Sense and Sensibility (2008) Review

{Warning: Excessive long-winded-ness, much rambling and a great deal of nonsense lies ahead.  Also, here be monsters.  Proceed at your own risk.  Dead men tell no tales.}

I've never thought of myself as being much like Queen Victoria.  But in The Young Victoria, Queen Victoria confused stubbornness with strength.  And in the case of Sense and Sensibility 2008, I confused stubbornness with loyalty.

S&S 1995 was the very first movie I reviewed here on YAPDB.  The movie has sentimental connotations for me--it was the second Jane Austen novel I read, the second Jane Austen film adaptation I watched, and the second "just us two" movie that I'd watched with my mom.  It's a stunningly lovely film with superb acting and a well-written script.  So it's only natural that I would think it was the only S&S adaptation I would ever need.

And boy, was I stubborn in that respect.  When Melody suggested that I just give S&S08 a try, I laughed her off.  Surely no other adaptation could even come close to the splendor of the 1995 version.  Besides, hadn't I heard that the first scene was a little iffy?  I didn't want to watch that!

But Melody, bless her heart, kept right on pestering suggesting, reminding me how much fun we had had watching Little Dorrit together last December.  (We both watched the same episodes each night and then emailed each other the next morning to discuss them and quote our favorite lines-- it was loads of fun.)  Now she really wanted me to watch S&S08 with her, and it's hard to say no to my Tween, so I finally caved, ordered S&S from the library, and settled down with Anne-girl to see the first episode.  (By the way, we didn't even have to see a bit of that objectionable first scene-- all you have to do is navigate to the second scene in the scene selection, and then rewind until you get to the opening credits.  And bingo, you've avoided the whole thing.  The rest of the movie is perfectly okay.)

After fifteen minutes had passed, I was hooked.  And Melody was gracious enough not to say "I told you so."  (Well, not in so many words.)

I'm not even going to try to keep myself from comparing the two films in this review, because I know I won't be able to.  So I'll begin by comparing the '08 Dashwood sisters with their '95 counterparts.

First of all, Emma Thompson ('95) is the face of Elinor Dashwood for me.  So what if she was 35 when the movie was filmed and Elinor is only supposed to be 19?  She spoke Elinor, moved Elinor, breathed Elinor.  And I didn't think Hattie Morahan ('08) was going to measure up to Emma Thompson's standard.  (When I first wrote that sentence, I abbreviated Emma Thompson as E.T. ... then I looked at it again and decided not to. :P) Hattie Morahan's voice and manner of speaking are quite similar to Emma Thompson's, and though I don't know if that was intentional or not, it definitely helped me to get accustomed to her portrayal.  She's not very pretty at first glance, but as you get to know her better throughout the film, she becomes more and more lovely.  (I've noticed that with a lot of characters in period drama... they become more aesthetically pleasing as the story goes on and you become better acquainted with them.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.)

As for Charity Wakefield as Marianne Dashwood... well, let's just say that Kate Winslet did a phenomenal job and leave it at that, shall we?

Oh, all right, she wasn't that bad.  I just felt that her portrayal of Marianne was much too self-centered and whiny-- and what was up with her running around with her hair down half the time? I think this movie was probably set around 1795, which was when Jane Austen first wrote it, and women did wear their hair down more often back then... but not as wildly as Marianne did in this movie.  Maybe it was an effort on the filmmakers' part to make her look younger, but I felt it just looked sloppy.  

Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret, however, were very well cast.  I've never been much of a fan of Gemma Jones' weepy Little Bo Peep performance in '95, and it was refreshing to see a Mrs. Dashwood who actually had some backbone.   However, Janet McTeer's performance wasn't quite on par with the Mrs. Dashwood of the book.  Mrs. Dashwood is supposed to be practically a carbon copy of Marianne-- easily swept away by feelings, etc.  She's supposed to be just as enamored of Willoughby as her daughter is (although of course she maintains later that there was always something in his eyes that she did not like).  Yet in this movie, she was shown to be a little suspicious of him, which wasn't exactly a bad thing but it wasn't quite in line with the book.

Lucy Boynton played Margaret quite nicely, and she improved as the story went on, but I still prefer Emelie Francois' performance.  Margaret suffers from a severe lack of personality in the original novel, but in the '95 movie she was made into a funny, likable character.  She's funny and likable in this version too-- "If she comes to live here, I MIGHT even POISON her"--but not quite as much.

Before I saw this adaptation, I was one of those who was firmly convinced that Hugh Grant did a splendid job portraying Edward Ferrars in '95.  This was because I had not yet seen how well Edward's role actually could be played.  I still think Hugh Grant did a good job, but he's no longer Edward in my book.  Dan Stevens brought out everything I liked about Edward (and everything I didn't like, which was good-- Edward's moodiness may annoy me, but it is in the book) and his eyes are much nicer than Hugh Grant's.  Ahem moving on.

I also really liked how Edward's relationship with Margaret was developed.  This may have been a little bit of copying off the '95 movie, but hey, it was cute.  Horseback riding isn't quite as fun as dueling with swords (that one scene where she stabs him in '95 is priceless, admit it) but it was still sweet when Edward took Margaret on his horse because that dreadful little Harry Dashwood was riding her pony.  (Speaking of Harry Dashwood.  That child's face was the single scariest thing in the entire movie.  I cowered under the bed when he came on screen.  Well, okay, not really, but it sounds good to say so.)

{I'd just like you all to know that everything that comes after this note has been rewritten from the original.  Because the original was EATEN by the bad, wicked Blogger, who cunningly and with malice aforethought ATE all the words that it TOLD me it had automatically saved.  And now it is smirking at me.  Blogger, why dost thou mock my pain?}

I also really liked how Edward's honor was portrayed so well in this version.  In '95, you have to draw your own conclusions about Edward's marrying Lucy-- here, they actually, you know, showed him standing up to his mother and keeping his agreement to a young woman who didn't deserve the time of day from him.  And the part where he talks to Elinor after Colonel Brandon's offer was heartbreaking in a very satisfactory way.  I was pleased.  Muchly.

Melody had convinced me not to watch Our Mutual Friend (1998) until I had seen S&S, because she said I would not be able to appreciate David Morrissey's Colonel Brandon if I saw him first as Bradley Headstone (the bad guy in OMF).  I took her advice, but when we began watching S&S, I began to think that Bradley Headstone had nothing to do with it and that I just wasn't going to like this guy.  At all.  He struck me as being just a bit stalker-ish in the way he stared at Marianne, and indeed I was inclined to agree with her when she said, "I think he is the kind of man who likes to find fault with everybody and everything."

But I changed my tune as the series went on and found myself liking this version of Colonel Brandon more and more.  Alan Rickman from '95 will always be my favorite, but I now grudgingly admit that there can be two very good portrayals of one character.  And I will quite freely admit that the Rescue Marianne In The Rainstorm scene is much more romantical in '08 than in '95.  In '95, the Colonel just goes out and carries Marianne in, sopping wet.  In '08, we see him thundering through forests and fields on his horse shouting her name, and eventually finds her and brings her back to the house.  It's far more Dramatic and Touching and "Oh-Look-He-Really-Loves-Her"-ish.

Speaking of which, the rainstorm scene was (in my humble opinion) a complete ripoff of the iconic scene from '95.  In the book, Marianne goes out for a walk and gets a bit chilled--a few days later, she comes down with a fever.  In '95, she goes out to see Combe Magna, says Sonnet 116 with the wet wind blowing her hair, gets rescued by Colonel Brandon and falls ill that very night.  In '08, she goes out walking to no place in particular with the wet wind blowing in her hair and her face turned up to the raining sky (doesn't she know you can drown that way???), gets rescued by Colonel Brandon and falls ill that very night.  It strikes me that '08 is trying to copy '95 as unobtrusively as possible.  I'm on to you, Andrew Davies.

Dominic Cooper was the worst Willoughby ever.  EVER.  Well, the only thing worse would be if they had cast David Tennant as Willoughby, because nobody would be able to hate him and poor Colonel Brandon would get booed off screen.  But I digress.  Dominic Cooper's Willoughby was not at all charming, as Willoughby is supposed to be--rather, he was creepy from the very start.  This did not reflect well upon the Dashwood women.  Mrs. Dashwood, Marianne and Margaret were made to look stupid for liking him in the first place, and as for Elinor (who didn't like him), it was kind of a "well, OBVIOUSLY" thing.

Seriously, if *I* had sprained my ankle and this guy came along offering
a lift, I'd run screaming.  Sprained ankle and all. 

I did, however, like that they included Willoughby's whining about how it's not my fault apology scene.  That is, if "like" is interpreted as "let's all punch Willoughby in the face.  Repeatedly."  But '95 left that scene out entirely, which I've always thought was a pity, and I guess half an apology (or a quarter... or an eighth... or whatever it was...) is better than none.  But why on earth was Marianne listening in?  That was NOT the way it was in the book.  She shouldn't even have been out of bed anyway.  Probably she didn't take her medicine either, the naughty girl.

Back to the characters.  Let's have a nice big round of applause for the Steele sisters, shall we?

... I can't heeeeeeear youuuuuuuuuuuu.

*covers ears*
Much better.

I cannot begin to describe how much I enjoyed the Steele sisters in this version.  They were so much better than in '95, it's almost ridiculous.  For instance, poor Nancy was left entirely out of '95.  And she's ten times more hilarious than her sister.  ("I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it just POPT out!")  Her dimwitted remarks really helped to lighten the more awkward scenes, and she was just all-around funny.  "For my part, I find them vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil, but I can't bear to see them nasty and dirty, can you?" Lucy, too, was quite an improvement on her '95 counterpart.  In '95, I never quite understood why Lucy confided in Elinor when they first met-- in fact, when I first saw the movie, I thought they had changed it from the book and made it so that she only wanted to tell her secrets to someone.  But in '08, the Middletons discussed the Elusive Mr. F. right in front of Lucy, which gave her ample reason to treat Elinor to the Hands Off monologue.  In addition, the '08 Misses Steele talked bad grammar and seemed real uneducated, which is the way they was in the book.

I appreciated the addition of Mrs. Ferrars (although there were times when I felt a high kick or two, a la Fanny Dorrit, was in order for her) and you could definitely see where Fanny Dashwood's meanness came from.  "Ohhhh Edward, you know you only say these things to annoooooooy me."

Speaking of Fanny, why on earth did the girls call her "aunt"?  She was their sister-in-law.  Not their aunt.  Did Margaret begin referring to her sisters beaux as Uncle Christopher and Uncle Edward after the weddings?  I think not.  (And yes, I'm aware that the Christopher appellation is from '95 and not the book, but it seems to fit him.)   And did anyone else notice that her hairstyle was stolen straight from '95?  She looked ridiculous and Columbia Pictures should sue.  (Anne-girl is expected to "get" that reference, but she is the only one.)

The ball was interesting, but quite inaccurate to the book, and you're probably tired of hearing me spout off about the book, but hey, this is the treasurer of The Book Is Always Better (TBIAB) club speaking.  Mr. America Robert Ferrars and Colonel Brandon were not supposed to be there, though of course the Colonel was quite handy to have around later in the evening when Marianne had her kinda-sorta fainting thingy.  (Did she actually faint?  Or just... sink?)  I was not at all pleased with the way she shouted Willoughby's name across the room, but it certainly was effective when the whole company went quiet and Miss Grey gave the Look of Death.  If they hadn't played the Willoughby Danger Music right at that moment, I probably would have liked it better.

I'm rambling far, far too much and this review is getting way too long, but I'm afraid I'm being too negative so I do want to stick in some positive elements before I start complaining again.  I really liked Marianne's constant letters to Willoughby (and the poor patient footman who had to deal with Miss Why-hasn't-the-mail-come-yet every single morning).  And the whole Elinor/Colonel Brandon mixup was handled quite nicely indeed.  This was when I really began to like Colonel Brandon.

I like the trimming on this pillowcase.  Yes, that was random.

Marianne's illness, however, was not as good as in '95.  I just didn't feel as sad for some reason.  And Colonel Brandon didn't say my mom's favorite line ever ("Miss Dashwood, give me an occupation or I shall run mad") which was a bit of a disappointment. But then, if he HAD said it, I probably would have complained that they copied from '95, so they really can't win, it seems.  (And was anyone else extremely annoyed by the fact that the Colonel came into her bedroom to say get well soon?  That was not proper in those days, peeps.  Not.  In.  The.  Least.)

As for the minor characters, I'm afraid I was vastly disappointed.  Mrs. Jennings was merely adequate-- there was none of Elizabeth Spriggs' over-the-top hilarity, and Mr. Palmer... ugh.  There is only ONE real Mr. Palmer, and that is Bertie Wooster.  End of story.  Thank you, my dear.

Speaking of the end of the story, I was rather disappointed at first that no weddings were shown.  But then I decided that no Jane Austen wedding can possibly top Throw the Coins in '95, so kudos to the '08 directors for not even trying.  Instead, we got to see Colonel Brandon and his newly tamed horse--er, his bride--riding off into the sunset and we all felt happy and warm and fuzzy.  (Except for the horse taming references.  What was up with THAT??)

As for Edward and Elinor, this proposal ties with the memorable '95 "My heart is and ever will be... yours."  And before I watched S&S08, I honestly thought nothing could top that.  So I was prepared to be disappointed with this version, and instead I got a lovely surprise. Cutest thing ever, ladies.  Just go watch it as soon as possible.  (At this point I should insert a link to a video of that scene, but alas, 'tis not available on YouTube.  So you must do it the old-fashioned way and get thee to the library.)

My conclusion?  These versions almost tie.  That's a huge admission coming from me, considering how much I love the '95 version.  I never thought anything could top it-- and nothing has.  But S&S08 has come pretty close, and I know I'll be watching it again.

Isn't it fortunate, by the by, that it was Willoughby passing when Marianne fell?  I mean, it could have been some uncouth old farmer with no taste for Byron.  Horrors.