their lives are bigger than any big idea

I had the luck of seeing a FREE SCREENING of this a few days ago (my sisters had the tickets but I still got in because they had extra seats...ah serendipity). Seeing a movie for free is fun, especially when you've been looking forward to it. SO, because this was a cool experience and all, I wrote a review for the flick. The movie opens tomorrow limited and nationwide Nov. 23, here is the trailer.

PRIDE & PREJUDICE

It would be tedious to try to compare this film with others, so to cut to the short and sweet this throws out the old notions and reverence for Austen’s tale and rather cheekily presents to us an oft told story made young again through soulful down-to-earth vibrancy and a blinding worship of emotion and weaves a very different and provoking interpretation.

First time director Joe Wright lends some typical first-timer quirks and choppiness, a lack of experience, but on a whole it’s a mightily valiant effort. Instead of rehashing a “precious” approach to the story, this is about young people making the mistakes and dreaming the dreams of the young, as it was originally meant. When it was written it wasn’t antiquity, it was life, and the filmmakers know this. Lizzie is not a smirking omniscient old soul but a quick witted independent young lady; hotheaded, fiercely loyal to her sister, who once offended is on a crusade and is more unforgiving than Darcy. She is wary of an unfair world and uses her wits to survive and cover her own pain and loneliness. Darcy is less of an impenetrable stoic and more of a shy sensitive soul with high unwieldy pretensions -- barriers between himself and the outside world. Both have big, yearning hearts. In fact the filmmakers made one great decision: they let the two fall in love, or form some connection inexplicable and compelling, from the first moment they lock eyes at the dance. In a shot we see them exposed and human behind fortified personalities, and an instant tangible chemistry that takes a movie’s worth of battling with each other and themselves to right itself. This earthy move sets the tone for the entire film. For once it’s a movie less about propriety and more about the people and world behind the antiquated manners, a world that isn’t so different from ours.

The writers took the main plot points and committed themselves to it. Themes here are strong and never left to the wayside. The love between Jane and Lizzie is supreme and fuels a desire in Lizzie to tear at Darcy when he separates Jane from Mr. Bingley. She’s hurt, she reciprocates the pain, and it is bitter. Pride and prejudices are drawn clear as day. Lizzie searches too hard to find something wrong with Darcy, and Darcy cannot bring himself to let down his guard. They foil their own chances at love constantly until they see how wrong they are, and are too heartsick to do so any longer. Class conflict is suddenly personally injurious and vicious. When Charlotte Lucas marries for security, it’s a grave matter and she must bitingly sober up a disdainful Lizzie on the realities of their world. The Bennets are too eccentric and improper for their own good. Lady Catherine (Dame Judi Dench, who is downright fearsome) is not just a cold figure for Lizzie to spar with, but someone capable of deeply hurting others.

The world inside the frames is electric. The camera is mobile, spryly edging in and out of scenes, conversations, and rooms instead of sitting arthritically in a corner. The dance scenes are less ballet, more flirtatious, rollicking and spirited. The camera unabashedly revels in beauty, the titles open synchronized as the sun rises over a dewy British landscape. Colors live everywhere. Lively layered interactions between characters make richly filled scenes, neither wasting space nor time. Even simple blocking gets creative and then hilarious. The actors are constantly moving and talking over one another. The sisters act like sisters: silly, playing off inside jokes nearly telepathically with winks and stares. The dance scenes are alive as characters send morse code back and forth; fend off, try to attract and analyze one another. Consider Mr. Collins, played to the extreme hilt by Tom Hollander with a subtlety and self importance that makes Collins all the more ridiculous (he's a standout in this, so delightfully weird. When he jaggedly squirms his way up to someone you want to shriek). When he wants to propose to Lizzie, a bolt of fear strikes through her as she sees his earnestness and in a panic pleads in vain not to be abandoned. Jane is horrified, Mrs. Bennet delighted, Mr. Bennet at a loss, and the sisters tease mercilessly, while Collins congratulates himself. It’s all silent, and it's bloody hysterical. The film’s ensemble and mis-en-scene is caffeinated.

Things usually taken for granted are made important. Because so much of the dialogue was paired down, the writers and actors give even small lines impact and potency. The thoughts and intentions behind the actors’ eyes and words are visible at all times. Epic little moments linger and rain, revealing souls, and that is the major strength of this film: it understands the power of a scene, shot, or glance when filled to brimming. Once, Darcy tries to reach through to Lizzie, quietly confiding that he’s not good at talking to strangers, but she shoots him down. It’s subtle and pitiful. Darcy doesn't say much, but we see him change leagues in the way he embraces his sister, walks into a room, or just smiles (a momentous occasion, indeed). When Lizzie tells her father that she loves Darcy, it is something that has finally spilled over into the open although we've seen it perilously close to the edge many times throughout with half said sentiments and stifled tears. Usually "I love you" comes with added prose to convince, but here it’s too sincere. There are no clichés; parties are fun, a misty field is breathtaking, the dawning realization of love is a revelation, the heartbreak is throbbing.

I ought to mention, Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen are so convincing and fitting as Lizzie and Darcy, that up until this paragraph I'd ceased thinking of them as actors. Knightley is striking, charismatic, wonderfully young. Intuitive to the bone, she plays it as though she knows this person. MacFadyen is deep, remarkably subtle and earnest. Mostly, though, he is soulful. I’ve long held him as a sympathetic actor, but he shines in this. Both are transcendent and instill an exuberance of feeling in their characterizations. Neither ever acknowledge the camera exists and make the most of every second they have on screen to project their characters. When you throw them together you get a love story full of emotional subtext, double meaning, and gloriously heavy moments.

There is something breathless and luminous about this movie which makes up for whatever it leaves out. Maybe it is the youth and the break from the rigidity and propriety of period films, and the emotions and spontaneity of life and romance, failed and fulfilled, which provide the color.