Austen, Davies, Morrissey - A Tale of Three Brandons?
Colonel Brandon, no question, needs some fleshing out in any adaptation. He is mostly referred to in Austen's narrative, has little dialogue.
Here, is a bit from his introduction in Chapter 8:
. . . though his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike.
And from Chapter 10, Elinor's take, when she becomes aware of his feelings for Marianne (which, in the novel, appear, at least to Elinor, to develop rather more measuredly than the love-at-first-sight adaptations tend to give us):
She saw it with concern; for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty? [. . .] She liked him—in spite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John had dropped hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion.
A quiet, sad man, then, albeit of good sense and with very good manners.
Andrew Davies, in adapting the novel, has stated flat out that he wanted to "butch up" the men:
“With Sense and Sensibility, you can’t help feeling that the guys who get the girls just aren’t good enough in the book.
“Edward is dull, he’s hesitant. And Colonel Brandon just seems old, serious, and not very glamorous. Jane Austen doesn’t really convince us that Marianne would move from being so crazy about the young Willoughby to suddenly being in love with Brandon.
“So those two guys needed a lot of work, they both needed to be made to look much sexier, really. We needed to butch them up! Otherwise you’ll never believe that our lovely young heroines would fall for them.”
The link is here: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/a-sense-of-adventure-2213908; Davies' quote is followed by the comment:
Indeed, David Morrissey has never looked so glamorous and romantic as he does here, on horseback, as enigmatic war hero Colonel Brandon . . .
I think it is fairly clear that Davies took a rather careless attitude to reading the novel, as Marianne never IS "suddenly in love with Brandon." She marries him, Austen tells us,
with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship
although
Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby.
Davies' Brandon is aggressively assertive rather than silent and reticent. A "war hero," which he is not in Austen's work. A man who, captivated by Marianne upon first acquaintance, dashes madly to thrust himself the very next day upon a household of unpacking females, pressing upon Marianne music he wants her to learn.
A man who accosts and challenges as to his intentions a fellow guest in the home of his "particular" friend - which is a grave breach of courtesy and propriety on two counts - first, it is a grave offense to the host and his hospitality to do such a thing, and second, while Sir John, as Marianne's closest proximate male relation, might possibly have an excuse to query Willoughby, Brandon is minding business which is none in the world of his.
A man who can so far forget every nicety of propriety and respectability as to actually begin to strip a young, barely conscious girl, and later participates in a closed-door tete-a-tete with her, neither of them fully clothed, him sitting on her bed, and clasping the hand that lies upon her abdomen. This would sink Marianne forever from respectability - she would have been ruined; no man would marry her, after that, except Brandon. Is that the "gentleman" Austen wrote? It is not.
This Brandon is a different man than Austen wrote. Not an adaptation, not a fleshing-out, a different character.
Morrissey, a very fine actor, if an unsubtle one, gives us yet a third take - on the subject of Brandon falling in love with Marianne:
He doesn't know how to deal with it," says Morrissey. "He doesn't know how to love and he doesn't know how to communicate. He's like a child and he finds that difficult, because he's a grown man."
Link here: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Once+more+into+the+breeches,+dear+friends%3B+One+of+Liverpool's+most...-a0172282550, with thanks to Raincrow11 for bringing it to my attention.
This - making Brandon a frustrated (perhaps insecure) child-man, does add, for me, some interest to Davies' rather hackneyed action-man figure. But, again, it is very far afield from Austen's description.
And it begs a question - in this adaptation, Marianne does not appear to suffer a death-dealing blow to her heart, her illness is apparently of short duration and allows a very rapid recovery, and she bounces back smartly to fall in love with Brandon. We see little of any real growth or maturation in her.
If Marianne remains a rather child-like person, does Brandon also? Are we to take it that they both merely get a second chance at the very sort of romance which has so grievously disappointed them in the past?
One wonders.
Oh, right. So, she secretly trained a flock of sandflies. share