Pride & Prejudice rekindles love with burning energy

Pride & Prejudice rekindles love with burning energy

The timelessness of classics is often the first victim of movie adaptation. Not so with the latest entrant of Austen's Pride & Prejudice, which promises to leave you reeling under a heady mix of romance, hatred and the comical, yet serious business of marriage. Joe Wright, the director, brings to audiences, a Pride & Prejudice which reverberates with boundless energy and zappy zeal, breathlessness and romantic throes galore!

The comparison with BBC's “Colin Firth” version is natural but unnecessary, as Matthew Mac-fadyen, who plays Darcy, easily carves an original place for himself, letting the character mesh under his skin with realistic élan and intensity. Darcy progressively grows on your sensibilities, coming across as silent and arrogant to the hilt in the beginning, moving towards an explicit display of niceness and longing for his love Elizabeth later.

But the core life of the movie is held in Keira Knightly's famous pout and her impatient yet kind, tomboyish but feminine, business-like yet warm portrayal of Elizabeth, the second of marriageable Bennet sisters.

Keira's itinerary into films saw numerous ups and downs, but if her performance in 'Pride…' is anything to swear by, it seems she has finally arrived. She carries off Lizzy's flamboyant intelligence well, reined by a secret desire to love and be loved, albeit not with servility, hitting one in the guts as much as her bony beauty mesmerizes the romance flooded in the cinematography in the movie.

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She is the undisputed queen, no doubt, her dark eyes following every character's movement and her sharp words hurled straight into your heart. She has epitomized the Georgian era's woman of punch in Elizabeth's immortal words to Darcy, “You could not make me happy and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so."

The centerpiece of the story remains the love-hate relationship of Darcy and Elizabeth, fiery and subtle to burning and seductive. The screen does not smack of sex and flesh blatantly, but the air is heavy with controlled desire and tempered love. Austen's story has a Georgian backdrop where intelligent beauties were supposed to be revered as they were, without attempt to tailor them. The deviating tales of Lizzy's four sisters, her businesswoman of a mother and caught-in-between father, throw up fulfilling cameos which interweave seamlessly into the main track.

Joe Wright's presentation is voluminous, passionate, bubbly and full of people shouting, talking in high tones and meaty words. The dances are not of smooth waltz and sway, but move wildly like flames licking the sky. The unsophisticated characters have been played by equally pedestrian performances, as those by Brenda Blethyn, as Mrs. Bennet and the unkempt, laid-back father portrayed by Donald Sutherland.

The outdoors is in here. No smoked, wooden-paneled shots of grand interiors. Just heart rending stretches and expanses of Britain's lavish natural bounty, mist et al, creating just the right backdrop for simmering romances birthed by poisonous hatred. But then, Keira's fire-in-the-eyes look could not have been contained effectively if suffocating interiors were the prime frame here. The social environment is correct of that era is correct, plainly. Period.

This is perhaps the youngest and full-of-life movie made on Jane Austen's classic written in 1813. Joe Wright has stood in good stead as a new entrant and the screenplay by Oscar winner Emma Thompson does justice to the author's blend of tight and flexible.

The cast, both main and cameo, is brilliant. Special mention must be made of Tom Hollander as the comical suitor and Judi Dench as Darcy's socialite aunt, who is very cynical and critical of Lizzy and her disguised proximity to her nephew.

When love finally conquers hate in the film, Darcy and Elizabeth make us happy, perhaps irrationally. But then, their characters are so strongly etched with bold strokes of righteousness and bridled passion, you can't help but give in to the exhilaration of the rushing climax where they find each other ultimately.