Inhabiting the Character

Pride and Prejudice is a great romance novel.  With characters so interesting and vivid, it's no wonder Jane Austen's work has been adapted many times to both big and small screens, as well as having been the source material for other novels, like Bridget Jones' Diary (a personal favorite) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Sometimes Miss Elizabeth Bennet and her Fitzwilliam Darcy are as real as if they were sitting in this room with me.

I'm currently all aflutter over P&P because I watched a charming movie the other night, Lost in Austen.  It tells the tale of a die-hard P&P fan, Amanda, who discovers the heroine of her favorite novel in her bathroom, after the latter has come through a door from Regency-era Longbourne (fictional home of the Bennet family) into the shower of our protagonist in modern-day London.  They switch places for a time, during which Amanda completely turns the plot of this classic novel on its head.

As events change, characters previously missing from the original novel appear, and it's if they have always been there, only Jane Austen forgot to tell us about them.  The world of Pride and Prejudice is fully intact, especially the dreamy Mr. Darcy.

I don't know what it is about Mr. Darcy that makes him so irresistible.  He is a snob, he jumps to conclusions, he lets his (wait for it) pride get in the way of finding happiness, and he says terrible things to Elizabeth over the course of their "courtship", but there is just something about him.  When it comes to the actors who portray this hero, may I just say, damn.

Colin Firth was my first Darcy.  He was cast in the film version of Bridget Jones' Diary partly because of his amazing portrayal in the 1995 BBC production of P&P.  Dandy collar and all, he was to die for, especially emerging from the lake on Pemberly in a white shirt and breeches. 

Then came the 2005 Kiera Knightley/Matthew Macfadyen rendition.  There was something a little rougher around the edges in this Darcy, and a scene with mists and fields and open collar, oh my.

This week it was Elliott Cowan whom I saw as the haughty Fitzwilliam.  As his colleagues before him, pulling on the mantel of an arrogant, prideful suitor, Mr. Cowan transformed into something purely divine.  And kudos to the writers of Lost in Austen who, in a wonderful homage to the 1995 film, had Amanda instruct Darcy to go into the lake.  Sigh.

I'm not sure I'm a big fan of that period, the restraint, the propriety, the clothes, but when each of those actors (who are attractive and talented in any role I've seen them play otherwise), puts on that Regency garb, curls his lip just so, looks down upon a witty and intelligent woman and say, "My good opinion once lost is lost forever," well, it's enough to sink down in your seat and fan yourself. 

And that is what I'm thankful for this holiday season.

(Was this post link-fantastic, or what?)

"Life is more than just mere survival"...

Tonight is the kind of night you refer to when you start a story with, "It all happened on a night just like this..."  Fall leaves swirling in the wind that echoes like a ghostly cry.  It would have been much more appropriate on Halloween and not some random Wednesday in November and cut off the power for 30 seconds in the middle of my changing out of my work clothes.  Eerie, unsettling, and yet, sitting at the traffic light on the way home from the office, my car buffeted by that relentless wind, it was comforting.  I always say I like fall the best.  I guess I'm just more nostalgic during these crisp months.

I read various, eclectic blogs -- all loads better than mine -- and one that I visit regularly is My New Plaid Pants.  A movie-driven blog, the author has various features (my particular favorite is "Thursday's Ways Not to Die"), including "Everything You Need to Know About Life..." wherein he posts a quote from a movie possessing sometimes off-the-wall insight.  Yesterday's quote was from Woody Allen's recent film, Midnight in Paris, and had an impact on me.  You can view the blog here, but I'll re-print the quote directly:

Paul: Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... 

the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous 

notion that a different time period is better than the one one's 

living in - it's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people 

who find it difficult to cope with the present.

And now I want to see the movie exclusively to hear Michael Sheen, who plays Paul, say this bit of dialogue...

Anyway, my first response was that this is absolutely true.  My second was that I am not necessarily dealing with a painful present.  The point, however, is that this isn't world-shattering information, but sometimes someone can articulate something so well that a gong of clarity sounds in your head and for a few minutes you feel like you've been shown the answer to the meaning of life.  And now I can't get that quote out of my head.

So admiring the leaves of fall dancing and frolicking in the air is just a way to deal with the here and now, I suppose.  

And even with the TV playing 'Mr. Belvedere' in the background, the wind insists on being heard...