Almost Persuaded

It's finally here. The moment I have been eagerly anticipating since my sister-in-law first told me about it last July has arrived. Masterpiece Theater's The Complete Jane Austen began last Sunday night. Beginning on January 13th and running through April 6th, Masterpiece Theater is broadcasting adaptations of all six of Jane Austen's novels and a new drama based on her life. Last Sunday night's film was the new version of one of my favorite books, Persuasion.

As I was looking forward to this new movie I kept wavering between ecstatic hope and fearful anxiety. Persuasion is one of my favorite of Austen's works, tied for first place with Pride & Prejudice; and since I had already seen BBC's adaptation of Pride & Prejudice this was the film I was anticipating most. Yet at the same time I was worried that it would be a repeat of 1995's version with Amanda Root, which was an absolute disaster (If you have never seen it, don't. The pain experienced in watching it can only be compared to watching a loved one getting mauled by a lion).

I liked it. It was pretty faithful to the book until the last 10 - 15 minutes. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't amazing either. It just didn't have time to be fantastic. Even though Persuasion is a shorter book than Pride & Prejudice, I thought it should have been closer to P&P's 5 hours than its mere 90 minutes.

The scenery was beautiful, and I give points for actually filming in Lyme and Bath. The casting was also excellent. Sally Hawkins looked almost exactly like the Anne Elliot of my mind and did a great job acting. Rupert Penry-Jones was excellent as the dashing Captain Wentworth that turned Uppercross society upside down, and Anthony Head is absolutely brilliant as the vain, snobbish Sir Walter Elliot. The only characters I thought slightly miscast were Mrs. Croft and Elizabeth Elliot. Elizabeth looked more like Anne's wicked stepmother than her beautiful older sister (I guess that's the effect of evil, just look what it did to age Palpatine).

The cinematography was a little awkward; some of the shots almost made me dizzy, and I thought the scenes where Anne looked straight into the camera detracted instead of added to the movie. It made me aware of the camera, making me sort of "wake up" and remember that I was watching a movie instead of actually being in the story.

The kiss was, as a friend of mine said, "very awkward. Captain Wentworth took way too long to lean in for the kiss and since Anne was too short to reach him she was left weirdly jerking her mouth for at least 30 seconds".

The biggest problem though, was the absurdity of the last 10 minutes. Not only did they remove the best part of the whole book (the letter writing scene) but they had to replace it with such rot! Whoever had the dumb idea to have the sensible, refined, level-headed Anne Elliot run through the streets of Bath like a chicken with its head cut off (hatless no less!) should be, as Captain Harville would say, run up to the yard arm.

However, even with all these disagreeable qualities, it was by no means a bad movie. It was a quite good movie, it just wasn't the book. So, if you haven't seen it yet, do, it's worth it. But make sure you read the book too.