A Truth Universally Acknowleged

     Jane Austen adaptations for the screen are tricky. There will always be a contingent of the audience decrying the lack of historical accuracy in the production design or costuming; a few bookworms will be bereft that their favourite character and/or scene was cut, and there's still, unaccountably, those members of society who find it boring. I think it's especially difficult to try and fit her many observations into a feature length film, and find the most successful adaptations to be mini-series (usually from the BBC).

    That being said, I will, and have, watched every regency drama with an accent I possibly can. Cutting my teeth as a 10 year old with the 1940 black and white film of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.

    Like any millennial pre-teen I had my crush on Colin Firth walking back from his impromptu dip in practically his undergarments.

    And sure, I was skeptical how Joe Wright could top that in 2005, but I was easily persuaded by Matthew McFayden's misty morning walk.

    Pride and Prejudice, as you can see, is usually the star of the Jane Austen book to screen transition, for reasons that are very apparent: who doesn't love a good enemies to lovers slow burn? But if I'm being  honest, a different book has long had a prior claim on my preference:

Sense and Sensibility. 

    I do find it to be the most devastating, and pronounced of Jane's attitude towards wealth hoarding, and the business arrangements of marriage. There are lines in the prose that make me chuckle out loud, coupled with romance, and character development.

    This is the story, chiefly, of 2 sisters finding love in the midst of dealing with turbulent changes in their lives: Elinor, the eldest daughter who steadfastly refuses to let emotions and desires to dictate or even influence her decisions; and Marianne, the younger sister who cannot begin to understand this way of life. To her feelings are everything, and if she feels good or is enjoying herself, why should she 1) not display this fact, and/or 2) why would this enjoyment be wrong? There is also their mother, Mrs. Dashwood, and a younger sister, Margaret. 

    There are some critical factors of the story that are, shall we say, uncomfortable for the sensibilities of a 2026 audience: the age gap between Marianne and Colonel Brandon being chief among them.

    This book has received numerous screen treatments, the most successful being the 1995 film adaptation written by Emma Thompson and starring the same actress as Elinore, alongside Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, and directed by Ang Lee. Amazingly, this was Ang Lee's first English language film, and he felt he had only a tenuous grasp of English, and was also confronting some major cultural differences (apparently the idea of actors coming to the director with suggestions was not done in Taiwan). But he was selected to direct this work based on his previous films, The Wedding Banquet, and Eat Drink Man Woman which have emotional repression and classic Eldest Daughter holding it all together. He felt the stratified society of Jane Austen was very familiar in Taiwanese life.

    Being a movie, characters and scenes had to be cut, but I really do feel Dame Emma Thompson did an incredible and monumental effort to include the spirit of those passages in the screen play. 

    In 2008 the BBC produced a 3-episode mini series of the novel, starring Dan Stevens as Edward Ferrars, among many other hidden gems of the British acting stable. Being a mini-series with each episode about an hour long, we can welcome back characters like Lady Middleton, and Ms. Steele; we have the horse gift scene, and the Willoughby Redemption scene, and an on screen treatment of the duel described by Colonel Brandon. Overall I feel this adaptation was fine, not ground breaking or memorable despite having room to more comprehensively include scenes. 

    What was mostly lacking for me was chemistry, but I'm not exactly going to urge that Colonel Brandon and Marianne sizzle when in frame together; I'm not going to totally push for an actor in his late 30's to be yearning for a teenager. No, my belief in the sisterly relationship between Elinore and Marianne is not complete. In the 1995 version it's spot on: Emma Thompson's Elinore clearly loves her family with all of their dramatic, sentimental nonsense, and has also clearly honed techniques for managing her sister's romantic notions over the years. She genuinely wants the best, and for Marianne to be happy with no regrets, and believes she has the best steps to that objective. Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet lived together for a few months prior to filming, with Emma noticing that Kate was skipping meals in an effort to lose weight and in a very sisterly manner helped out. I don't know that the 2008 mini-series gave the same opportunity to the actresses playing the parts (and I don't recommend diving into an eating disorder to manufacture authenticity).

    This brings us to the present, October 2026, with a brand new film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility just released. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, as Elinore Dashwood, and Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings, Catriona Balfe as Mrs. Dashwood, and directed by Georgia Oakley, and screenplay by Diana Reid, this treatment clocks in at 132 minutes, and during each of those minutes, I wondered just what the heck this movie was trying to say. By no means do I wish to discourage anyone from going to see this movie, I want to support the tradition of Jane Austen stories on the screen, but I do have thoughts on what works, and what needed work. And I might have to have more than one post to do these thoughts justice. 

    So, put the kettle on, and I'll launch this deep dive into a very niche topic into the void within the next fortnight.