If I had a superpower it would be the ability to have public transportation meet me anywhere within one or two minutes.
We could really have used this superpower the other night when we decided to go see the 9:40 showing of Pride and Prejudice and left the house at 9:20. As we rode the bus to the T station at 9:35 I called the theater and told them we would probably be doubling the audience and they should definately prolong those previews for us. They were less sure about this plan. So sadly, we missed The Ball At Netherfield, but got in on the hot "turning about the room" action.
Now I know that some of you are still recovering from the news that I actually went to see Pride and Prejudice in the theater. Believe me, I am too. But get this, I kind of liked it. I mean, sure, it was still so damn sedate and reserved and Lizzie was still a brat, but this version was more . . . tolerable. No sex, but sexual tension. One thing that really helped was that the director finally got Mr. Darcy right. I'm not a Jane Austen fan and I haven't really read the book, but I've always strongly identified with Darcy and felt that he was misjudged. When he tells Elizabeth "I'm desperately in love with you, but I can't stand your family" he's not being a jerk, he's just telling her what he thinks she needs to know. He has a bluntness problem that I completely understand. The other versions of P&P show Mr. Darcy as a product of constricting manners and prejudices, this version lets him be more free, more genuine. One might say that this director understands that INTJ's are not just arrogant bastards. And I liked that.
Posted by linnea at February 3, 2006 10:57 AMI think in our independent "every (wo)man judged by her/his own merits" and fragmented "live-three-thousand-miles-from-any-family-members" society, the importance of good (or at least tolerable) family connections is hard to understand.
And I thought that the real point of the story was to show that the Pride and Prejudice mostly occur on Lizzie's side...somehow critics get locked into distinct bifurcations. I guess it's easy to do when you have two main characters in a story with two concepts in the title.
Posted by: funke at February 3, 2006 11:48 AMwell, I didn't mean that he needed to tell her she had bad family connections. What I meant was, there was something he didn't like about her and he needed to tell her. He felt the need to share the negative as well as the positive, so she could have the whole picture. Not that this was a good thing for him to do, but he wasn't just doing it to be mean.
Posted by: linnea at February 3, 2006 1:49 PMYour entry title sums it all up.
Posted by: funke at February 3, 2006 5:45 PM