Some Random Thoughts on Re-watching Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Not very long ago I wrote a post talking about my favorite Jane Austen adaptations, and not very long after that, we began re-watching some of the Jane Austen movies we hadn’t seen in a long time. I found some things especially jumping out at me as I watched the 2005 Pride and Prejudice again, so naturally I thought I should write a blog post about it. So, for your pleasure (or mine, at least), here are my random thoughts on the 2005 P&P.

~ I liked Keira Knightley’s Lizzie more than I had remembered for the first half of the movie…she was much more playful and sparkly than I remembered. There was a particular mannerism of hers I noticed that I really liked: whenever someone would say something insulting or vexing, we see on her face for a moment that she feels hurt, then she almost immediately seems to mentally turn it into a joke and laughs it off. I thought that worked really well.

I liked her portrayal less as the movie went on, though. She seemed to lose a lot of her vivacity and become more sober and unsure of herself…and while we should see her more in sober meditation and being more unsure of herself throughout the second half of the story, she should nevertheless still be the same Elizabeth who loves to laugh and delights in the ridiculous.

~ Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, was almost exactly the opposite. His portrayal ‘clicked’ much more for me during the second half of the movie than the first. I felt like I couldn’t really get a grip on what his character was for the first half. I don’t think I completely agree with those who say that he’s just playing Mr. Darcy as awkward and introverted, since he still did rude Darcy-ish things; introversion doesn’t force you to insult strange women in public places, for instance. But he felt more sullen and repressed than proud per se, and I just didn’t feel like his character/motivations/&c. were very cohesive or understandable.

But then he felt much more natural for the second half of the movie…his post-character-arc Mr. Darcy felt much more like a real person and worked much better for me. My suspicion is that Matthew Macfadyen is just better suited to playing nice people than jerks, but I haven’t seen enough of him to state that unqualifiedly.

~ The movie as a whole felt more rom-com-y than I remembered. For instance, the way it’s played here, pretty much as soon as Mr. Darcy walks into the room the first time, the audience knows that he and Elizabeth will end up together eventually…which (though I need to re-read the book, so correct me if this is wrong) I don’t recall being the case in the book. The dialogue, too, was sometimes altered to sound more rom-com-ish and just more modern in general. (Part that especially grated on my ears was when Elizabeth said that Darcy spoke of Wickham’s misfortune with sarcasm rather than contempt and ridicule. Why?? What’s wrong with contempt, or ridicule? Both are perfectly good words, moviemakers.) (EDIT: Though I wanted to add that I was also pleasantly surprised with how much of the dialogue was taken straight or very nearly straight out of the book…quite a lot of it was!)

~ And yes, we did have to snicker and heckle at the dramatic romantic conclusion with Lizzie and Mr. Darcy wandering about in their pajamas…I enjoy a lot about this movie, but I do not understand the thought process behind this decision. (Well, maybe I do, actually – I think it’s probably meant to represent how both Lizzie and Darcy’s pride has crumbled or how much they love each other or some such, that they’re not bothered by such an enormous overriding of convention. But it 1) would never have actually happened 2) isn’t romantic at all and 3) is Just Plain Weird, so if I were involved I would have opted to skip the proposal-in-pajamas-scene.)

And the very last scene was of course just pure fluff, and rather cringey fluff at that, but let’s pass hurriedly over that and talk about something I liked,

…and this is where I left off when I began writing this post a week or so, and I don’t actually know what I was going to say. Whoops.

~ I think that I was probably going to say that I liked the Bennet family dynamics in this one. The family feels less dysfunctional; it feels like they actually do all like each other, deep down…we get little touches of it, like Mr. Bennet comforting Mary after he stops her in the middle of playing her piece at the ball, or Lizzie giving Mrs. Bennet a consoling daughterly hug-squeeze as she’s sadly watching Lydia drive away to her new home. There’s absolutely no precedent for this in the book, so I shouldn’t like it…but I kind of do, nevertheless.

~ Oh. OH. One thing I forgot to mention before is poor Mr. Bingley. Why they had to make him a total and complete goofball, I do not know. (And I think the portrayal of his sister was almost too serious…she had too much gravitas and wasn’t just petty enough.)

Well, I think that’s the majority of my random thoughts on re-watch. We’re now re-watching the 1995 P&P, so I just may have some more Austen-y thoughts coming your way before too very long. (We just re-watched the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma, too, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my review of it that I wrote a couple years ago still pretty accurately sums up my thoughts. The only main things I’d add are that I don’t dislike its Jane Fairfax as heartily as I seemed to then, the Mrs. Weston in this version is probably my favorite now, and my opinion of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Emma herself has gone down. I definitely prefer Kate Beckinsale’s portrayal.)

What do you think of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice? Watched/re-watched any good period dramas lately? Are there any departures from the book in a movie adaptation that you actually like?