Sunday 22 June 2008

Poor old much maligned Mansfield Park will be buggered up on the television tonight

The last of this batch of Jane Austen movies is on the ABC at 8.30. It's Mansfield Park, allegedly.

I have seen a video of the writer & producer of this film explaining how Austen really made some ghastly terrible mistakes in the writing of this novel, but it's okay because they have gone through and fixed them all up. Good.

Anyway, come by afterwards and we'll discuss.

22 comments:

lucy tartan said...

horrible

Ampersand Duck said...

[sounds of demented howling woman running around the house tearing at face and hair]


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
What have they done to my lovely Mansfield Park! They has made it into saccharine-flavoured Mills and Boons!

If Billie Piper hadn't been in it I would have pegged the production date as somewhere between 1978 and 1982, but 2007!!!!! WTF??!!

Worst. ending. eva.
Bad hair on just about everybody. Edmund SUCKED. Mary failed to sparkle and seemed to have only one dress pattern, and that was awful. Fanny wore a sparkly white wedding dress!

I'm going to bed to sob myself to sleep and hope that it all goes away by tomorrow.

lucy tartan said...

obviously youse are struck dumb with confusion and horror.

Cousin marriage is never an easy sell at the best of times, but somehow they managed to make it considerably more ick than in the novel.

lucy tartan said...

crossed, Duck. Thanks for vicarious catharsis. Sleep well....if you can.....

Anonymous said...

I thought Fanny's hair needed a good brushing. And what a lot of fabulous hats. Hats and bosoms actually. And Edmund really needed a jolly good slapping. How one yearned.

lucy tartan said...

yes, her hair was like a limp, worn-out fox neckpiece, I kept looking for the beady eyes.

Ok, the hats were good. Ostrich feathers cover a multitude.

Ampersand Duck said...

There was a cat in the background at the picnic. Very blurry, but undeniably a cat.

That was this adaptation's ONLY redeeming feature.

I just know I'm going to dream about all that bad dialogue.

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I only saw the last 20 minutes but that was quite enough, and it's a while since I read MP but I remember it pretty well, or so I thought till this evening.

I agree that Billie Piper is good in herself but surely Fanny's not supposed to be a knowing-looking, bosom-flashing, sly-glancing and manifestly sexually experienced young woman? Que?

Anonymous said...

I missed the beginning - did I miss the ha-ha, or was it chopped?

I liked Billie though she certainly wasn't Fanny; same with Edmund. And it was nice to see Douglas Hodges again - I always think of him as Lydgate. I liked his gradual turn around, but he seemed too quick to forgive things like the theatricals.

The Crawfords were really bad, not nearly enough sparkle - I think the team thought dressing them in red and blue would do the trick. The writers gave away the necklace angst (and I suspect the ha-ha angst, too). And we didn't see the Price's at home. Interesting take on Lady Bertram, too!

Ampersand Duck said...

And what was with all the running? Fanny never struck me as a girl with that high an energy level. And surely Edmund would have disapproved of it.

lucy tartan said...

If she's running up and down the stairs all day, she doesn't need to go riding for exercise, so Edmund lending 'her' horse to Mary doesn't seem like a real shift in his hitherto meticulous attention to Fanny.

Hil there was no ha-ha, in fact no Sotherton - no Portsmouth either as you say. Maria is engaged before Sir Thomas goes away.

I sort of liked Lady B's observant little glances, but the end was total overkill. If she'd known all along that Fanny was in love with Edmund 'since she was a little girl', then why didn't she say or do something when they were all hounding her to marry Henry?

Fanny's slavery question and Sir T's answer were ridiculous. He would never have said 'we can well do without slavery'. Just dumb. They could not possibly have maintained the west indian plantations without indentured labour. He MAY have said they could get along without TRADING slaves - that was what was abolished at this period - not actual slave-owning. And of course, in the novel Fanny's question (which we don't hear) is about the slave trade, not slavery per se.

Yes, why were Fanny's boobs prominently on display for the whole 90 minutes?

Beth said...

I think Billie Piper makes an adorable Billie Piper, but I didn't really buy her as Fanny. At all. The whole thing rattled along making not much sense and without much charm. By far, the worst of the four, and yet *I still enjoyed it*. Maybe I'm coming down with something....

Anonymous said...

Yes, we now have the Mansfield Stairs-and Corridors-funrun as well as the Bath marathon. Billie looking so wonderfully robust undercut all the plot subtleties to do with Fanny struggling with her health.

I agree about Lady Bertram, Laura. Her Mrs Bennet action at the end was jarring, but I was interested that in general they gave her a little more than the usual 'completely-out-of-it indolence'.

Mindy said...

I kept thinking of one of those roses that goes all out to look beautiful, then all its petals fall off and its gone, when I looked at Fanny. She seemed out of place next to her cousins who were less lippy and less voluptuous looking. I also wanted to drag Edmund to the barber.

Miss Schlegel said...

You guys so should have watched Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth.

lucy tartan said...

I suspect you are right.

JahTeh said...

I'm glad I didn't watch as I love the old BBC production.

Anonymous said...

I'm with the writer and producer on this one. JA wrote 5 of the greatest novels of all time, but Fanny Price is an insufferable prig.

lucy tartan said...

Then I'm relieved that you, unlike the writer & producer, haven't felt the need to make a film of a book you don't like.

Anonymous said...

Then I'm relieved that you, unlike the writer & producer, haven't felt the need to make a film of a book you don't like.

You obviously haven't seen my masterful Nibbly Pig goes to Market

Anonymous said...

Or my glorious Major Bumsore.

Anonymous said...

O/T: I'm just looking through a few of these Stewnce essays and I tell you, my Donnelometer is going clang clang clang aroogah! Listen to these clangers:

"No doubt it is handsomer than mine..."
"No, it is not handsomer, not at all handsomer..."
"he might mean to recommend her as a wife by shewing [sic] her persuadableness." !!!1!1!!1!

When are the youth of today going to learn how to rite good, and who is this J. Austen anyway who wrote this stuff?