(no subject)

Saw this on, uh, someone's journal and thought, why not?

The problem with LJ/DW: We all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So, I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Then post this in your LJ/DW and find out what people don't know about you.

Persuasion

I'm knitting, as I've probably mentioned, a largeish garment for Bun. This means that I'm currently spending quite a bit of time in front of the telly, watching DVDs of things I have seen before. (Beast spends the time on his computer, so I'm not watching new stuff.)

I just discovered that I own two different films of 'Persuasion', and this morning I watched the unfamiliar one, which appears to have been made in 2007 and stars Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones. Now, I will admit that Rupert Penry-Jones is *gorgeous*, but he and Alice Krige and unexpected!Giles are really all this particular film has going for it.

I was amazed at how badly the story was told. I cannot accuse the screenwriter(s) of not reading the book, because a good deal of the dialogue was lifted straight from its pages (and oh, boy, did the modern stuff stick out like fat, sausage-like thumbs). But those bits of dialogue don't necessarily belong at the stage in the story where they are given, or in the scene they appear in.

It's... it's "Persuasion-Lite". Instead of showing us a complicated story in which every character has his or her own motivations and in which the tension ratchets up slowly and irrevocably, they make it pellucidly clear at every point that This Girl and This Guy are Destined To End Up Together, and they make it dull. They miss the point of so many things. They mistake jogging through Bath for actual drama. The manners are modern instead of period, gah! I was already cross by the time it got to the scene where Mrs Smith (an invalid who needs help to move from one room to another and who leaves her lodgings only to go to the baths) trots through the streets to inform Anne that she shouldn't marry Mr Elliot, for he is a Villain, but that was appalling. I prefer the story in which the heroine already knows she is not going to marry Mr Eliot, and has to convince her impoverished friend before Mrs Smith dares to reveal the horrid truth about him—because everyone in Bath believes the engagement will be announced at any moment.

The script is, in short, dreadful. There's no excuse—all they had to do was follow the book.

Do not bother with this version. Get the 2003 BBC version starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, which is as near to perfect as any filmed version of any Jane Austen story can be.