“Pride and Prejudice” is the type of book popular
enough to have already been turned into a film quite a few
times.
The love story about Elizabeth Bennet ““ witty, cheerful
and not as pretty as her older sister ““ and Mr. Darcy ““
wealthy, handsome and proud of it ““ has inspired a 1940 film,
a 1995 miniseries and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,”
among others.
But new readers often bring new interpretations. Joe Wright,
director of the new “Pride and Prejudice,” which
screens Friday at 7 p.m. in Ackerman Grand Ballroom, had never read
the book until becoming involved with the movie.
“I read the script and loved it, and then I went and read
the book and was surprised by it,” he said. “It seemed
so modern and real and honest and truthful and entertaining. I was
engrossed in it and I didn’t think I would have been. I felt
rather ashamed at not having read it before.”
Whereas the book has been viewed by many as the story of Darcy
overcoming his pride and making changes for love, Wright saw it as
a story about a young woman finding herself through the discovery
of love. So he decided to focus more on the character of Elizabeth,
played by Keira Knightley.
“There are as many different versions of that book as
there are people who have read it. We all experience it through our
own sensibility,” he said.
“The last film was referred to as “˜the Lawrence
Olivier Pride and Prejudice’ and the miniseries is referred
to as “˜the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice,’ and I
thought that was wrong, considering that it’s a story about a
girl. Hopefully, this will be seen as “˜the Keira Knightley
Pride & Prejudice.'”
Though Knightley is one of today’s most famous young
actresses with a real British accent, Wright insisted that casting
her as the lead was not an obvious decision.
“Before I met her, I thought she was probably going to be
too beautiful. I imagined Elizabeth to be a slightly plainer girl.
But I discovered her to be a tomboy and kind of scruffy and, like
Elizabeth, she spoke her own mind completely, and that really
impressed me,” Wright said. “She didn’t fit into
the period’s idea of beauty; she would not have been seen as
beautiful at that time.”
Knightley manages not to seem too glamorous. Elizabeth is
supposed to look wild and unkempt after walking a long way to visit
her sister, and Knightley’s hair is messy and her face sweaty
““ making it more surprising when Darcy completely falls for
her when she enters the room.
A comparatively unknown British actor, Matthew MacFadyen, plays
Darcy. Casting the role can be a dangerous task, as the actor must
overcome the prejudice of fans who fell in love with Firth in the
1995 miniseries. The role made him a sex symbol, even with enormous
sideburns and silly costume pants. But the casting was not as hard
for Wright as the hype might suggest.
“I always knew I wanted Matthew. I think he’s one of
the best actors of his generation. I knew I needed an actor that
was going to come to it as an actor thinking about character rather
than thinking about the fact that he is playing an icon,”
Wright said. “He’s not at all vain. And he’s not
a boy-band pretty boy. I wanted a proper manly man.”
In order to make the film visually appealing, Wright had to
change the location of some scenes, as the novel consists of mostly
interior parlor scenes. The proposal rejection scene is moved
outside into the pouring rain, so when Darcy comes to Elizabeth,
who is in some sort of classical gazebo, his blue eyes vividly
shine under his wet black hair and he looks like an emotional
mess.
“Matthew is someone who shows love very easily ““
it’s hard to stop him from looking like he’s in
love,” Wright said.
Change is all well and good, but what follows then is not a
word-for-word reading of Austen’s famous “In vain I
have struggled” dialogue. Changes to Austen’s text
warrant an explanation, as the witty lines are part of what makes
the novel re-readable.
“Austen wasn’t writing a script, she was writing a
book,” Wright said. “If you actually say Austen’s
dialogue in script form, it doesn’t work; it doesn’t
sound like two people talking. She writes in incredibly long
paragraphs, and we don’t really talk like that.”
Some of the side plots had to be cut as well to make a two-hour
film.
“When you are adapting a novel for a film, you have to
decide what your story is,” Wright said. “And our story
was Elizabeth and Darcy. I tried to stay faithful to it, but to say
that it is a faithful adaptation of it is probably wrong.
“But I didn’t set out to make something that was
modern or revisionist in any way at all. I tried to make something
as faithful to my experience of reading the book as
possible.”