Persuasion
Aug. 9th, 2022 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerBecause Julie and I are gluttons for punishment, we decided to watch the new Persuasion, directed by Carrie Cracknell and widely panned by critics. Because we went in forewarned, I actually found it… not as bad as expected? This is not to say that it’s a good movie, but there were in fact entertaining moments, almost all of which involved Anne’s hilariously narcissistic sister Mary (who plays her part with a deliciously self-absorbed gusto) or Anne flirting with Mr. Elliot.
Unfortunately the fact that these moments are the highlight of the movie only underscores the film’s failure as an adaptation of Persuasion: we’re supposed to be rooting for Anne to get back together with Captain Wentworth, not for her to get together with Mr. Elliot. But Captain Wentworth is boring! All his scenes with Anne are excruciatingly awkward! Whereas Anna and Mr. Elliot crackle with chemistry (he is played by Henry Golding, which gives him an unfair advantage), and although he’s kind of a sleazeball, so is this version of Anne.
The movie goes out of its way to emphasize and exaggerate Anne’s most unappealing qualities, like her tendency to sit in silent judgment of those around her. She criticizes Mary for her narcissism, claiming that Mary won’t notice that Anne is in the room till Anne coughs - then, later, herself fails to notice that someone else is present until that person coughs. A deliberate suggestion that Anne is as self-absorbed and obnoxious as the people she sneers at?
That’s certainly how they’ve decided to portray her in this movie. There’s one particularly dire scene where she attempts to prop up her flagging self-esteem and make Wentworth jealous by informing an entire dinner party that her little sister Mary’s husband initially wanted to marry Anne. It’s astonishing that Wentworth witnesses this impetuous humiliation of Anne’s sister and her sister’s husband in front of a gaggle of their relations, and still wants to marry Anne later on, because any sensible person would have looked at that exhibition and gone “Thank God we didn’t get married all those years ago, really dodged a bullet there.”
Unfortunately the fact that these moments are the highlight of the movie only underscores the film’s failure as an adaptation of Persuasion: we’re supposed to be rooting for Anne to get back together with Captain Wentworth, not for her to get together with Mr. Elliot. But Captain Wentworth is boring! All his scenes with Anne are excruciatingly awkward! Whereas Anna and Mr. Elliot crackle with chemistry (he is played by Henry Golding, which gives him an unfair advantage), and although he’s kind of a sleazeball, so is this version of Anne.
The movie goes out of its way to emphasize and exaggerate Anne’s most unappealing qualities, like her tendency to sit in silent judgment of those around her. She criticizes Mary for her narcissism, claiming that Mary won’t notice that Anne is in the room till Anne coughs - then, later, herself fails to notice that someone else is present until that person coughs. A deliberate suggestion that Anne is as self-absorbed and obnoxious as the people she sneers at?
That’s certainly how they’ve decided to portray her in this movie. There’s one particularly dire scene where she attempts to prop up her flagging self-esteem and make Wentworth jealous by informing an entire dinner party that her little sister Mary’s husband initially wanted to marry Anne. It’s astonishing that Wentworth witnesses this impetuous humiliation of Anne’s sister and her sister’s husband in front of a gaggle of their relations, and still wants to marry Anne later on, because any sensible person would have looked at that exhibition and gone “Thank God we didn’t get married all those years ago, really dodged a bullet there.”
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Date: 2022-08-09 01:27 pm (UTC)(That dinner party scene made me wish I had alcohol on hand. The octopus digression was also pretty dire.)
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Date: 2022-08-09 01:39 pm (UTC)We actually discussed turning the movie into a drinking game - take a drink every time Anne addresses the camera! - but she addresses the camera so often that we probably would have been unconscious by the end, so.
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Date: 2022-08-09 02:08 pm (UTC)I mean............. maybe? My inclination is that the movie would have been salvageable if they'd just toned down Anne's ~quirkiness~ and had a sense of moderation/context vis-a-via the funny anachronistic references (and possibly recast Wentworth the wooden).
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Date: 2022-08-10 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-10 01:20 pm (UTC)