Mansfield Park
Director/Screenplay: Patricia Rozema.
Starring: Frances O’Connor, Jonny Lee Miller.
Mansfield Park is the latest screen adaptation of a Jane Austin novel and perhaps one of the best. Having never read a Jane Austen novel in my life, I am speaking purely from a filmic perspective. Canadian director Patricia Rozema does not have all that many credits to her name but is quite obviously skilled in the art of filmmaking. The only thing she has done that I have seen is Yo Yo Ma Inspired By Bach which showed on the ABC a couple of years ago. Yo Yo Ma is a violinist (or maybe a cellist, I can’t remember) and various directors directed ‘music clips’, for want of a better word, of him playing Bach in different settings. Atom Egoyan was also involved in this project.
Mansfield Park is the story of Fanny Price (Frances O’Connor) whose family is poor but who has rich aunts (or at least their husbands are rich) that live on the great estate Mansfield Park. Fanny is taken to live with her aunts when she is about 11, not realising until she arrives that she will not be able to return to her family. She grows up writing stories and sending them to her sister who she used to entertain with them as a child. With the help of her friend and cousin Edmund Bertram, Fanny expands her mind (one of her downfalls, as several people put it) by reading as much as she can. Once she is a woman, the question of marriage arises and this is when the drama starts.
The first two thirds of this film are quite witty and humourous and the last third quite dark. This does not detract from the film at all. In fact I think it makes it stronger. It loses all possibility of being dismissed as fluff like other Jane Austin adaptations could be, for example Emma and even Sense and Sensibility. O’Connor does a brilliant job as the heroine and Miller is also good in his role. I find it difficult to fault this film, although I am sure people who have read the book might. I have been told that Fanny is a bit pathetic in the novel. However, in the film she is not. In fact she is comparable to Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice. There is also the question of the so-called lesbian aspects of two of the scenes. They are justified, one scene is to prompt a man into action and the other is the result of reading too much into it after seeing the first scene. If that doesn’t make sense then go and see the film and you will understand.
This is an excellent film well worth seeing.
ChrisB
