It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least by the (self-proclaimed) most die-hard fans of Austen that the ’90s British miniseries interpretation of Pride and Prejudice is the best. This truth is so well fixed in the minds of these fanatics that your humble correspondent felt it necessary to defend the 2005 version, recently released on 4K and picking up another $6M at the box office.

Imagine my delight in discovering that most of you didn’t feel that such a defense was necessary. But let’s be honest: You’re morons.

And, let’s be honest further: I like hearing myself speak. Or type as the case may be. So let’s look at why this version is the best version of the Austen classic.

Caveat: There aren’t as many feature interpretations of P&P as you might think, and only a handful if you eliminate the variants. The first video dramatization of any Austen novel was the 1938 television production of this book, which survives only in transcript form. It was constantly given an hour or two on TV, to say nothing of being a miniseries in ’49, ’52, ’57, ’61, etc., until the 1980 “Masterpiece Theater” version (which has a ridiculously lurid playbill). Then nobody touched it for fifteen years, when the BBC did its five-and-a-half hour version, which is the one fiercely defended by some. Since then, it’s been butchered and reassembled and given zombies, set in modern day, and made a musical, and so on.

I’ve seen three versions of P&P. The other two being Bridget Jones’ Diary and the 1940 version with Olivier and Greer, featuring the unforgettable exchange:

• Elizabeth Bennet: At this moment it’s difficult to believe that you’re so proud.
• Mr. Darcy: At this moment it’s difficult to believe that you’re so prejudiced.

I’ve looked at the 1995 version, but all BBC productions are so visually impoverished, I can’t generally stand more than a few minutes of them if it’s not something inherently cheesy like “Dr. Who” or “Day of the Triffids”. I give the 1995 producers credit for using 16mm throughout, but it’s still distractingly ugly, even re-mastered.

I do find it amusing that the 1995 fans praise its faithfulness to the book when the most famous scene involves Colin Firth getting dumped in a lake (not in the book). But this, perhaps ironically, is the point of tangency leading to my review of the movie.

Because I find the 2005 P&P to be the most faithful. If that sounds contradictory, read on.

The Experience of Reading

It is generally best, when watching a movie based on a book, to forget that the book exists. In fact, if one is a fan of the book, an argument can be made that one should probably just ignore the filmed versions altogether. I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch a filmed version of The Secret Garden. Most attempts at bringing Ray Bradbury to the screen are regrettable. And I rather loathe the Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, as a whole.

But the first of the LOTR movies, Fellowship of the Ring, is relevant here. It captures the feel of the Shire rather well. I thought it was okay in the theater, because I could see where Jackson was amping the story up and I could respect that. It made sense from a cinematic standpoint. I actually liked the extended version of Fellowship. (It was only when the second movie turned into Titanic with Superheroes that I got bored.)

So, the thing about Pride and Prejudice, the novel, is that it’s exciting. Austen’s wordplay is clever. Her plotting is tight, reliance on coincidence notwithstanding. Her characters, surely among the most privileged people to live (prior to the last 50 years, where we’ve all been privileged) yet nonetheless sympathetic for their plights.

It’s natural for a filmmaker, particularly one who loves the literature, to want to put the book on the screen as-is—and yet to do so is to rob the story of its life!

Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice, as a movie, reminds me of what it’s like to read the book, which is the highest commendation I can give a film based on a (good) book. It takes the experience of reading and manages to create a cinematic equivalent for a modern audience. Well, a “modern audience” back in 2005 which was not yet code for “insane sexually confused weirdos”.

Drama and Theatricality

The 2025 re-release of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice begins with a mercifully short intro from director Joe Wright talking about how he wanted to make his interpretation of the classic Jane Austen novel “gritty”, but we can ignore that or, more charitably, reinterpret it as “using a word that artists have been using for the last 40 years to try to convince people that their art is somehow better for aping the worst aspects of reality.”

What it means in practice is that the Bennet household is very lively. The staff is ever-present, if not addressed, and there’s livestock and girls running amok and so on. The Bennet estate is both ridiculously grand (in modern, middle-class terms) and run-down. Since the other characters (who are all higher class) live in the sort of sterile, dignified settings that radiate the kind of stultifying boredom this sort of drama is associated with, the victory here is that the audience appreciates the Bennet’s circumstances but can also understand how degrading it is for the other characters (particularly Darcy) to have to associate with them.

The blocking is impeccable, as we are often treated to shots of narrow English hallways and small drawing rooms that still somehow manage to showcase five daughters at once. Joe Wright is so good at this, he manages to block moving shots well.

I have assumed that nobody can block static shots well any more because nobody dares leave the camera still. As such, the blocking in dynamic shots—which is infinitely harder—comes out as a slurry. (See your average Marvel fight scene.) But when Wright is tracking around a ballroom following Elizabeth, we can see the other characters moving in and out of the shot, and their feelings reflected in the brief moment on screen.

Intriguingly, Wright’s next film, Atonement, uses all the same tricks to the same degree, and it’s one of the worst cinematic experiences I’ve ever had.

But here, it means, the country ball is exciting. Exciting, but also rustic, in the aristocratic English sense.

“Modern Audiences”

Austen has become like Shakespeare, in the sense of being someone whose work is culturally significant, and also so familiar, that the variants on her work constitute their own kind of sub-niche. Particularly in the ’90s and early ’00s, you had things like Clueless and Bridget Jones’ Diary and the like, you had the recognition that you could dress up universal aspects of the story in modern clothing quite profitably.

Where this novel “cheats” is in its overt emotionality. Keira Knightly’s Bennet is too demonstrative and also bemused, like she’s in on the joke, whereas she’s usually interpreted as drily sarcastic and judgmental—the pride and prejudice that give the book its name. Matthew Macfayden’s Darcy is instantly smitten and instantly repulsed by that, and the movie is not skimping on the sexual chemistry. Donald Sutherland’s profession of affection for Elizabeth is overt, as is his bittersweet willingness to let her go. Brenda Blethyn’s lugubrious Mrs. Bennet is very publicly gauche in ways that are probably over the top.

To reference the camerawork again, this movie uses incredibly dated zooms. And by dated, I mean 1970-dated, not 2005-dated. Like zooming in on Charleton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes dated. It’s perhaps the only camerawork I think was overdone, as if Wright was worried people weren’t going to get it. “Reminder: They’re hot for each other!” Similarly, the tacked on victory dialogue added to the American version, where Mr. and Mrs. Darcy get to wallow in their victory is overkill (to me).

And to reinforce my hypocrisy, this kind of bombastic cinema is exactly what I hold against LOTR. It works for me big-time here, perhaps because the story itself is so low-key by modern terms whereas Tolkien’s work is still high fantasy and doesn’t need amping up. (Of course, this is my taste, and when Peter Jackson is done counting his billions, I’m sure he’ll get right on toning things down a notch.)

Production Values

Every shot in this movie is a love song to England. To a bygone England. A long bygone England, one suspects, never to return.

The main theme, an uncredited piece called Dawn by Dario Marinelli, evokes Beethoven beautifully. Wright’s choice to set the story in 1797 (when the story was written) versus 1812 (when the story was published) allows him to break from the empire-waisted late regency gowns that were common in 1812. Ten years before digital took over completely, so shot on 35mm film.

The casting of Rosamund Pike as the more beautiful, kinder sister of Knightly is also inspired. Wright gets the most mileage out of Knightly’s looks, which are peak, but she’s just different enough looking that you can really buy that said looks combined with her personality would make her much less desirable as a romantic partner. The other daughters have all gone on to full careers where they’ve been allowed to be much prettier. Heh.

The whole affair is done with such energy and passion that it rivals the energy and passion of Austen’s writing. In fairness, of course, this is a feature film and trying to compare it to a 5 1/2 hour miniseries (or anything of that length) is truly an apple-and-oranges comparison.

But I am skeptical that any feature of this length could capture the excitement of Austen as well as this.

 

Alex Garland is a talented director. I think. A novelist who transitioned to movies with scripts like 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd, he made a big splash with his directorial debut Ex Machina, which was good, overrated but also easily the peak of his efforts—leading as it did into Annihilation, a muddled distaff remake of Stalker, and then descended into the risible Men and Civil War—well, let’s just say there’s no confusion as to his politics.

It gives one pause, whether to watch a movie about a squad in Ramadi during the Iraq War, under these circumstances. However, he had a co-director and co-writer on this, first time writer/director Ray Mendoza, a Navy Seal who was part of the squad that took part in the events detailed in this film. Once again, The Boy and I decided to roll the dice.

Rolling the dice can pay off, people.

In a way, Warfare is like a Steven Soderbergh joint: Its very factual, very unadorned, and it could be considered low-key, except for the whole “holy crap, this is stressful as hell.” In fact, I started to think of it as PTSD: The Movie. Or maybe MTSD—Mid-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Our American squad is sent to do some surveillance on some Iraqi terrorists—I was actually sort of vague on what “success” would mean here—when the locals catch on to them and lay siege. One or two members of the squad are lightly injured, and when the others try to get them evacuated, they all end up in way too close proximity to an IED.

They’re immediately shell-shocked, of course, and their injuries are now much, much worse. Also, command doesn’t want to send in another evacuation vehicle because, hey, the first one got hit by an IED.

It’s ninety minutes of pure stress. There’s very little character development, no back stories, not much in the way of dialogue, and the whole movie basically takes place in a box made of concrete, with a poor, terrorized Iraqi family stuffed into one bedroom.

It’s excellent.

There’s no politics to speak of. I mean, “War is bad,” I guess. But that’s not really a political statement when you’ve just stepped on an IED.

Obviously, it’s not for everyone. I’m not joking about the stress level. The Boy and I were the only ones in the theater for this, and I can’t see it being a crowd-pleaser. It looks to make about $20M on a budget of $20M, and even that strikes me as remarkably high given the content.

It’s a man’s man’s film. From a cinematic standpoint, you could say that the characters should’ve been developed more, or the action should have felt like it had more of a point, but this kind of unglamorously violent, goal-oriented action came across as very pure: If you’re in combat, history doesn’t matter much—none of this “gal back home” or “sick mother in the hospital” sentimentality that are clichés of war movies.

You and your squad are in trouble, and you’re going to get out of it, and that’s all that matters just now.

The Boy and I liked it. Ray Mendoza might never do anything else cinematically, and he’ll have done good. And I hope this kind of “show the world” approach (versus the “describe a world that suits a particular political viewpoint” approach) takes hold with Garland, because he could really turn out some masterpieces.