Mansfield Park (2007)
I loathed the 2007 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, shown on PBS’s Masterpiece theater as part of The Complete Jane Austen. Dr. Who’s Billie Piper is miscast as Fanny Price, whose characterization seems to consist almost entirely of her chasing wildly after someone or something, or pouting at or about Edmund. Austen’s Fanny is ethical to a fault, self-effacing, and quiet. Piper’s voluptuous blond prettiness would be much more suited to the role of Harriet Smith in Emma. The movie’s 90 minutes condenses Austen’s complex story to a caricature of itself, leaving out many critical plot points, like Fanny’s return to her family at Portsmouth. This adaptation glosses over much of the subtleties of Austen’s humor, while the scene at the end when Edmund realizes his love for Fanny is played so broadly that I cringed.
I’ve enjoyed the two other adaptations in the PBS series–Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Persuasion was distinguished by the tense pauses in conversation that conveyed much of what had to go unsaid because of the conversational conventions and constraints of the time. Northanger Abbey did an excellent job of portraying Catherine’s romantic imagination, and alluding to the timelessness of teenage hormones. It did a good job with Austen’s sense of humor and propriety. Both these adaptations weren’t as good as their sources, but reminded me fondly of the books, and made me want to read them again.
Mansfield Park (2007), though, made me want to flee to the book, if only to get away from such a poor representation of it. Read the book, or rent the Patricia Rozema adaptation. It takes some broad departures from the text in Fanny’s character; this earned the scorn of ardent Jane-ites. But it is a well-made, well-cast film that does more justice to what many consider Austen’s most complex novel. The learned ladies at Austenblog didn’t care for Rozema’s Mansfield Park, so on that we’ll have to disagree. But they’re a wonderful resource for all things Austen if you want to learn more.
March 26th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Here here, Billie Piper as Fanny, what a joke. I’m gleefully awaiting the new Sense and Sensibility.