Dizzy Lizzie

Look at us, we're really acting: Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) and Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen) in Pride and Prejudice. Courtesy Focus Films.

I know at least two women who, when at a loss for a good book, reflexively reach for a Jane Austen novel, usually one they’ve read many times before. Austen’s a safe bet, providing comfort and familiarity while still qualifying as solid literature. Readers with similar taste must have a large say in the film industry. How else to explain the constant return to her work? The 1990s saw a spate of Austen adaptations (Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Clueless). More recently, Pride & Prejudice was made into a landmark BBC miniseries (starring Colin Firth), provided inspiration for Bridget Jones’s Diary (the film version also featured Firth) and was Bollywoodized in Bride and Prejudice. Who really needs another version?

Keira Knightley fans, it would seem, of which director Joe Wright is clearly one. Although the young actress bared much more than her sharp teeth in Tony Scott’s recent actioner Domino, Pride and Prejudice is exactly the kind of cred-building prestige vehicle that audiences demand and would-be serious thesps crave. Elizabeth Bennett is one of the juiciest female roles in literature — the character is still thoroughly modern — and Knightley sinks her incisors into it with the appropriate gusto.

The basic plot, which Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach have pared down to its romantic essentials, is familiar to any English-lit student. The Bennett family, well off but by no means rich, has five young daughters. The mother (a screeching Brenda Blethyn) insists on marrying the girls off to ensure the family doesn’t fall into destitution. When Mr. Bingley, a wealthy young bachelor, moves in nearby, Mrs. Bennett is quite confident he will take her eldest daughter, Jane (Rosamund Pike), for a wife. True enough: he falls for her at a ball and their courtship begins. At the same ball, Jane’s headstrong, sharp-tongued sister Lizzie (Knightley) meets Bingley’s equally flush friend, Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen). Darcy is dull-eyed and dour; the two don’t exactly hit it off.

Judge Judi: Judi Dench as Darcy's imperious aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Courtesy Focus Films.

Other complications ensue. At Darcy’s request, Bingley calls off his engagement, throwing the Bennett house into despair. A clergyman arrives to lay claim to the family estate and, later, Lizzie’s hand. Gradually, Darcy warms to Lizzie, and contrives to see her at every opportunity, despite the objections of his aunt, the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Judi Dench), who chafes at her nephew’s interest in the lower-caste Bennett girl. Lizzie, for her part, gradually learns that Darcy is not the monster he seems.

Lizzie doesn’t so much give in to her own desire as Darcy’s determined stalking — at least, that’s the impression the film gives. Like a horror-movie villain who won’t stay dead, Macfadyen appears abruptly and constantly, popping up in a rainstorm here, striding across a dawn-dappled field there. The pace of the movie, which begins with a pleasant briskness, becomes almost comically attuned to Darcy’s tedious appearances. I’ve never really understood the appeal of Darcy myself, but Macfadyen’s portrayal is thoroughly off-putting. He has Clive Owen’s looks, but none of his charisma. Instead of smouldering, he glowers. He’s more hangdog than hunky.

Knightley, however, makes an admirable Lizzie and Rosamund Pike a fetching Jane — even if the latter gets short shrift in Wright’s concentration on the Darcy dilemma. Donald Sutherland, who plays Mr. Bennett, is the warm heart of the film. His reluctance to engage his wife’s desperate machinations is pleasingly comic, and his climactic tête-à-tête with Lizzie is one of the film’s few touching notes.

Austen’s book is supposed to be a parody, critical of the mores it depicts. In his attempt to update it, Wright makes soap opera out of satire. While realism is the intent (lots of long shots, zooms, overlapping dialogue), the result is melodrama. Wright often clutters his frame with livestock, a reminder that the Bennett household is a kind of barnyard. But he’s quite content to let the romance play out in clichéd resplendence. Wright also seems to mix his Austen up with his Bronte: there is more than a whiff of Wuthering Heights in the film’s reliance on wind-swept moors and unbridled tresses. Austen aficionados would be better off passing on the popcorn and returning to their libraries.

Pride & Prejudice opens Nov. 11 across Canada.

Jason McBride is a writer and editor in Toronto.