Pride & Prejudice

Yes, I totally agree with Jay that Lizzie (Keira Knightley) giggles too much (sometimes even inappropriately) in the movie., though her sweet smiles do remind me of those of Natalie Portman or Danielle Peita Graham (the Olay commercial fraulein, they look so much alike!) And her lines are done in too hasty a way.

I finally wached the so-called "best Jane Austen adaptation ever to hit the big screen" this evening, and I'm sorry to say that I couldn't buy it as much as I did the BBC mini series made in 1995. The setting (landscape) is brilliant, so brilliant that it shadows some actors, which, I think, is partly due to the imperfect casting. E.g., Mr. Bingley is far from handsome and Jane looks like in her 30's (I really hated her hay-like hair, and actually she is the only actress born in the 70s among the five Bennet daughters). It's very much like the repeated comparison between the TV and film adaptations of the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber. Well, in terms of acting, Lizzie and Mr. Darcy are OK, but they could barely beat the pair in the BBC version, esp. Colin Firth, THE DARCY. The 71-year-old Oscar winner Judi Dench, of course, sparkles in the picture. Her interpretation of the insufferably arrogant Lady Catherine de Bourg was another triumph in her career life. By the way, Mr. Bennet, played by "Tyler" (as in Feng Xiaogang's Da Wan / Happy Funeral), looks good in the familiar hairstyle :-)

Matthew Macfadyen, who once played Sir Felix Carbury in another BBC mini series of classics -- The Way We Live Now (interesting, my MA thesis topic), is hardworking in the picture. He carefully employed not only vacillating eye contacts but delicate hand moves (not gestures exactly) to express his unspoken lines, and I noticed at least three times of close-up at his hand.

It must be impossible for me, if I were the director, to cram so many plots into a two-hour film production, but Joe Wright obviously managed to have reproduced the 200-year-old love story on the screen. At least I should say, it is a gorgeous movie with a gorgeous heroine.

P.S., I read the goof records on IMDB, and I was surprised by some sharp eyes, e.g., "when Lizzie is sitting in the woods with her Aunt and Uncle, the bite marks in her apple change between shots." And it is true!