Film Review: "Pride And Prejudice"
Nov. 29th, 2005 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flowrs4opheliaThis is something that will appear very rarely from me in this journal: a review for a movie. I wrote this in my regular journal and figured it might as well go here as well.
I think all of you hopeless romantics would really love P&P. And by the way - Keira Knightley. Tonks. Please? Now that I see she really can act, I am very attached to the idea of her as Tonks. She's not even necessarily too glamorous or anything; Keira is actually kind of flat-chested and in real life very tomboyish. I think she'd be great.
The point being: the best example of that in this movie is a scene in the rain between Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden. In all previous scenes they act very civilized toward each other no matter what their true feelings toward each other are, always bowing and being all "I trust you are well, Miss Bennet?" and etc, and suddenly they're standing outside looking like wet animals and come out with their real feelings in a not at all polite or civilized confrontation. And it's sexy. They're angry and frustrated at each other and even after she expresses complete loathing for him they stand there very close glaring at each other and you think for a moment that they're going to kiss. But they don't, which of course is a lot more enticing even than a really hot scene of two soaking wet people making out. Mansfield Park, probably the worst Austen adaptation, tried to make the Jane Austen story more flirtacious and sexy and even had a scene of nudity in it. This one achieves that much better without actually making a movie with a higher rating than PG. It feels more modern than the other Austen movies and the romance seems very natural and timeless.
All of the performances are so good. Donald Sutherland plays a father who you want to be your father. Knightley is great in scenes of more intense emotion, otherwise drifting through the movie cool-headed and sarcastic among her mother who is always a bundle of nerves and her younger sisters who are always either raucously laughing or crying. Jena Malone of them in particular is extremely annoying, which I suppose she's supposed to be. It was nice at least to see her in another role than her typical Girlfriend Of The Dark Misunderstood Kid. And MacFayden is great at making us dislike him at first and adore him later, and he is so amazingly good in the climactic romance scene at the end that his lines don't even seem a bit cheesy.
And the cinematography! This movie looked so beautiful. There were some certain shots that were so surreal and breathtaking that they seemed like more of a representation of the internal than the external. One very memorable scene with someone slowly appearing out of fog in the distance at dawn looks like something in a dream.
Knightley is getting an Oscar nomination for this movie and I definitely think it deserves to be nominated for Best Picture, too. But then again, I don't really remember what all of the good movies this year were. Cinderella Man and Good Night, and Good Luck are all that come to mind, and I didn't see either of those.
And to conclude my thoughts, MacFayden is a hot, hot bastard. Sorry. I have to. Even when he was a dick in the beginning I was like "They have to get together, omg, hot." I felt like such a girl at this movie. LOL.
I think all of you hopeless romantics would really love P&P. And by the way - Keira Knightley. Tonks. Please? Now that I see she really can act, I am very attached to the idea of her as Tonks. She's not even necessarily too glamorous or anything; Keira is actually kind of flat-chested and in real life very tomboyish. I think she'd be great.
The point being: the best example of that in this movie is a scene in the rain between Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden. In all previous scenes they act very civilized toward each other no matter what their true feelings toward each other are, always bowing and being all "I trust you are well, Miss Bennet?" and etc, and suddenly they're standing outside looking like wet animals and come out with their real feelings in a not at all polite or civilized confrontation. And it's sexy. They're angry and frustrated at each other and even after she expresses complete loathing for him they stand there very close glaring at each other and you think for a moment that they're going to kiss. But they don't, which of course is a lot more enticing even than a really hot scene of two soaking wet people making out. Mansfield Park, probably the worst Austen adaptation, tried to make the Jane Austen story more flirtacious and sexy and even had a scene of nudity in it. This one achieves that much better without actually making a movie with a higher rating than PG. It feels more modern than the other Austen movies and the romance seems very natural and timeless.
All of the performances are so good. Donald Sutherland plays a father who you want to be your father. Knightley is great in scenes of more intense emotion, otherwise drifting through the movie cool-headed and sarcastic among her mother who is always a bundle of nerves and her younger sisters who are always either raucously laughing or crying. Jena Malone of them in particular is extremely annoying, which I suppose she's supposed to be. It was nice at least to see her in another role than her typical Girlfriend Of The Dark Misunderstood Kid. And MacFayden is great at making us dislike him at first and adore him later, and he is so amazingly good in the climactic romance scene at the end that his lines don't even seem a bit cheesy.
And the cinematography! This movie looked so beautiful. There were some certain shots that were so surreal and breathtaking that they seemed like more of a representation of the internal than the external. One very memorable scene with someone slowly appearing out of fog in the distance at dawn looks like something in a dream.
Knightley is getting an Oscar nomination for this movie and I definitely think it deserves to be nominated for Best Picture, too. But then again, I don't really remember what all of the good movies this year were. Cinderella Man and Good Night, and Good Luck are all that come to mind, and I didn't see either of those.
And to conclude my thoughts, MacFayden is a hot, hot bastard. Sorry. I have to. Even when he was a dick in the beginning I was like "They have to get together, omg, hot." I felt like such a girl at this movie. LOL.
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Date: 2005-12-01 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-01 01:30 am (UTC)