (February 1)

For fun and to kick off the month I will be watching Persuasion on my own and rambling about it on January 4.

Note: You do NOT have to write about the movies on the same days we do. If you watch a movie and write about it on any day you can still post in the link up. Any post about Jane Austen, not just these movies, is also allowed. So, posts about the books are absolutely allowed too!

Have fun with it. Ramble about your love or even your disdain for Jane. Okay, maybe don’t express too much vitriol about Jane. Ha! Ha! We’re trying to keep this fairly positive and fun!