This film is surprisingly good.
I went to see it with a sort of resigned attitude. I didn't believe anyone could do a re-make after the exhausting mini-series version done by A&E a ten years ago.
And, really, it isn't as true to the book (that I'v probably read twice a year since I was eight years old) as the A& E. However, that dosn't stop this from being a beautiful lush film. The scenery and costuming alone manage to communicate the old-world aristocracy vs peasants battle inherant in the matching of Darcy and Elizabeth and then resolves them with the French Revolution, Rights of Man, triumph of the human spirit sort of thing. Which is cool. I was delighted and astonished to see how real everything looked in this film. So often Jane Austin assumed the reader would know what things looked like. The cinematography showed me an England I'v never seen. It's glorious and refreshing.
Darcy is very good, if much softer than the Darcy we're all used to. He's trying just as hard to break out of his class restrictions as Elizabeth is trying to transcend them. One thing to note, he's never seen on a horse after he notes that Elizabeth likes to walk a lot. They end up getting engaged in the early morning mist they had both been wandering through like a couple of Romantic poets.
Everyone else is good in this film as well, except for Keira Knightly who can't act or at least can't be bothered to because she's perfectly content to make her overbite-y "I'm gonna eat your face and laugh while I'm doing it" face. So, if she gets a "Best Actress" nomination from anyone I'll be really pissed. However, I do believe this film should garner all sorts of other nominations. It's a breathtaking new look at an old favorite.
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