fair_maria

This is an excellent movie! I just finished watching it after hearing so many good things, and this is one of the few movies that lives up to its praise. The acting is phenomenal and everything about the film feels real. It never falls back on any tired cliches; it stays true to its characters and never tries to bulls*** anyone. 10 stars out of 10.

It's true that this version is a bit long and should only be attempted by real aficionados of Austen's work. I prefer it to the 1999 version, but someone looking to be entertained for an afternoon ought to look elsewhere. I didn't mind the actress who played Fanny as much as everybody else seems to. I won't praise her acting, but found it not much worse than anyone else's. She looked the part so much more than Frances O'Connor and played it with the necessary timidity that the other actress completely ignored. Edmund, I thought, looked all wrong for the part. I suppose this is a debatable point, but I felt his features were too old and his expressions too severe. Edmund was meant to be serious but warm. It is a subtlety that I felt, unfortunately, neither he nor the 1999 actor got right. The worst choice was Henry Crawford. His portrayal was so off and confusing that I found it hard to focus on the rest of the film. The actor played Crawford so flamboyantly that it is hard to imagine he made so many girls fall in love with him. Those are all of my real complaints; otherwise I found it an enjoyable, faithful adaptation of a wonderful book.

if you are a true Austen aficionado, stay away from this version! Not only is it unfaithful to the book(I'm not even going to get into the slavery thing-that was beyond creepy), but it is unfaithful to the characters as well. I have no idea why they felt the need to pervert the character of >Fanny so much. Her virtue and modesty was a large part of the book and it made her quite different from Austen's other heroines. And an actress in her 30's should not be cast to play an 18 year old- a trifling point, but I couldn't help being distracted by it. I also found Edmund a bit empty- they made him serious, but without the necessary warmth behind it. I could go on for ages, but won't. I'll just end by saying that the makers of this film really did away with all the little details and subtleties that an Austen fan can hold dear. Not to even mention the gross alterations in the story that they made. When I had finished watching it, I really had no idea what I had just seen. As a movie in itself, as long as you don't know the story, it's really not so bad. As an adaptation of an Austen novel, it's an abomination.