A film which allows Fanny Price to accept Henry Crawford's proposal should not be called Mansfield Park or be attributed to Jane Austen.
As to the merits of the film in itself - I found it completely incoherent, bitty, without any fully develeoped characters.
And the writing:
"This is 1806 for heaven's sake"
Which somehow reminded me of a very funny radio spoof play called "The gun I'm holding in my left hand is loaded".
Dalum
I agree, why on earth did they make Fanny accept the proposal?
It’s not my favourite Jane Austen novel, because I have never liked any of the characters (in fact the character that I like most is Henry! He seems to be the only one with a bit of personality. And poor Henry in this film… he isn’t treated very well at all) I disliked the awful way Sir Thomas Bertram was made into some kind of satanic rapist, when in the novel he was a blunt man but cared only for his families interests. And even worse, just before the credit roles, Fanny says Sir Thomas has given up the slave trade, and moved on to tobacco. Oh! That’s ok then! All is redeemed! She says it with a cheery disposition too!
The awful sex scene… eugh… this is Jane Austen my dear, did someone forget to tell the scriptwriter that?
Fanny is more likeable, she is stronger, not the weak wreck she is in the novel (but she has very high morals, which makes her even more annoying) I’ll admit that much, but it’s not the Fanny that Jane Austen created, so it didn’t fit terribly well.
Sorry to load off on your thread, but there are so many hate threads I didn’t want to start a new one!
There is a cheap and tawdry feel to the entire movie. Even the set design was practically non existent. Sir Thomas may have been experiencing some financial problems but surely he didn't sell every stick of furniture as it appears in the movie. The interior of Mansfield Park was so bare that each time someone spoke there was an echo!
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You really need to listen to the Director's Commentary before saying stupid things like that. Rozema used Jane Austen's life to create the Fannie character in the movie. Real life Jane Austen accepted a marriage proposal and rejected it the next day. Rozema was enhancing Fannie's character by making her do that as Jane Austen did herself.
And you don't even need the Director's Commentary if you have the mental capacity to recognize by yourself the pieces of Jane Austen's persona in Fanny's.
no i am db
If you believe the Director has any idea what she is talking about you are sillier than she is!
Austen accepted and then rejected a proposal for very specific reasons. Fanny Price just changes her mind??? No, this movie spits in the face of EVERYTHING that is Austen's writing. An author's life should not be brought into the interpretation of their work.
The brilliance of Austen's writing is that she gives a wonderfully insightful portrait of what society was like in her time. How socioeconomic/class structures limits her characters, how women had to survive in a world where men were the only ones who had any kind of security in life, where marriage more-often-than-not, was a marriage contract and had little to do with the couple's feelings for each other.
Fanny Price is NOT a go-getter character in the book! She is not spunky or particularly brilliant. She is, however, strong-willed, clear-headed and holds firmly to her personal morals.
The problem with this movie is, that it assumes that in a modern world women have to literally be a very specific character (like Carry Bradshaw in Sex in the City) before anyone will believe that she is feminist or a strong female character. This is one of the places the Director so horribly failed!
Austen herself, regardless of how independent and gutsy and feminist she was, lived a very quiet life in relative anonymity.