Andrew Davies' Sense and Sensibility.
Jan. 1st, 2008 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
whathoI'm always interested in Andrew Davies' Austen adaptations. He did, after all, kind of fuel my interest in script-writing. I've a great fondness still for his Pride and Prejudice and I thought last year's Northanger Abbey was flawless. But I'm also very fond of the Emma Thompson/Ang Lee film of Sense and Sensibility and I don't really see that the pair of them left room for improvement. I know Davies thinks otherwise, but I mostly don't agree. I generally wish him very well with his efforts, and I know he doesn't need my well, but he's been kind of getting on my wick over Sense and Sensibility - I've heard him speaking about it for a couple of years now. It's getting fairly wanky. He thinks Emma Thompson was way too old to play Elinor (not really - she just played an older version) and he basically didn't like anything about Alan Rickman. I think that's kind of Davies' problem.
So I'm kind of hoping he fails a bit. And I spent the last hour thinking it was nice, more or less, but wanting to watch the film rather more. Mostly I'm looking at his Brandon (David Morrissey) and feeling an intense lack of Alan Rickman. He seems too young and not sufficiently, you know, like Alan Rickman. Elinor and Marianne are, indeed, both cast younger than they are in the film, but Marianne's actor is still nine or ten years her character's senior ... only Davies made the mistake of repeatedly drawing attention to it. Mark Williams is a nice Sir John and has a brilliantly Hogarthian face for the era, but I'd not say he's better than the wonderful Robert Hardy. Nor is Linda Bassett a better Mrs Jennings than Elizabeth Spriggs was. And Margaret is plagiarised almost wholesale from Emma Thompson's script (minus the obsession with geography but she's still hiding in corners of the library and climbing trees). I'm guessing he couldn't think of anything better to do with her - she's so skeletal in the book - but I think he ought to have tried, or just cut the role.
Davies' other big issue was that he couldn't believe in Marianne and Brandon's eventual getting together. I must admit that, watching the film before I read the book, I didn't really know who was going to end up with whom by the end because there wasn't masses of chemistry between Marianne and Brandon ... but I think that's the book's issue. And it's a plot point anyway, not a problem: I think it's easy enough to accept her settling passionlessly for someone who helped her and who loves her after what happened to her. I think the clue is sort of in the title.
Don't think he's making much of the extra half-hour either. I feel like more was packed into the film - it was very pacy. And notably funnier. And I think it wins, essentially. Which isn't to say that this version isn't a pleasant watch ... I just don't entirely see the point.
So I'm kind of hoping he fails a bit. And I spent the last hour thinking it was nice, more or less, but wanting to watch the film rather more. Mostly I'm looking at his Brandon (David Morrissey) and feeling an intense lack of Alan Rickman. He seems too young and not sufficiently, you know, like Alan Rickman. Elinor and Marianne are, indeed, both cast younger than they are in the film, but Marianne's actor is still nine or ten years her character's senior ... only Davies made the mistake of repeatedly drawing attention to it. Mark Williams is a nice Sir John and has a brilliantly Hogarthian face for the era, but I'd not say he's better than the wonderful Robert Hardy. Nor is Linda Bassett a better Mrs Jennings than Elizabeth Spriggs was. And Margaret is plagiarised almost wholesale from Emma Thompson's script (minus the obsession with geography but she's still hiding in corners of the library and climbing trees). I'm guessing he couldn't think of anything better to do with her - she's so skeletal in the book - but I think he ought to have tried, or just cut the role.
Davies' other big issue was that he couldn't believe in Marianne and Brandon's eventual getting together. I must admit that, watching the film before I read the book, I didn't really know who was going to end up with whom by the end because there wasn't masses of chemistry between Marianne and Brandon ... but I think that's the book's issue. And it's a plot point anyway, not a problem: I think it's easy enough to accept her settling passionlessly for someone who helped her and who loves her after what happened to her. I think the clue is sort of in the title.
Don't think he's making much of the extra half-hour either. I feel like more was packed into the film - it was very pacy. And notably funnier. And I think it wins, essentially. Which isn't to say that this version isn't a pleasant watch ... I just don't entirely see the point.
