Saturdays with Jane: Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Becoming Jane (2007)

Finally saw the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice this week. Matthew Macfayden is no Colin Firth, but dang if he didn't grow on me as Darcy should. At first I was all cross-armed and judgmental. "He's not Darcy," I thought. "I don't like him." But then I kind of started to and I remembered with embarrassment that I wasn't supposed to like him right off the bat and that -- what do you know -- I started warming up to him right about the place the story called for it. So I guess he's not so bad.

Keira is flawless as Keira will be. I'm completely unable to be objective about her at this point, but she's a fine Elizabeth. Hell, she could've played Darcy and I'd have been happy with her.

I missed how much time we got to spend with the characters in the six-hour Colin Firth version, but this one made up for it a little with better production values. The movie rushed through parts of the story -- especially Elizabeth's introduction to Darcy's home -- but it sure was gorgeous and exciting. It's one of those times when I'm thankful not to have to choose between two versions because I can enjoy them both for different reasons.

Four out of five Keiras.



We also watched Becoming Jane this week. I was a little disappointed that the story didn't cover Jane's life all the way up to her acceptance and almost immediate refusal of Harris Bigg-Wither's marriage proposal. I've always imagined that to be a defining event in Jane's life and figured that leaving it out would be sort of like leaving out the midnight ride in a movie about Paul Revere. But I'm no Austen scholar, so maybe I put too much emphasis on ol' Harris. The writers of Becoming Jane see her relationship with Tom Lefroy as the important one and for all I know maybe they're right.

Their focus is on how Jane came to the decision to pursue writing as a career and they make Lefroy integral to that decision. Again, I don't know how true that is, but I suspect that maybe they were reaching a bit. It doesn't hurt or help my perception of Jane one way or the other. In fact, I kind of liked that that's where their focus was because it drove them to include a fictional (I assume) meeting between Jane and The Mysteries of Udolpho's Ann Radcliffe (creepily played by Helen McCrory) in which Jane gets to pick Mrs. Radcliffe's addled brain about the dangers of becoming a famous novelist.

The only Austen biography I really care about is Stephanie Barron's fictional one, so watching Becoming Jane was all about making connections between that story and Barron's. I recognized Tom Lefroy's name from Barron's books, but I can't remember what she said about him or how he figures into whichever novel he's mentioned in, but now he's someone I'll be keeping an eye out for.

More interesting to me were the portrayals of Jane's parents (James Cromwell and Julie Walters), her sister Cassandra, and especially the romance between Jane's brother Henry and the saucy Countess Eliza De Feuillide. Eliza and Henry are two of my favorite characters the way Barron writes them. Barron's novels begin when they're already married, so it was great fun watching their early romance in Becoming Jane.

Anne Hathaway did a fine job as Jane. She's not my favorite actor or anything, but she worked for me. Barron's Jane is more animated than Hathaway plays her, but then Barron's also has wittier dialogue than the Becoming Jane writers were able to muster, so it's just a poor comparison all the way around.

Three out of five Keiras.

Speaking of Stephanie Barron, I mentioned that I'm focusing on reading all the Jane mysteries this year. I figure if I read one a month I'll be able to re-read the ones I know and catch up with the ones I don't by November. That leaves December open, so I was planning to read Barron's most recent novel, the Victorian-set Flaw in the Blood. Unfortunately, Bookgasm lessened my enthusiasm for that, but they also turned me onto the fact that Barron writes contemporary thrillers with an historical slant under the name Francine Mathews, so I'm thinking I might check out The Alibi Club instead. Or maybe I'll save the Mathews books for another year. I guess I have a few months to figure that out.