Pride and Prejudice (2005)

[Guest mynameis;jonas]

i loved this movie, it was so cute and loverly. muhaha.

[Guest chibilite]

Mr. Darcy in this movie lack the coolness and elegant of an aristocrate. I do prefer Mr. Darcy in the old movie more

[Guest RagingHEART]

hm... which version is this? lol

i watched one of the versions and i thought it wuz pretti good! nice happy ending

[Guest vannushka]

Keira Knightley is amazingly pretty. not exactly how i imagined elizabeth to be. i prefer colin firth as mr darcy, he'll alwasy be my one and only mr darcy.

[Guest Yvonne]

I love Mr. Darcy in this movie! :wub:

[Guest meabxwb]

this is a wonderful classic movie. really amazing scenes. and setting.

[coolsmurf]

R1 version

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59823

R2 version

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59825

which would you choose?

[melkimx]

well, those are british, right? so will either version arrive stateside, considering our ending was different?

[Guest dreamz]

Nah, this movie doesn't work for me. I would rate it a 6 out of 10.

[Guest nadhura]

i reeeeeeeeally liked the book. and i reeeeeeeeally like colin firth. like that article says... he just FITS as darcy. i pictured him as darcy the whole time i was reading the book. THEN i found out theres a BBC version featuring colin firth as darcy and now i reeeeeeeeeeally want to watch it. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET A COPY OF THE BBC VERSION?

as to the 2005 version, i didnt really want to watch it when i saw the previews bc

1. i think the guy that plays darcy is ugly....... and hes not colin firth.

2. they showed all these really passionate scenes and jane austen just isnt about passionate love. shes about witty conversation and staring. lol there wasnt any kissing in the book!

but everyone keeps saying he's handsome so maybe i'll change my mind. and i guess they needed a kissing scene or else the movie would be really boring to ppl who havent read the book.

omg i've never seen the bbc version,and all the time i was reading the book...colin firth has alway been mr. darcy in my mind..and then i went to do a research on the net to find whether have they ever made a movie out of this book(this was before the new pride and prejudice came out).....and found that wow, colin firth is mr.darcy in the bbc version...so colin firth will always be like this gentleman from the past...lol..i alway thought he only fits roles in classical movies..haha..but he was charming as ever in bridget jones, ofcourse.

and i wasn't really excited when this new p&p movie came out because i've alway thought that keira knightley never fits in classical roles...coz u know i first saw her in bend it like beckham.and her face is so modern..haha..don't mind me for saying that.but after i saw the movie..i felt like hmm..she just fits into it...not perfectly but it was good...and mr. darcy oh dear mr. darcy, when i watched the trailer, first thought was..i wish colin firth is playing this role..but no, he would be too old for it,haha....but then he was ok in the movie...he didn't actually charmed me,but he did made me feel like i wanna be lizzie bennet..lol...

one thing tho..the last part is the cheesiest part in the history of classical movies...and yeah it was also very annnoying to hear someone said "that was a good love story" when the credits role..know wat i mean...altogether it was good...it shows everything i loved abt the book.except the dorky mr. bingley, i imagined him more calm and charming than that..lol..

[Guest ripgal]

well i thought the movie was ok.. i didn't watch the colin firth version so im not sure. but keira knightley was good as elizabeth.. as 4 the guy, he's cool n hott.. but lacked tsumthing.. i ono.. but it's enjoyable

[Guest Gork]

this movie was sooo romantic!! its as good as the book I must say

at first, I didn't think Mr. Darcy was charming/handsome at all but he really grows on you maybe it was because of his character....I loved Mr. Darcy in the book sooo much!

[Guest dewa130]

Hi there, I saw the movie because I like jane austen stories, my take ; its was well done, keira capture the spirit of elizabeth bennet very well, matthew was appealing as Mr Darcy, it was beyond my expactation, the bst jane austen film adaption to date.

I am not a fan of keira, because she was more of a celebrity then an actress, but this role is her breakthrough role that would gain her new fans.....

I have also seen the bbc series as people was comparing it to this movie, and my opinion its boring and dull but then what can you expect from a bbc productions.......so sorry that colin firth had to play the sema type of role in bridget jones diary (also inspire by the novel pride and prejudice)....

[Guest dewa130]

Here are reviews regarding the film ;

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, Bruce Newman

November 11, 2005

"Utterly Enchanting. You Wish It Would Never End."

Of all the classical literature likely to wind up perfect-bound and printed on vellum, so that it can gather dust for centuries while you're reading Danielle Steel, the works of Jane Austen have proved the most infinitely adaptable to the screen. So it comes as something of a shock that the utterly enchanting version of Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" arriving in theaters today is the first movie adaptation of the book in 65 years. (The 1995 TV miniseries - one of five adaptations for television, and the one that made a star of Colin Firth when he strode out of a lake as Mr. Darcy - will return Monday-Wednesday (11p.m. nightly) on the Biography Channel.

The story was told in modern-dress just last year in a sari Bollywood knockoff called "Bride & Prejudice," directed by Gurinder Chadha, whose "Bend It Like Beckham" brought Keira Knightley to the attention of American audiences. Knightley plays the prideful heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, with a luminescence that puts the movie's frequent shots of sunrises and sunsets in the shade. Her thin Lizzie is thoroughly grounded in the 18th century, and yet Knightley never allows the eldest Bennet sister to seem less than fully alive and freshly drawn.

The only time she seems wrong for the part is when the visiting snob Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen, unrecognizable here as the former super-spy on the A&E series "MI-5") tells his friend Mr. Bingley (a delightfully doltish Simon Woods) that Elizabeth is not pretty enough to be of interest to him. Overhearing this, Lizzie treats Darcy's stuffed shirt as if it were a piñata, verbally battering him until, at length, he has no choice but to fall in love with her. What man can resist a woman who reminds him how horrible he is?

The gemlike performances of Judi Dench (as the forbidding Lady Catherine de Bourgh) and Brenda Blethyn (as the single-minded, quintuple-daughtered Mrs. Bennet) come as no surprise. But British director Joe Wright has strung them together with the slyboots scene-stealing of Donald Sutherland (as patriarch of the tittering Bennet mob) and a hilarious turn by Tom Hollander, an actor I'd never seen before, who plays the equally determined and clueless Mr. Collins.

Wright is particularly adept at turning social settings such as formal dances into comic operettas. He shoots one of these in a single, continuous take that goes on for something like five minutes. As with so much of this "Pride & Prejudice," you wish it would never end.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Michael Phillips

November 11, 2005

"An Exuberant Film Adaptation Of Real Personality- Lively, Coltish, Imaginatively Conceived!"

Austen, Shmausten. Do we really need another "Pride & Prejudice," one more dance of misperception performed by Fitzwilliam Darcy, whom the world knows always as Darcy and never as Fitzwilliam, and Lizzie Bennet, whom Jane Austen once called "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print"?

Each new adaptation of Austen's three-volume novel, titled "First Impressions" in its original manuscript draft, carries with it this stern question of need. In Chicago, the prejudice and the pride won't quit. Austen's novel is the current "One Book, One Chicago" selection, and a stage version continues through Nov. 20 at Northlight Theatre in Skokie.

And while it may be a decade old, the pristine, well-manicured, beautifully acted six-hour BBC-TV miniseries adaptation boasts a DVD-clutching fan base of ardent ferocity.

It's a crowded field, but the happy answer to that question of need is: Yes. This latest "Pride & Prejudice" does feel necessary. It's an exuberant film adaptation of real personality - lively, coltish, imaginatively conceived for a fluid camera.

Director Joe Wright, whose resume consists mostly of British TV, has fashioned a version with a freer, less stuffy air than it has received before, more Romantic than Classical in impulse. Austen's novel straddles those realms to begin with; Wright and his collaborators have simply tipped it in one direction. The result is a costume picture that doesn't feel like one. Unlike so many respectability-plus literary adaptations - Roman Polanski's recent and surprisingly conventional "Oliver Twist" comes to mind - this one delivers a well-loved story without losing sight of the medium by which it is being told.

It's clear director Wright had a notion or two regarding that vague concept, "atmosphere." The moment he and cinematographer Roman Osin whisk us into the first of Austen's many balls and social gatherings we know we are not watching the BBC. When Lizzie, played by Keira Knightley, first meets the imperious Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen, sparks fly in the codified Austen manner. But the whole party, from musicians to dancers to Bennets, teems with life. Wright keeps his frames crowded with jostling, ruddy faces. Later, when Lizzie and her sister Jane (Rosamund Pike) share romantic secrets under their bed covers, the visual intimacy is striking.

While this "Pride & Prejudice" bustles along to a crisp but not frantic rhythm, thanks to editor Paul Tothill, the real payoff comes in the complex long takes and gliding camerawork. When the camera scurries after this or that domestic crisis in the Bennet home, or the guests at a manor bash thrown by Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods), Darcy's sweet-natured comrade, the effect is pleasurably intoxicating. At one point, Wright's camera snakes its way along the outside of the Bennet home, eavesdropping on one conversation after another. The effect isn't showy - it took some doing, but it comes off without any conscious dazzle...

Memories of Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier (from the 1940 film) or Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth (from the 1995 miniseries) won't suffer by comparison. Yet even performances that get off to an indistinct start, such as Sutherland's, deepen and mellow as the story progresses. Sutherland and Knightley share a terrific scene, the one in which Lizzie must gain consent to marry Darcy from her doting father. It's surefire material, full of tears and laughter, and will no doubt generate the same in the audience. But Sutherland comes alive in this exchange in a way he hasn't for years.

Knightley, she of the swan's neck and the period-perfect lantern jaw - both of which the camera likes very much - wasn't yet 20 when she made this picture. A few years younger than Jennifer Ehle was when she made the British miniseries version, on screen Knightley seems to be of another generation entirely. But what Knightley and Macfadyen lack in seasoning, they make up for in charisma. They're good young actors. This Darcy may not suggest infinite gradations of the human being beneath the hauteur, but there's real fervency and heat to Macfadyen's later, emotionally unclenched scenes. And Knightley, who overworks that dazzling smile a bit in the early going, is blessed with a sharp ear for Austen's wit, teased out nicely by screenwriter Deborah Moggach.

Even the music's good: Dario Marianelli's delicate light-classical score holds off on the bombast until late in the game, when we see Darcy storming across the open fields toward Lizzie. It's his Heathcliff moment, more in the spirit of the Brontes than of Austen. And at the end, director Wright wraps the whole thing up with a fairy-tale coda more Shakespearean than Austen-tine. Yet it works.

On the way to that rapturous ending, Mr. Collins, Lizzie's pathetic would-be suitor, tells Mr. Bennet he likes to affect "as unstudied an air as possible." This disarming "Pride & Prejudice" has taken Collins' advice to heart.

KANSAS CITY THE STAR, Robert W. Butler

November 11, 2005

"!

A Tour De Force!"

The world wasn't clamoring for another Jane Austen movie. And certainly not an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which only a decade ago got first-class treatment in a five-hour Brit TV miniseries.

But like the Bard of Avon's plays, Austen's books are ever ripe for reinterpretation. And the new, compact "P&P" starring Keira Knightley is not only good Jane Austen, but it's also great moviemaking.

With his first feature film, Brit TV director Joe Wright, 33, slams one out of the park. With screenwriter Deborah Moggach (Emma Thompson reportedly polished the script) he has jettisoned many scenes and plot threads to keep the running time to only two hours but has compensated by making this the most cinematic Austen adaptation ever, surpassing even Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility."

By some alchemy he has made a film that moves swiftly yet seems attuned to the slower rhythms of life in rural 19th-century England. His landscape has fascinating and amusing characters, and in Knightley he has found an ideal Austen heroine, a young woman whose combination of intelligence, beauty, stubbornness and high good humor is enchanting.

The film opens with an astounding visual passage as Roman Osin's camera drifts through the Bennet household, introducing us not only to the members of the family but also to the richly detailed environment in which the story will unfold.

Presided over by the hyperactive, fussbudgety Mrs. Bennet (a very funny Brenda Blethyn) while her scholarly husband (Donald Sutherland) keeps a low profile, the clan has four daughters of marrying age: Elizabeth (Knightley), Mary (Talulah Riley), Jane (Rosamund Pike) and Lydia (Jena Malone).

The Bennet girls are poor but pretty, and it is their mother's mission in life to see them all married to well-to-do gentlemen.

The arrival in their backwater of the rich bachelor Mr. Bingley (a sweetly bumbling Simon Woods) sets Mama into matrimonial overdrive.

But being auctioned off to the highest bidder is not a fate that the plucky Elizabeth looks forward to. Armed with a vicious sense of humor, she's capable of popping the balloon of any egoistic male who falls into her orbit. Take the case of Bingley's friend Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), a stuffy pill to whom our heroine takes an immediate dislike. "Do you dance, Mr. Darcy?" "Not if I can help it." He is, she concludes, a "proud, indifferent fellow" whom "I'm bound to loathe for all eternity."

They are made for each other.

"Pride & Prejudice" is about inspiring the pompous Darcy to let down his hair and Lizzie to recognize there's a romantic guy inside. To a lesser extent the same drama is being played out with her sisters, who one by one find the man they've been looking for, whether he's a sterling fellow or an utter cad.

Wright tells this story (one might argue that all of Austen's books are essentially the same story) with much good humor, a genuine sense of burgeoning romance and a polished cinematic technique that verges on the flabbergasting.

The film's centerpiece is a long, unbroken shot following the Bennet women as they arrive at Sir William's fancy dress ball. It must last five minutes, with the camera's attention being pulled this way and that, eavesdropping on conversations and spinning around the dance floor.

It's intoxicating but not pretentious. The film is so focused on character and story that we're halfway through this amazingly complex shot before we realize that we're witnessing a tour de force of moviemaking. And that's the approach Wright takes throughout the film, using brilliant visuals to illustrate his story while not calling attention to themselves.

As a comedy of manners, this "Pride" perfectly captures Austen's attitude, one of droll humor relieving a smoldering sense of outrage over a woman's lot in Georgian society. But it also works wonderfully as a romance about two people loathe to admit their mutual attraction.

In her short career, the 20-year-old Knightley has proven herself versatile with a charismatic screen presence. But this performance will force everybody to take her seriously. She perfectly captures the conflicts within this young woman - a love of independence and thoughtful pursuits at loggerheads with the tugging of her heart. This Elizabeth is simultaneously a giddy girl and wise-beyond-her-years woman, and in Knightley's hands those opposites don't seem at all contradictory.

The film's real surprise, though, is Macfadyen's Darcy. For some viewers the very thought of another actor attempting the role, which Colin Firth made his own in the TV version, amounts to sacrilege. Well, Macfadyen's Darcy is different from yet equal to Firth's.

At the core of the performance is the concept of Darcy as a deeply romantic man who hides his insecurity beneath a brittle exterior. When we first meet this fellow, he seems to have sat on a metal rod - his posture is stiff and graceless and he looks as if a smile would cause his jaw to drop off.

But as he begins to realize just what a find Elizabeth Bennet is, the character undergoes a slow, almost imperceptible change. Some of this is visible - he seems a hopeless geek in his first appearance, yet over time somehow becomes devastatingly handsome.

I'm not sure just how Macfadyen pulls this off...but then the entire film works in ways that cannot be pinned down. Moment for moment I derived more pure pleasure from this "Pride & Prejudice" than any other movie I've seen this year.

It is nearly perfect, with Keira Knightley cementing her stardom, Macfadyen announcing his intention to become one, and Joe Wright delivering the "Citizen Kane" of Jane Austen movies.

[Guest dewa130]

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, Carrie Rickey

November 11, 2005

"The Essential 'Pride & Prejudice'! Undeniably Sexy!"

Romance. Finance. Real estate. Jane Austen wrote about the big three. Is happiness in marriage entirely a matter of chance? Is a large income the best recipe for happiness? Is a man's home a window to his character? Ask Jane, a most reliable source - as pithy and endlessly renewable as Mario Puzo's "The Godfather."

Generally cited by Austen adherents (Janeites to you) as the favorite among her six novels, "Pride & Prejudice" is likewise filmland's preferred Austen property.

Joe Wright's fresh and spirited account of the modest young woman who melts an icy aristocrat to a puddle of love stars the exuberant Keira Knightley as Lizzie and the implacable Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. It is the 10th - 11th if you count "Bridget Jones's Diary" - adaptation of "P&P." Others include "Bride and Prejudice", the 2004 Bollywood rendition, and "A Latter-Day Comedy," the 2003 Mormon one.

Whatever number it is chronologically on the "P&P" parade, Wright's film ranks first in verve. Quite simply, it is the essential "P&P."

Most Janeites are partial to the 1995 BBC miniseries with the delightful Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. But although scrupulously faithful to the book, it is the opposite of cinematic.

The miniseries lumbered; this one gallops. Not always gracefully, but enthusiastically. Knightley's coltish Lizzie is the correct age and temperament, a girl-woman who, although intelligent, initially mistakes Darcy's diffidence for indifference.

"I could forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine!" Lizzie confides to her friend after meeting the imperious Darcy at a village ball where her mother hopes to make matches for her five marriageable daughters.

Deborah Moggach's lively script (reportedly doctored by Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar® for her adaptation of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility") paints Lizzie as a laugher and Darcy a glowerer.

How can they make conversation if he won't crack a smile at her witticisms? They literally dance around each other, Wright's camera hovering between them as the puzzled Darcy wonders whether Lizzie's curt curtsey is an expression of contempt or of social deference.

Wright and Moggach open the windows on "P&P" and let it breathe. Resisting the urge to frame the film as a series of tableaux, all the better to admire the Georgian decor and costumes, they keep camera, characters and plot moving at a clip, striding through spaces where others might saunter. The result is an earthier, more kinetic film, an action movie in which heroine and hero take turns being hunter and hunted.

I'm not sure whether Knightley is a great actress, but the screen's reigning tomboy is well-suited to the role of Lizzie. A cross between Audrey Hepburn and Winona Ryder, she radiates intelligence and beauty sabotaged by impulsiveness.

Likewise, Macfadyen is an ideal Darcy, a man too complex to reveal himself at first glance but who becomes more fascinating the more we see him.

Knightley's impulsiveness and Macfadyen's inhibition are a good fit, and as the movie proceeds, their mutual magnetism is undeniable and undeniably sexy.

Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn are excellent as Lizzie's parents, likewise Tom Hollander as her cousin, the too-reverent reverend.

DETROIT FREE PRESS, Terry Lawson

November 11, 2005

" Compelling, Real And Fresh!"

The era of Merchant Ivory came to an end around the time of "Pulp Fiction," when a new generation of art house moviegoers decided that a classic movie did not have to be set in some faraway past or place and that not everything had to be beautiful. Even the epics that came after, be they "The Lord of the Rings" or "The Passion of the Christ," required mud and blood to render them real.

Yet here is a new and classic version of Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice" and the only thing really new about it is the hip ampersand of the title.

It reminds us of everything that was fine about "A Room with a View" and "Howard's End," but it takes that style of classical filmmaking into the present while returning Austen's story to its actual past.

There is the clever, skittish, teenage Elizabeth, played by Keira Knightley, and her older beauty of a sister, Jane (Rosamund Pike). If the focus of the movie is Elizabeth, perhaps the most fascinating character in all of Austen's books and returned to her actual age here, is the demure Jane who, to her mother (Brenda Blethyn), has become a commodity that will ensure the family's future.

That's because Jane is eminently marriageable, a subject with which Mrs. Bennet has become increasingly and annoyingly obsessed because of a sexist bit of British inheritance law. If her husband, Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland), dies before any of the girls are betrothed, they will lose their cozy country home outside London to the nearest male heir. (Kind, wise Mr. Bennet is not overly concerned with dying and deals with his wife in a most sensible way: He locks himself away in his study.)

A fine bit of provenance presents itself with the arrival of Charles Bingley (Simon Woods) who attends a local ball while in the area looking for an estate of his own, and is immediately and rightfully smitten by Jane. With Bingley is his sister, Caroline (Kelly Reilly), and their friend Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen), whom Elizabeth finds intriguing until they are introduced. He reveals himself to be arrogant and aloof and when she overhears a remark of his that cuts her deeply, she forms an opinion of him that will complicate all that is to come.

Girls of all ages should have much fun with this "Pride & Prejudice," and so will boys. It's a dirty little secret that any male who reads Jane Austen is as quickly reeled in by the smart storytelling and astute observations - and that they very often fall in love with a character or two.

Knightley plays Elizabeth as a clever, verbally athletic tomboy who has no idea how sexy she is. She doesn't climb trees. She climbs under your skin, and into your head, and in this version we understand why Darcy seems so resistant to her obvious wonderfulness. He's never seen anything like her.

Jane is often portrayed as an elegant and fragile teacup, but Pike fills her up with strong stuff. As for women who think there could never be another Darcy but Colin Firth, who starred in the 1995 BBC miniseries, keep an open mind and prepare to have it altered. Macfadyen's Darcy does not keep his feelings close to his chest; he hides them away so deep there is real danger neither he nor Elizabeth can ever find them.

It's all compelling, real and fresh.

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Ruthe Stein

November 11, 2005

"!

Deliriously Charming, And Sublimely Entertaining!"

Did metrosexuals inhabit 18th century England? The deliriously charming new adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice" raises such a possibility, an illustration of how fresh the film seems while staying true to Jane Austen. It takes a distinctly modern approach in depicting young women on the prowl for a mate - a PG-rated "Sex and the Shires."

The suspected metrosexual reveals his inclination while accompanying the Bennet sisters to an emporium. Perusing a notions counter with a practiced eye, he brags of his "very good taste in ribbons."

This does not necessarily make him good husband material for the five unwed siblings. It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in Austen's universe, that a man's character counts above all else.

Lizzie (Keira Knightley), the second-oldest and the one with the most spunk, is painfully slow to discover Austen's truism. The eureka moment when it sinks in, played to the hilt by an animated Knightley, is a revelation no matter how often you've experienced it before on the page or screen.

When a novel already has been dramatized six times - most memorably in the 1940 Hollywood movie and '95 British miniseries - the obvious question is do we need another version. Absolutely, when it's as creatively reimagined and sublimely entertaining as the new "Pride & Prejudice." The title, replacing the author's "and" with an ampersand, signals its jaunty approach.

For the uninitiated, I can't imagine a better introduction to this classic, which encapsulates in the Bennet family the jockeying for money and position, primarily through marriage, among a certain stratum of 18th century English society. The assorted plots and subplots as the girls hook up with Mr. Rights who go wrong and vice versa make most romantic comedies - for that's what "Pride & Prejudice" is once you get beyond the costumes and the formality with which people address one another - look anemic. Such an abundance of story and backstory presents a convincing argument for adapting more literary masterpieces. The Ephron sisters can't hold a candle to the Brontês.

Director Joe Wright, making a spectacular feature film debut after years toiling in British television, sets the tempo in his first big scene - a party thrown by a wealthy bachelor who's taken a place in the country near the Bennets. A line dance where the girls wait their turn to be twirled around has the sweep of Vincente Minnelli's celebrated ball sequence in "Madame Bovary." Wright's camera swoops up to the rafters to show the ceiling height and give a sense of the hall's sheer size, then homes in on a close-up of Lizzie partnering with the host's best friend, the enigmatic Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen).

... With Knightley at her liveliest - her Lizzie appears to jump for joy while standing still and shows delight in simple things like the smell of fresh herbs - the contrast between the two couldn't be starker. This works in the movie's favor by forcing the audience to ask the same question Lizzie is asking - is this really the guy for her?

Wright wisely has cast young actors as the single set. This is a young person's story. Austen completed a first draft when she was 21, making Lizzie her age and Darcy a mere seven years older. The notion of courting in your 40s, so 21st century, wouldn't make sense in a time when people were ancient, if not dead, by then.

Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn contrive to steal a few scenes from their junior co-stars. Seemingly channeling Spring Byington, Blethyn plays Mrs. Bennet as always in a dither, propelled by relentless worry about her daughters' marital prospects. By contrast, Sutherland's Mr. Bennet is the personification of cool attempting to prevent them from rushing into ill-advised matches. He controls the household, rarely raising his voice.

All those years trying to make TV miniseries look expensive on limited budgets have paid off for Wright. "Pride & Prejudice" has a lush look. It could be a travelogue for the English countryside and those fabulous mansions you now need an admission ticket to peek inside. Sink down into your seat and enmesh yourself in the richness before you, much as you would with a good book.

[Guest dewa130]

P&P REVIEW

THE WASHINGTON POST, Stephen Hunter

November 11, 2005

"Keira Knightley Is A Vast Force Of Nature! She Just Rules The Screen!"

The hate that dare not speak its name is, of course, love. This is an ancient principle in romantic comedy or romantic romance - it's summed up in the phrase applied by others when a man and woman begin their relationship by spitting venom at each other: "Just get a room!" - and it seems to derive mostly from Jane Austen's fabled "Pride and Prejudice," in which Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy begin as fiery opponents and end up as married lovers.

It's not quite the taming of a shrew, because in Austen's worldview, leading ladies of beauty and wit weren't shrews and never had to be tamed, but merely loved and respected, and good things would follow. That's the main trajectory of "Pride," although digressions include the fate of her four sisters, her obnoxious mother, her passive, amused father, various other suitors, and the whole of English rural society as the 18th century turned into the new and modern 19th. This was a social world that seemed based on a kind of distaff agriculture: One sustained one's expensive estate by breeding progeny in large number, then marrying them off to rich people.

The story is given an interesting, even diverting treatment in a new film version, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth and Matthew Macfadyen as the initially dour, snotty Mr. Darcy.

Is it as good as the superb BBC miniseries of 1995 starring Jennifer Ehle as Lizzy and Colin Firth as Darcy? How the hell would I know? Do you think I watched it? Get serious. Life's way too short for five hours in front of the tube watching ponces and twits flounce and scrape and talk tony Brit. However, many learned people say it is not as good, and that would therefore become my official position.

Still, I have to say, for a movie about ponces and twits flouncing and scraping and talking tony Brit, this version of "Pride & Prejudice" is pretty entertaining. One thing is clear from the very start, when we glimpse Lizzy wandering in from the fields to the manse amid a fleet of filthy, clucking, pecking, scabby chickens - universal symbol for rural dissolution: This ain't your grandma's "Pride & Prejudice." It's not that Austen's great novel has been modernized (that was tried, most notably in "Bridget Jones's Diary," in which Colin Firth, again, played the Darcyesque character). Rather, it's been merged with another tradition in costume filmmaking, which gives it a kind of dissonance that will be felt most painfully by Austen's many admirers: Her world has been masculinized. Why, it's as if director Wright made this film off the jolt of inspiration he received from watching Tony Richardson's fabulous, bawdy, rambunctious "Tom Jones," of 1963.

Films derived from Austen are pure Regency, set in that safe if rigid age, 1811 to 1820, even if the book itself was written in 1796 and 1797. The disconnect is perhaps relevant; the book was published in 1813, and therefore took on a Regency cast; the movie is set in 1797 and is full of Georgian energy. Regency works tend to emphasize social control, witty dialogue, parlor maneuvers, trysts, alliances, flirtations, and are set in a decorous indoor world, with the rigidity of the homes - with their multitude of tastefully appointed rooms - standing for the rigidity of society. Georgian pieces, by contrast, are full of the pleasures of the flesh, both eating and rubbing. ("Tom Jones" was set in the bawdy, rambunctious 1740s.) Regardless, Austen's themes usually involve some plucky middle-class jeune fille getting the best of some snarky upper-class snot - but not in a bad way. Austen wasn't a revolutionary: She didn't want to bring the whole thing down and send the wig-wearers in tumbrels to Madame Guillotine, but merely open up the accessways to security and respect a degree or two.

Wright's 1797 therefore is a boisterous, loud, dance-mad, crowded kind of place, full of ruddy-faced peasants, dirt and hay (everywhere), lots of animals waiting to be eaten. It's not a very polite world. The whole thing feels like it was art-directed by Brueghel on holiday. No minuets or waltzes here, but spirited, flashy, almost cloglike dances by firelight. You see this in the earthy, less than genteel performances offered by Brenda Blethyn and a shaggy, bewhiskered Donald Sutherland as Bennets mere et pere. You see it also in the gamboling tribe of young girls, the constant bickering as voices crowd out voices.

Oh, it'll make purists insane, as will the insistence on playing most of the scenes outdoors as opposed to in candle-lit rooms amid silk damask and vellum books. But in a sense it's necessary: Knightley is too vast a force of nature to be contained by tiny rooms.

Lord God, can this little gal take control of a scene, dominate a movie, project to the last seat, radiate power and personality unto the rafters. For this movie really is far more about Knightley than it is about Austen.

The young actress hit the mainstream in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"; she won over the highbrows with "Bend It Like Beckham" and the lowbrows with "King Arthur" (in the last as a pagan sprite who reminded me of Tinker Bell with a battle-axe). In the recent "Domino," carrying a sawed-off 12-gauge pumper, she took over the NRA crowd. This new one will earn her the loyalty of all the tea-drinkers. She just rules the screen, takes it over with a jut-jaw and eyes beaming with dark fire.

It's a great performance, better than Reese Witherspoon's in "Vanity Fair," because her prideful, prejudiced Lizzy Bennet seems so smart. (Greer Garson, usually called "Miss Greer Garson," then 36, played the part of Miss Bennet opposite Laurence Olivier in the last big-screen version of "P&P," made in 1940 by MGM and said to be dreadful!) I love the way Knightley's eyes light with furious intelligence when she cuts the pompous standoffish Darcy a new something or other: "You could not make me happy and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so."

Macfadyen's Darcy grows on you; at first he seems not merely boorish and tongue-tied but stupid. As Austen's machinations play out and his ultimate goodness becomes evident, the whole performance warms up to the point where he's actually likable.

More important, you feel the chemistry between them growing.

Kids, get a room!

REVIEW

SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE, David Elliott

November 11, 2005

"!Fall Into The Thrall Of A Master Served Beautifully."

Jane Austen's universe is well-served in delightful "Pride & Prejudice."

Jane Austen movies keep coming, and finally we have one to put right up next to 1995's great "Persuasion" (though much female opinion, which should probably rule, prefers 1995's "Sense and Sensibility").

The new delight is Joe Wright's lovably inhabited "Pride & Prejudice."

For a man who suffered dyslexia and was a bad student, Wright has done splendidly right by Austen, with help from adapter Deborah Moggach. The 1940 MGM version of "P&P," spruced by no less than Aldous Huxley, cannot be bested for ensemble wit and "condescension" (the snob reflexes, incarnated by Laurence Olivier as Darcy).

Wright has placed Austen's tale more securely in its nest, the fine but disheveled, unpretentious country house of Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) and his wife (blithery Brenda Blethyn). Their five daughters are dearies all, with a couple in danger of aging past being impeccably marriageable.

Senior, blond and most fair, Jane (Rosamund Pike) glides graciously into view of the rich, charming and rather silly Bingley (Simon Woods). He is more than interested, but in his gorge rises condescension, for the Bennets aren't rich.

Younger sisters plot, giggle and snap funny comments. Mrs. Bennet plots, flutters and frets, her bosoms like harbors in a storm. Mr. Bennet is wearily distracted. Sutherland, with rather 18th-century village hair, is perfection as a man who'd rather garden and farm, easily put out, but also easily amused by the girls he adores.

The most dartingly bright daughter is Elizabeth, "Lizzie," who wants to marry on her own, proud, non-patronized terms. She has a fox tongue and a rascal spark in her eyes. When Keira Knightley squinches her nose while unfolding a marvelous grin, she makes the movie her own and makes her fate our deepest care...

The apple, at first the sour apple, of Lizzie's eye is Darcy, the insanely rich pillar of condescension, "a long way from Grosvenor Square." At first, Matthew Macfadyen seems a very dry stick (oh, for a young Leslie Howard), but he grows on you; his crust fronts shyness and a romantic heart, and attraction to Lizzie is his liberation.

Nobody could cat-and-mouse new lovers like Austen, squeezing every delightful drop of worry and reward. The episodic dance of Darcy and Lizzie is the story's turning center, the side dancers including Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Judi Dench, a gargoyle of crust, but not having half so much fun as Edna May Oliver in 1940).

Wright often uses actual dances, elaborations of early 19th-century lust and social politics. There must also be stiff, posed moments in Austen films, so that condescension can properly crystallize forms of behavior, but Wright has a fluid camera when he needs it, as when Lizzie almost swoons before a marble bust of Darcy.

Austen drama is conservative, about testing, stretching but then filling the limits of a given order. Bound to necessary graces, characters speak almost by dictation, having practiced the forms much like the sitting room "pianoforte"

(Lizzie falls short there and is embarrassed). But emotion is always flowing, refining the forms.

The film is profoundly accomplished, entrenched in its period, timed with supple rhythms, cast near to perfection. You may go to condescend - oh, Austen again, must we? - but fall into the thrall of a master served beautifully.

MORE REVIEW ;

THE BOSTON GLOBE, Wesley Morris

November 11, 2005

"!A Jaunty Romantic Comedy That Leaves Us As Incandescently Happy As Its Characters! Exhilaratingly Made!"

Everyone in the bouncy and whooshing new version of "Pride & Prejudice" appears to be having a great time. Everybody except Mr. Darcy. But he'll come around. Jane Austen's novel has been rejiggered into a jaunty romantic comedy that leaves us as incandescently happy as its characters.

That sort of excitement is what Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and her sisters dream of. Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) just wants her five girls married off to men who can support the hell out of them. Love is a luxury the family can't afford. But the Bennet girls, for the most part, are idealists in spite of their mother. They must get it from their taciturn and protective father, played by the sterling Donald Sutherland in his least evil part in years. The girls take their cues from him while running from their breathless, batty mum.

Rosamund Pike, as Jane, the eldest, fairest Bennet daughter, and Simon Woods, as Mr. Bingley, the unassumingly rich, magnificently carrot-topped whippersnapper who falls for her, could be two besotted freshmen at any college. They leave each other and the movie in a tizzy. Their crush, of course, is complicated by the matters of caste and propriety that threaten to break them up.

The spirit of this version feels fresher and more youthful than previous editions. The youngest Bennets, Kitty (Carey Mulligan) and Lydia (Jena Malone), are more cuckoo than ever. Malone is particularly hilarious as the most Southern-sounding Bennet and the one least likely to remain a virgin.

Chastity is, needless to say, the norm. (The kiss apparently hasn't yet been invented, but nuzzling noses is very hot.) But a sense of sex permeates the decorous times. Giddy with lust, Kitty and Lydia ricochet around the sets like pinballs. (I do wish there were more of Talulah Riley's prim and plain Mary, the philosophical heart of the book.)

Elizabeth, of course, is the most idealistic of all the Bennet girls. Famously, she meets her match in the humorless aristocrat Darcy, whom Matthew Macfadyen plays with an inviting blend of self-consciousness, snobbery, and righteous exasperation. (He steps nicely out of the long shadow of the universe's most famous Darcy, Colin Firth, who played the role in a 1995 BBC version, while bringing with him a whiff of John Cusack. In fact, a sequence toward the end could come out of a climactic scene from "Say Anything.")

On hand to torment Elizabeth is the supercilious Lady Catherine, Darcy's aunt. The role falls to Judi Dench, whose skin is tight and tanned and whose hair has been piled up and swept back into a great gray mane that makes her look so entertainingly ferocious she could be the MGM lion.

Austen's story is timeless and masterfully engineered, but it isn't foolproof. Elizabeth and Darcy's animosity must be real, but not so intense that the eventual convergence of their feelings leaves you cold. Knightley and Macfadyen manage these hairpin turns of perception like stock-car champions. After he rebuffs her invitation to dance at a ball and then insults her - unaware that she's well within earshot - Elizabeth writes him off as a snob. Actually, the film has her do a great deal more than what I recall in Austen's book. She politely tells him off, then saunters away, exhaling in a small triumph of confidence.

A masterpiece of choreography, that ball kicks the picture into an exuberant high gear that lasts for the rest of the film. Using Deborah Moggach's sharp and economic adaptation as a road map, director Joe Wright is as much a traffic cop in this sequence as he is a gleaner of his characters' states of mind. Elsewhere, Austen's book feels liberated from the page instead of having been dragged from it, as has been the case with other adaptations. (That enjoyable if academic version of "Mansfield Park" from 1999 comes to mind.)

This "Pride & Prejudice" is not the ultra-faithful and comprehensive emotional experience that the beloved BBC adaptation was (known throughout the world as the "Colin Firth one," and featuring the luminous Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth). Wright's is certainly the most exhilaratingly made. He and his exceptional crew know their Robert Altman. The hand-held camerawork is catch as catch can with the action. Many shots seem to be happening on the fly (as with Altman, that's a grand illusion: the framing is impeccable), and some conversations become an aural latticework.

Even better is how Wright seems to have encouraged his cast to watch everyone and everything, using their faces to enrich the written story. That seems like acting 101, but even the extras seem in on the gawking here. The movie's first half is worth seeing a second or third time just to catch what all the major cast members are doing with their faces and where they put their eyes.

In this regard, no one in "Pride & Prejudice" is busier than Knightley. Several scrapbooks full of Kodak moments could be filled with her gallery of rolled eyes, devilish grins, and angrily furrowed brows. Knightley boldly creates Elizabeth's most modern-seeming incarnation. She's a coltish tomboy, but she hasn't given up on girlishness. She just refuses to entertain Dream House Barbie aspirations, which has been true of the character since Austen came up with her in 1813. The actress just brings out more of her edge.

With that fearsomely square jaw of hers, Knightley will never be mistaken for a straight-up glamour puss. (In my dreams, she'd have Elizabeth Bennet smoking in the girls' room.) But those of us who put ourselves through "King Arthur" and "Domino" looking for signs of a great actress can leave "Pride & Prejudice" ecstatic. We finally get what we paid for.

[Guest dewa130]

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CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Roger Ebert

November 11, 2005

"!One Of The Most Delightful And Heartwarming Adaptations Made From Austen Or Anybody Else."

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Everybody knows the first sentence of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." But the chapter ends with a truth equally acknowledged about Mrs. Bennet, who has five daughters in want of husbands: "The business of her life was to get her daughters married."

Romance seems so urgent and delightful in Austen because marriage is a business, and her characters cannot help treating it as a pleasure. "Pride and Prejudice" is the best of her novels because its romance involves two people who were born to be in love, and care not about business, pleasure, or each other. It is frustrating enough when one person refuses to fall in love, but when both refuse, we cannot rest until they kiss.

Of course all depends on who the people are. When Dorothea marries the Rev. Casaubon in Eliot's "Middlemarch", it is a tragedy. She marries out of consideration and respect, which is all wrong; she should have married for money, always remembering that where money is, love often follows, since there is so much time for it. The crucial information about Mr. Bingley, the new neighbor of the Bennet family, is that he "has" an income of four or five thousand pounds a year. One never earns an income in these stories, one has it, and Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) has her sights on it.

Her candidate for Mr. Bingley's hand is her eldest daughter, Jane; it is orderly to marry the girls off in sequence, avoiding the impression that an older one has been passed over. There is a dance, to which Bingley brings his friend Darcy. Jane and Bingley immediately fall in love, to get them out of the way of Darcy and Elizabeth, who is the second Bennet daughter. These two immediately dislike each other. Darcy is overheard telling his friend Bingley that Elizabeth is "tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me." The person who overhears him is Elizabeth, who decides she will "loathe him for all eternity." She is advised within the family circle to count her blessings: "If he liked you, you'd have to talk to him."

These are the opening moves in Joe Wright's new film "Pride & Prejudice," one of the most delightful and heartwarming adaptations made from Austen or anybody else. Much of the delight and most of the heart comes from Keira Knightley, who plays Elizabeth as a girl glowing in the first light of perfection. She is beautiful, she has opinions, she is kind but can be unforgiving. "They are all silly and ignorant like other girls," says her father in the novel, "but Lizzie has something more of quickness than her sisters."

Knightley's performance is so light and yet fierce that she makes the story almost realistic; this is not a well-mannered "Masterpiece Theatre" but a film where strong-willed young people enter life with their minds at war with their hearts. The movie is more robust than most period romances; it is set earlier than usual, in the late 1700s, a period more down to earth than the early Victorian years. The young ladies don't look quite so much like illustrations for Vanity Fair, and there is mud around their hems when they come back from a walk. It is a time of rural realities: When Mrs. Bennet sends a daughter to visit Netherfield Park, the country residence of Mr. Bingley, she sends her on horseback, knowing it will rain, and she will have to spend the night.

The plot by this point has grown complicated. It is a truth universally acknowledged by novelists that before two people can fall in love with each other, they must first seem determined to make the wrong marriage with someone else. It goes without saying that Lizzie fell in love with young Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) the moment she saw him, but her pride has been wounded. She tells Jane: "I might more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine."

The stakes grow higher. She is told by the dashing officer Wickham (Rupert Friend) that Darcy, his childhood friend, cheated him of a living that he deserved. And she believes that Darcy is responsible for having spirited Bingley off to London to keep him out of the hands of her sister Jane. Lizzie even begins to think she may be in love with Wickham. Certainly she is not in love with the Rev. Collins (Tom Hollander), who has a handsome living and would be Mrs. Bennet's choice for a match. When Collins proposes, the mother is in ecstasy, but Lizzie declines, and is supported by her father (Donald Sutherland), a man whose love for his girls outweighs his wife’s financial planning.

All of these characters meet and circle each other at a ball in the village Assembly Hall, and the camera circles them. The sequence feels like one unbroken shot, and has the same elegance as Visconti's long single take as he follows the prince through the ballrooms in "The Leopard." We see the characters interacting, we see Lizzie avoiding Collins and enticing Darcy, we understand the politics of these romances, and we are swept up in the intoxication of the dance. In a later scene as Lizzie and Darcy dance together everyone else somehow vanishes (in their eyes, certainly), and they are left alone within the love they feel.

But a lot must happen before the happy ending, and I particularly admired a scene in the rain where Darcy and Lizzie have an angry argument. This argument serves two purposes: It clears up misunderstandings, and it allows both characters to see each other as the true and brave people they really are. It is not enough for them to love each other; they must also love the goodness in each other, and that is where the story's true emotion lies.

The movie is well cast from top to bottom; like many British films, it benefits from the genius of its supporting players. Judi Dench brings merciless truth-telling to her role as a society arbiter; Sutherland is deeply amusing as a man who lives surrounded by women and considers it a blessing and a fate, and as his wife Blethyn finds a balance between her character's mercenary and loving sides. She may seem unforgivably obsessed with money, but better to be obsessed with money now than with poverty hereafter.

When Lizzie and Darcy finally accept each other in "Pride & Prejudice," I felt an almost unreasonable happiness. Why was that? I am impervious to romance in most films, seeing it as a manifestation of box office requirements. Here is it different, because Darcy and Elizabeth are good and decent people who would rather do the right thing than convenience themselves. Anyone who will sacrifice their own happiness for higher considerations deserves to be happy. When they realize that about each other their hearts leap, and, reader, so did mine.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE REVIEW

USA TODAY, Claudia Puig

November 11, 2005

"4 STAR! Supremely Entertaining!

Bewitches The Viewer Completely And Incandescently With An Exquisite Blend Of Emotion And Wit."

Who would have guessed that the world needed another remake of "Pride and Prejudice"? Yet despite multiple previous incarnations and the cries of protest from diehard Colin Firth fans, this "Pride & Prejudice" is a stellar adaptation, bewitching the viewer completely and incandescently with an exquisite blend of emotion and wit.

Director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach extract the essence of Austen's clever dialogue, fashioning a supremely entertaining saga of amorous adventures.

What emerges on screen feels contemporary while preserving the nature of the character study. "Pride & Prejudice's" transcendent love story will captivate viewers - even diehard Austenites.

Wry, beguiling and lushly romantic, the film is gorgeously shot, with some of England's most dazzling estates doubling for the novel's Pemberley and Netherfield Park manses.

The sumptuous musical score intensifies the film's vitality.

Keira Knightley's spirited Lizzie Bennet is a delight, but the movie belongs to dark-haired, blue-eyed Matthew Macfadyen, who plays Mr. Darcy, one of literature's great romantic heroes.

Taking on a role that was powerfully played by Laurence Olivier in 1940 and indelibly re-enacted by Firth a decade ago had to be daunting. But Macfadyen manages to make us swoon with his more boyish, vulnerable version of Darcy. Unlike Firth's supremely confident portrayal, Macfadyen seems endearingly awkward. And Knightley and Macfadyen have chemistry.

Donald Sutherland as the remote and sardonic Mr. Bennet and Brenda Blethyn as the nattering, marriage-obsessed Mrs. Bennet are both superb as the beleaguered parents of five daughters.

Knightley imbues Austen's beloved heroine with just the right blend of humor, intensity and intelligence. Rosamund Pike, who plays her gentle sister Jane, is also winning. Elizabeth and Jane fall for wealthy, handsome men (Darcy and Mr. Bingley), but the path of true love is anything but smooth.

Judi Dench is aptly imperious as Lady Catherine de Bourg, the benefactress of the Bennets' cousin, Mr. Collins, and an impediment to Lizzie's liaison with Darcy. One of the movie's happiest surprises is Tom Hollander as Collins, a groveling sycophant to Lady Catherine and hilarious in his bungling attempts to woo Lizzie.

This production of "Pride & Prejudice" avoids any suggestion of pretension or stodginess. Rather, it's subtly sexy.

The climactic scene in which a disheveled Macfadyen emerges from the misty dawn, desperately seeking Lizzie, is rich with sexual yearning.

A PG romance rarely feels this satisfying.

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THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Carina Chocano

November 11, 2005

"Exhilarating. With Outstanding Performances, 'Pride & Prejudice' Is A Joy From Start To Finish."

Does the thought of Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet give you pause? Jane Austen's smartest, toughest and most independent-minded heroine was last portrayed by Jennifer Ehle in the excellent 1995 BBC miniseries, the one that established Colin Firth as the Mr. Darcy to end all Mr. Darcys. There, Lizzie's intelligence was made to carefully hack its way through pin curls and silly Regency frippery like a machete-wielding Amazon explorer. But in Joe Wright's exhilarating new version, the first feature film adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice" in 65 years, Lizzie has been liberated from period fashion victim-hood, scruffed up a little, and let loose on the wily, windy moors. So what if the style seems a touch anachronistic -- it's close enough to the spirit and the letter of the novel, and makes up for the differences in energy and fun.

In wash-and-dry hair and sacklike brown dresses that highlight clavicles you could slice cake with, Knightley's beauty has been gamely toned down to bring Lizzie to life as a sharp, playful colt with a well-developed sense of the absurd. It would be tempting to call her a modern heroine if modern heroines weren't such vapid saps. Knightley does much better than that: She animates Lizzie's laserlike wit without dampening the righteous frustration from which it springs. Like all great satirists, Austen knew to couch her barbs in humor, and Knightley's vibrant performance eloquently expresses the ignominious, but often funny, position Lizzie and her four sisters have been placed in by fate, gender and circumstance.

Lizzie is the second of five sisters, all of them unmarried, a fact that causes her honking goose of a mother (wonderfully played by Brenda Blethyn in various states of giddy agitation and distress) no end of worry. The daughters of a minor member of the aristocracy whose house and fortune will go to a loathsome, toadying cousin when Mr. Bennet dies, the girls are at the mercy of whoever chooses to marry them. But still they chafe at the idea of marrying for anything but love, and the story catches them at the precise moment when their futures are starting to come down to a reckless gamble. How their lives turn out will depend on a careful calibration of decorum, parental engineering and luck. It's an impossible situation for a smart, sensitive person to find herself in, and Lizzie feels it acutely -- especially after the sweet but suggestible Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods), who has fallen in love with her sister Jane (Rosamund Pike), allows himself to be led away by the imperious Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen).

The story has been compressed for time, as well as considerably sped up and aired out, thanks to Wright's dynamic direction and Roman Osin's voracious and kinetic photography. Having wonderfully captured the Bennets' simple life in the country, and the excitement at the Bingleys' arrival, the camera begins constantly placing Lizzie on the edge of some dramatic cliff, or in some riotous storm or on some windswept hill or another, dramatizing the tempestuous extremes of her emotions in pure, Romantic style.

Hit with the triple blow of seeing her beloved sister jilted by Mr. Bingley, her best friend Charlotte (Claudie Blakley) resignedly married to the dread cousin Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander) -- whose alarming earlier breakfast proposal to Lizzie seemed even to make the ham on the table cringe and blush " and the sudden departure of the handsome officer Mr. Wickham (Rupert Friend), Lizzie is tipped into melancholy. It's in this frame of mind she finds herself when, while visiting Charlotte, she once again meets Mr. Darcy, who stuns her with a marriage proposal that's part ardent declaration of love, part ad hominem attack on her family. (An even "greater man" than Mr. Bingley " his income is double " Mr. Darcy considers the Bennet girls beneath him and his friend.) Lizzie rejects him, only to come to understand him and discover the truth about Mr. Wickham after it's too late. When by chance she tours Mr. Darcy's awe-inspiring estate Pemberley Hall with her aunt and uncle, she feels the full effect of her refusal. Even the down-to-earth Lizzie can't help but feel the sting of a near-miss with a great fortune.

Macfadyen's Mr. Darcy broods and stews more fiercely than ever and is occasionally reduced to muteness as he struggles with his love for Lizzie, which at first he tries to ignore for the sake of his rank. Notably missing from Deborah Moggach's polished adaptation is the wet shirt scene that launched a thousand Bridget Jones rhapsodies, but Macfadyen's Mr. Darcy has a generally lugubrious air, not to mention his propensity for getting caught in the rain. He's sexy in a forlorn, wild-haired way, more Byronic hero than peer gone wild, and his and Knightley's near-kisses are more heavily charged than all the nudity-for-art's-sake in the world.

In one notable deviation from the novel, Mr. Bennet's (Donald Sutherland) somewhat contemptible neglect of his daughters' situation has been softened here into a sort of benign distraction, which undercuts the tragedy of Lizzie's younger sister Lydia's (Jena Malone) birdbrained elopement with the rapacious Mr. Wickham. But his doting relationship with Lizzie is a pure pleasure to watch. With outstanding performances, including a turn by Judi Dench as the evil Lady Catherine de Bourg, "Pride & Prejudice" is a joy from start to finish. If this one doesn't inspire a rush on bookstores, nothing will.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Stephen Holden

November 11, 2005

"Makes you believe in true love, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. Satisfyingly rich. The sumptuous new screen adaptation has so much to recommend it."

The sumptuous new screen adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" has so much to recommend it that it seems almost churlish to point out that its plucky, clever heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, played by Keira Knightley, is not exactly the creature described in the 1813 novel.

The second of five well-brought-up but impecunious Bennet sisters, whose fluttery mother (Brenda Blethyn) desperately schemes to marry them off to men of means, Elizabeth prevails in the novel through her wit and honesty, not through stunning physical beauty. Among the five, the belle of the ball is Elizabeth's older sister, Jane (Rosamund Pike), who is as demure and private as Elizabeth is outspoken and opinionated.

But because Ms. Knightley is, in a word, a knockout, the balance has shifted. When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her. Her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine Elizabeth would be anyone's second choice.

Once you've accepted this critical adjustment made by Joe Wright, a British television director in his feature film debut, "Pride & Prejudice" gathers you up on its white horse and gallops off into the sunset. Along the way, it serves a continuing banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. In its final minutes, it makes you believe in true love, the union of soul mates, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. For one misty-eyed moment, order reigns in the universe.

If the depth and complexity of the movie can't match those of the five-hour British mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth that was shown on A&E a decade ago, how could they, given the time constraints of a feature film (128 minutes, in this case)? But in a little more than two hours, Mr. Wright and the screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, have created as satisfyingly rich and robust a fusion of romance, historical detail and genial social satire as the time allows.

Matthew Macfadyen finds a human dimension in the taciturn landowner Fitzwilliam Darcy that was missing in earlier, more conventionally heroic portrayals. Mr. Firth might have been far more dashing, but Mr. Macfadyen's portrayal of the character as a shy, awkward suitor whose seeming arrogance camouflages insecurity and deep sensitivity is more realistic. Isolated by his wealth, ethical high-mindedness and fierce critical intelligence, Mr. Darcy is as stubborn in his idealism as Elizabeth is in hers. The disparity between his diffidence and her forthrightness makes the lovers' failure to connect more than a delaying tactic to keep the story churning forward; it's a touching tale of misread signals.

The movie unfolds as a sweeping ensemble piece in which many of the characters outside the lovers' orbit are seen through a Dickensian comic lens. Ms. Blethyn's mother is a dithery, squawking hysteric; Donald Sutherland's father a shaggy, long-suffering curmudgeon with a soft heart; and the Bennet sisters, except for Elizabeth and Jane, a gaggle of pretentious flibbertigibbets. Jena Malone, as the saucy, boy-crazy youngest daughter, Lydia, offers an amusing caricature of teenage idiocy and entitlement.

William Collins (Tom Hollander), the priggish, self-satisfied clergyman Elizabeth rejects, to her mother's horror, is mocked for his short stature as well as his puffed-up airs. Late in the movie, Dame Judi Dench storms onto the screen as Mr. Darcy's imperious aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourg, to offer a tutorial on British snobbery. Elocution curdled with contempt and kept on ice; upwardly tilted facial posturing with narrowing eyes; and the deployment of artful humiliation, as when Lady Catherine coerces Elizabeth into playing the piano (very badly): all are laid out to be studied by mean-spirited future grandes dames on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the film's most intoxicating scenes, the camera plunges into the thick of the crowded balls attended with delirious anticipation by the Bennet sisters and moves with the dancers as they carry on breathless, broken conversations while whirling past one another. That mood of voluptuous excitement, barely contained, is augmented by Dario Marianelli's score, which takes the sound and style of late 18th- and early 19th-century piano music in increasingly romantic directions.

The movie skillfully uses visuals to comment on economic and class divisions. The humble Bennet estate, in which farm animals roam outside the house, is contrasted with some of the world's most gorgeous palaces and formal gardens, all filmed with a Realtor's drooling eye. Burghley House, a resplendent mid-16th-century palace in Lincolnshire, doubles as Lady Catherine's home, Rosings. At Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the largest private country house in England, which substitutes for Mr. Darcy's home, Pemberley, the movie pauses to make a quick tour of a sculpture gallery.

For all its romantic gloss and finery, the film still reflects Austen's keen scrutiny of social mobility and the Darwinian struggle of the hungriest to advance by wielding whatever leverage is at hand. This is a world in which, for a woman, an advantageous marriage made at an early age is tantamount to safety from the jungle.

As the tide of feminism that crested two decades ago recedes and the old advance-and-retreat games of courtship return, "Pride & Prejudice" speaks wistfully to the moment. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are tantalizing early prototypes for a Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy ideal of lovers as brainy, passionate sparring partners. That the world teems with fantasies of Mr. Darcy and his ilk there is no doubt. How many of his type are to be found outside the pages of a novel, however, is another matter.

[Guest Crystaln]

oh man this version sucked big time compare to colin firth version, yeah they she is more beautiful than the other actress but the whole movie was just so lacking of smth.. and ofcourse the man actor of the old version was more cool.

[b0ra]

I remember watching it. It was fantastic!

I even dled the british miniseries version with Colin Firth.

[Guest sw33tlyd]

i love this movie!!! when does it come out on DVD???? I think kiera knightley did a great job, and didn't it say in the book that elizabeth is also beautiful? Second to her sister? I like the movie way better then the book, it cut out a lot of nonsense like her mother yabbering all the time. Can't stand that.