If Jena Malone was to be any part, it should've been Mary, and vice versa. Jena is a good actress, but she can't really do an English accent or be an idiot like Lydia.
I like Keira Knightley, but she doesn't do long speeches very well. When she got angry for Jane, that was great, but everything else fell flat.
Donald Sutherland looked the part, but nothing else.
AnnieBell
Perfect Love casts out all fear.
I SO agree with you about Malone--I thought she was the weakest link in a cast of fairly weak links. Her over-acting as frivolous Lydia seemed so forced and fake.
I did like this Jane, though.
Knightley played Knightley in this--I have yet to see her do a role where she didn't act exactly the same.
I have no idea who Jena Malone is apart from in this film but to be fair to the actress she's playing a particularly air-headed 15 year old. The kind of character who in modern terms would be obsessed by the latest scripted reality show and comparing kissing (euphemism) techniques amongst her girl friends.
The only odd casting I see is Tallulah Riley. But that is only because she has a funny trick of catching the eye, even when just standing quietly in the background - I think it's her peculiarly modern look. Kneightly has a similarly unique beauty but perhaps we've grown more used to it.
I felt this way too about Malone. She is her best in strong roles with lots of emotion, like her Bastard out of Carolina. Her Lydia version seems so forced, like she wasn't having fun in this role. But whatever the reason, Malone is so good in other roles. As for Keira, she is the same in her roles but I still like her for some reason.
shareYou, my dear OP, lost all credibility the moment you mentioned Donald Sutherland in a negative light.
P.S. Lidia was perfectly cast in my opinion. The character's vulgarity extended beyond her manners and language. It also reflected in her appearance. And, with a little make-up, Jena Malone managed to truly look the part, as it were, more so than any other actress on the cast could have.
You, my dear OP, lost all credibility the moment you mentioned Donald Sutherland in a negative light.
In Sutherland's hands, Bennet was a rather amiable eccentric, who appeared to be an attentive and affectionate husband and father.
Disastrous.
True, true. A case of "a red rag to a bull" when the previous poster called into question the credibility of the OP regarding Sutherland. I'm a bit impetuous. It gets me into trouble.
I find such huge changes in characterisation rather unforgiveable, I'm afraid. The whole point of P&P is that Mr Bennet entered into a disastrous marriage on the basis of looks and youthful charm, and became a negligent husband and father.
The Bennet family dynamic can't be altered THAT much without damaging the story.
If there aren't any skeletons in a man's closet, there's probably a Bertha in his attic.
Very true, but I did not really mind the alteration of the family dynamics. After all, even in P&P 2005 Mr. Bennet was indeed a negligent father; he made pretty much the same mistakes as in the novel, just in a more amiable way.
The only difference is that he was nice to his wife, which I found endearing.
I guess I'm ok with liberal adaptations, or at least I am with this one. I found P&P05's Bennet family very likable and fun, something I would have liked to be a part of.
That's fine. I won't continue to flog a dead horse, except to say this: Elizabeth's recognition of her father's failings plays a key part in her maturation that the novel charts.
Mr Bennet is substantially responsible for the family's woes. In my opinion, his cruel mockery of the other family members and indulgence of Elizabeth (together with the way he draws her in and makes her almost a co-conspirator), is detrimental to her.
This from chapter 42:
Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents which rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.
If there aren't any skeletons in a man's closet, there's probably a Bertha in his attic.
I agree and I think Elizabeth’s reactions to Darcy make less sense if not considered in light of her father’s behavior. As an example, when I first read the part where Darcy talks to her about dancing a reel and she answers, “You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste…” I thought it seemed rather an odd thing to suspect someone of, even if he is disagreeable and “above his company”, but then I considered that her father does this with Mr. Collins and even with Mary.
shareI'm afraid that I can only agree.
As such a talented actor can Donald Sutherland made good a fist of the part that had been made nonsensical by the scriptwriters.
Matthew Macfadyen was just dull as Darcy. The same monotonous delivery for his disdain as for his enthusiasms.
Rupert Friend's Whickam was insipid; hardly credible as the dashing amoral seducer and fortune hunter.
Tom Hollander entirely missed the absurdity of Collins and his delivery was so mechanical as to be comical for entirely the wrong reason.
Riley, Malone and Mulligan as the younger misses Bennett were non-entities — perhaps again a fault of the script.
The only performances I though entirely creditable was Brenda Blethyn — who was far more the Mrs Bennett of the novel than Alison Steadman in the 1995 series — and Simon Woods who was a suitably air-headed, charming (and pretty) Bingley.
And Knightley was just not up to the part.
It is all most frustrating because most of those I have named I have seen deliver far finer performances in other things.
I completely agree about Brenda Blethyn. I easily imagine her as a young girl, which we were supposed to because Mr. Bennett had married someone very young. Rather than being sort of manipulative and harsh, she was rather excitable and fluttery, running around the room when the gentlemen arrived urging, "Just act natural, just act natural!" And earlier on when she talked very overtly about her daughters' eligibility and prospects, vis-a-vis money in front of Mr. Darcy, you could see how natural, practical and important this subject was for her, and the same time how Mr. Darcy would see the discussion as completely lacking in subtlety and propriety, especially given their relative status.
One thing I never really understood from the novel was whether Mr. Bennet was supposed to be a powerful character who damaged his family, or someone who just kind of ran under the radar, making his remarks for his own sake, and being disregarded by the rest of the family as kind of odd and strange (except for by Lizzie and Jane). I had leaned toward the running under the radar, because that was how I first experienced him when I read the novel. I didn't see him as doing damage, except in his rather inept failure to keep Lydia from traveling to Bath because he wanted peace and quiet. I saw him as pretty passive and uninfluential.
But some of the comments make me a bit more unsure. And given a father then was supposed to be master of the household, I guess the fact that he was passive could be equally damaging as would have been an overly controlling man. Anyway, a good excuse to re-read the novel with this question in mind!
Carey Mulligan was adorable in this. She should have been Lydia.
McFayden was miscast as Mr. Darcy. He is not haughty or handsome enough to be Darcy.
Sutherland was too meek. Mr. Bennet is supposed to have a curmudgeonly grouchiness due to his marriage to the tedious Mrs. B.
Keira did not come across as witty enough to be Lizzie. He charm is all in her looks.
But Wickham, perfection.
Lizzie Bennett should NOT be stick thin and supermodel-featured. Her appeal is of the wit/spark/‘inner beauty’ kind. One of the key reasons this adaptation fell flat for me was the miscasting of Keira Knightley (the other was the fact that Austen’s droll wit simply didn’t come across in this film).
Ang Lee and Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensibility is an object lesson in how big-screen Austen should be done, but I do like the 1940 Olivier/Garson P&P, too.
I think Knightley was better than Thompson and I think Pride and Prejudice better than Sense and Sensibility. I watched both films recently. Sense I give 8/10. Pride I give 10/10.
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