Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Sense and Sensibility (1995), directed by Ang Lee.
One of the finest Jane Austen productions, somehow midway between period realism and a fantasy romantic comedy for modern tastes. It is like a portal into classic literature, both respecting the original text and enticing the viewer. An illustration of romantic passion in a society more formal than our own.
The producer complained about the shoestring $16 million budget, but they have produced a convincing illusion of a more expensive film. Meticulous visual composition throughout.
Rich cast, all with a touch of humor to their characters:
Emma Thompson: the older level-headed sister of "sense", more or less head of the family since her father died.
Kate Winslet: the independent-minded middle sister of aesthetic "sensibility", a passionate nature learned from books and music. Winslet was 19 and had just done Heavenly Creatures (1994) the previous year. She would do Jude (1996) and Hamlet (1996) the next year and Titanic (1997) the year after that.
Hugh Grant is first male romantic lead, although he is absent during a big middle of the film.
Alan Rickman is most commonly villainous or eccentric, but here he gets something different and shines at it, a sort of male Cinderella, ignored until he is loved, getting the princess in the end. The bit where Marianne lifts her head from her sickbed and gives him a kind word: strong men go misty.
Able support from Harriet Walter, Gemma Jones, Robert Hardy, Imelda Staunton. This was the first time I saw Hugh Laurie in a role not wholly comic, although his Mr Palmer is mordantly sarcastic, turning out to be a sweetie in the end.
Notes:
Written by Emma Thompson over several years. She did not originally intend to appear in the film.
Ang Lee's first film outside of Asia. Everyone tells affectionate stories about him, his frequent retakes without instruction apart from things like "Don't act so old" and "Be less boring". It took him a while to adjust to the British film environment, but everyone learned from it.
This is a Hollywood-financed film with a British cast and crew.
The girl playing the youngest daughter was chosen because she acted naturally without affectation. Many child actors are ruined by their drama coaches.
Having a child character can help the story: she blurts out things the adults won't say and asks questions when the audience needs guidance.
The women sometimes had to wear stiff corsets that (a) were uncomfortable, but (b) made movement stately and graceful. Playboy bunnies did the same thing.
Note the progress of the women in their mourning attire. Mom wears the most, eldest sister the next, and so on. I think they wear more when expecting company. Historically, with time the black was reduced and could be replaced with other somber colors until the mourning period ended.
Lovely period score by Patrick Doyle. Those traditional sounding themes are all his new compositions.
This was Austen's first novel, begun when she was a teenager. The language is formal but still witty. Some of it survives into the adaptation. She understood sociobiology perfectly centuries before it was invented.
We have a Harry Potter count of six, not forgetting Elizabeth Spriggs ("Mrs. Jennings") who played the first "Fat Lady" portrait at the entrance of the Gryffindor rooms.
Although there is an inexpensive all-region Blu-ray import available, Sony has not released a North American version, allowing Twilight Time to do a limited edition instead. This befuddles me: isn't there a perennial Jane Austen boomlet and constant demand for costume romances? Even if this is a women's picture and men do most of the buying, isn't the demand felt somehow?
The film was well-reviewed and earned 8x its budget at the theater. On the other hand as of this writing Twilight Time has still not sold out its 3000 copy run, so maybe it's a good thing I am not in charge at Sony.
My thumbnails are from Twilight Time Blu-ray. The image is quite lovely, "filmic" as we used to say in the pre-digital age.
Two commentary tracks are brought forward from the DVD:
Emma Thompson and producer Lindsay Doran in a chatty, often funny conversation, giving a lot of inside scoop on film production.
Ang Lee and another producer in a more erratic semi-commentary.
