Mansfield Park, 2007
May. 28th, 2010 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessContinuing my belated watching of the more recent ITV/Masterpiece Theatre Austen adaptations, I watched Mansfield Park, the 2007 adaptation. And...snooze. Literally. I zonked out.
Mansfield Park, as a novel, just seems to be difficult to film. I find this mildly odd, given the abundant adaptations of other Austen novels that manage either authenticity (Pride and Prejudice BBC 2, 1995, Persuasion, 1999) or at least high entertainment (Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier which also featured a parrot and costumes and some of the cast from Gone With the Wind; as an Austen adaptation it is wrong on so, so many levels but it's a highly entertaining film). But three adaptations of Mansfield Park, so far, have left me cold.
I suspect the problem starts with the book's heroine, Fanny Price, who could be made to be a sympathetic character: a poor relation, continually abused by her irritating aunt, yet retaining her goodness and piety, and refusing to yield to a marriage where she thinks that the guy will end up cheating on her and being in general unreliable. Unfortunately, in the book (in my reading, at least) Fanny comes off as priggish and dull, and my main reason for thinking that she shouldn't marry Henry Crawford is that he deserves someone more interesting. Worse, Fanny's rival, Mary Crawford, is far more charming and intriguing character. My main reason for thinking that she shouldn't marry Edmund Bertram is that she deserves someone more interesting. In fact the Crawfords would be better off staying near another wealthy family and chasing them. A second problem is with the morality. It's easy enough to understand the horror when Marianne is so publicly chasing after Willoughby (and vice versa) and the resulting gossip and public humiliation, or when the 20-something Wickham takes off with the 15 year old Lydia. It's a lot less easy for contemporary readers to really get all of the horror over having a little bit of fun with a play (home theatricals! gasp gasp!) and all of that nonsense – well, nonsense to us – with Mary Crawford and those letters (gasp gasp).
This setup causes a problem for screenwriters. In the other five Austen novels, the heroines are more sympathetic and likeable than their rivals or at least more interesting and arresting (Emma), and although they certainly deal with morality, none of them feature the hero and heroine running around constantly trying to stop everybody else from having fun. (Occasionally, certainly; that's part of the point. But not constantly.) And the other heroes and heroines, as noted, are objecting to fairly serious or potentially dangerous/threatening social situations easy for a camera, a script, and shocked faces to convey. It's much harder to convince an audience watching what is essentially a theatrical (a professional one, admittedly) featuring lots of affairs and extramarital sex to be shocked by an amateur theatrical.
Rather than trying to show this, the two productions I've seen have instead dealt with the problem by trying to make Fanny Price more interesting and vibrant, less concerned with manners and propriety – a more realistic rival for Mary Crawford, certainly. But, in turn, this creates problems with the story: an interesting, vibrant Fanny Price is not really going to be upset by those theatricals or the letter writing, robbing the adaptation of much its point. And making Fanny Price more charming and vibrant also eliminates the book's examination of the appearance of charm versus the reality of piety and goodness.
Which is the problem here: this version stars Billie Piper, who is simply too good looking, too charismatic, to pull off Fanny Price. (Also, you keep expecting David Tennant to leap into the room. It's very distracting. Also, the hairstyle is just seriously, but seriously wrong.) The camera and the eye are drawn to her, and in this version, Fanny Price takes on many of the elements of other Austen heroines: she's a tomboy, she runs racing after dogs in Mansfield Park, laughing merrily, and happily races horses, all of which make her, oooh, I'm too shy and too proper to act in, gasp, theatricals that will only be seen by a small home audience all that more unconvincing. But worse, after all of this, ooooh, oooooh, theatricals are evil and we shouldn't have them because oooh, oooh, immoral, the characters are shown playing Blind Man's Buff which involves men feeling up women and vice versa. Fanny and Edmund spend a few delightful moments alone, outside, at night, watching the stars. Her cleavage is enjoying the scene. Fanny allows Edmund to enter her bedroom just after she's finished washing her hair, as she is clad in nothing more than a nightgown; he is obviously turned on.
Sorry, film, but you can't have Edmund gasping about the morality of plays in one scene, squawking that Mary Crawford can't possibly do any acting in front of a stranger, and then having him feeling her up a few scenes later, blindfolded or not. To do the screenwriter some justice, she seems to have recognized this as a slight problem, so, she um, has Fanny join the theatricals, in completely contradiction to the book, and apparently missing Austen's entire point about morals and poor relations who do not dare to break the rules.
Plus, the film is far too short, and since budget problems apparently forced the entire film to be shot on just one location, and in just a few rooms in this just one location, several incidents, including the critical one where Fanny is forced to confront her family's poverty and father's alcoholism in Portsmouth explaining just why a marriage to a probable philander might be tempting, and why her experienced aunt and uncle are pushing this, are left out. Henry Crawford, meanwhile, really leaps from woman to woman, with extraordinary and confusing speed; it's nearly impossible to tell who is eloping at the end, Julia and Maria, since the film gave us little time to know either (and the second elopement was left out). And so on.
So, grr.
Mansfield Park, as a novel, just seems to be difficult to film. I find this mildly odd, given the abundant adaptations of other Austen novels that manage either authenticity (Pride and Prejudice BBC 2, 1995, Persuasion, 1999) or at least high entertainment (Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier which also featured a parrot and costumes and some of the cast from Gone With the Wind; as an Austen adaptation it is wrong on so, so many levels but it's a highly entertaining film). But three adaptations of Mansfield Park, so far, have left me cold.
I suspect the problem starts with the book's heroine, Fanny Price, who could be made to be a sympathetic character: a poor relation, continually abused by her irritating aunt, yet retaining her goodness and piety, and refusing to yield to a marriage where she thinks that the guy will end up cheating on her and being in general unreliable. Unfortunately, in the book (in my reading, at least) Fanny comes off as priggish and dull, and my main reason for thinking that she shouldn't marry Henry Crawford is that he deserves someone more interesting. Worse, Fanny's rival, Mary Crawford, is far more charming and intriguing character. My main reason for thinking that she shouldn't marry Edmund Bertram is that she deserves someone more interesting. In fact the Crawfords would be better off staying near another wealthy family and chasing them. A second problem is with the morality. It's easy enough to understand the horror when Marianne is so publicly chasing after Willoughby (and vice versa) and the resulting gossip and public humiliation, or when the 20-something Wickham takes off with the 15 year old Lydia. It's a lot less easy for contemporary readers to really get all of the horror over having a little bit of fun with a play (home theatricals! gasp gasp!) and all of that nonsense – well, nonsense to us – with Mary Crawford and those letters (gasp gasp).
This setup causes a problem for screenwriters. In the other five Austen novels, the heroines are more sympathetic and likeable than their rivals or at least more interesting and arresting (Emma), and although they certainly deal with morality, none of them feature the hero and heroine running around constantly trying to stop everybody else from having fun. (Occasionally, certainly; that's part of the point. But not constantly.) And the other heroes and heroines, as noted, are objecting to fairly serious or potentially dangerous/threatening social situations easy for a camera, a script, and shocked faces to convey. It's much harder to convince an audience watching what is essentially a theatrical (a professional one, admittedly) featuring lots of affairs and extramarital sex to be shocked by an amateur theatrical.
Rather than trying to show this, the two productions I've seen have instead dealt with the problem by trying to make Fanny Price more interesting and vibrant, less concerned with manners and propriety – a more realistic rival for Mary Crawford, certainly. But, in turn, this creates problems with the story: an interesting, vibrant Fanny Price is not really going to be upset by those theatricals or the letter writing, robbing the adaptation of much its point. And making Fanny Price more charming and vibrant also eliminates the book's examination of the appearance of charm versus the reality of piety and goodness.
Which is the problem here: this version stars Billie Piper, who is simply too good looking, too charismatic, to pull off Fanny Price. (Also, you keep expecting David Tennant to leap into the room. It's very distracting. Also, the hairstyle is just seriously, but seriously wrong.) The camera and the eye are drawn to her, and in this version, Fanny Price takes on many of the elements of other Austen heroines: she's a tomboy, she runs racing after dogs in Mansfield Park, laughing merrily, and happily races horses, all of which make her, oooh, I'm too shy and too proper to act in, gasp, theatricals that will only be seen by a small home audience all that more unconvincing. But worse, after all of this, ooooh, oooooh, theatricals are evil and we shouldn't have them because oooh, oooh, immoral, the characters are shown playing Blind Man's Buff which involves men feeling up women and vice versa. Fanny and Edmund spend a few delightful moments alone, outside, at night, watching the stars. Her cleavage is enjoying the scene. Fanny allows Edmund to enter her bedroom just after she's finished washing her hair, as she is clad in nothing more than a nightgown; he is obviously turned on.
Sorry, film, but you can't have Edmund gasping about the morality of plays in one scene, squawking that Mary Crawford can't possibly do any acting in front of a stranger, and then having him feeling her up a few scenes later, blindfolded or not. To do the screenwriter some justice, she seems to have recognized this as a slight problem, so, she um, has Fanny join the theatricals, in completely contradiction to the book, and apparently missing Austen's entire point about morals and poor relations who do not dare to break the rules.
Plus, the film is far too short, and since budget problems apparently forced the entire film to be shot on just one location, and in just a few rooms in this just one location, several incidents, including the critical one where Fanny is forced to confront her family's poverty and father's alcoholism in Portsmouth explaining just why a marriage to a probable philander might be tempting, and why her experienced aunt and uncle are pushing this, are left out. Henry Crawford, meanwhile, really leaps from woman to woman, with extraordinary and confusing speed; it's nearly impossible to tell who is eloping at the end, Julia and Maria, since the film gave us little time to know either (and the second elopement was left out). And so on.
So, grr.