Pride and Prejudice - New Movie for a Great Classic

Director Joe Wright's 2005 movie version of British author Jane Austin's 1813 novel of the same name makes for an enjoyable evening's entertainment. The story is a classic boy meets girl despite numerous obstacles. The cinematography and scenery gives the viewer the feeling that they are actually in regency England. However, while charming and scenic, it is also realistic with plenty of mud (this is farm country), chickens in the front yard and clothing that screams discomfort despite its elegance. Enjoyable as it is to view this bygone age, few viewers would be willing to trade their 21st century comforts for the physical discomforts of that era.

Set among the landed gentry in regency era, rural England, this is the story of young people struggling to overcome their perceived shortcomings and inadequacies as well as society's constraints in an attempt to find love. Scared of making a wrong decision and marrying the wrong person but also, for the women, under pressure to marry before they become too old and passed over by the eligible men. In those days too old for a woman meant late teens.

For young women, meeting a man was not easy. Living in a rural area the number of single men was limited and, as members of the aristocracy, their options were further limited to men of their own class or above. The men young women of this era and class met tended to be those invited by mothers or other relatives to functions at the home or at balls at which parents also attended. A final complication of courtship was money. Those who had money (through inheritance) were never sure whether their suitor was in love with them or their inheritance. Those without money had to find someone with a large enough inheritance to support them. Given all of these pressures, it is easy to see how these young people, with limited experience in the ways of the world, would tend to rely on stereotypes and make snap judgments about members of the opposite sex whom they had just met.

This is a story about the Bennets and their five daughters. Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) had inherited a rural home, farm and small annual stipend. They were basically an upper middle class family, living in the country and surviving on the income from the farm and Mr. Bennet's stipend. However, they were well enough off to be able to afford help for the home and farm as well as partake in the social life of the neighboring gentry. Mr. Bennet was the sole source of income and when he died the home, farm and annual stipend would pass on to a young cousin, William Collins (Tom Hollander), a snobbish clergyman. It was imperative that the five Bennet girls find husbands to take care of them and their mother in her old age. The oldest daughter, Jane (Rosamund Pike) a shy, quiet beauty, is still single and bordering on becoming an old maid. Lizzie (Keira Knightley), the second daughter is also advancing in years (we're talking late teens, early twenties here) but outgoing, strong willed and has a streak of idealism mixed with pride. Lizzie knows she has to find a man with an inheritance that will support her but she also wants love. She is willing to gamble by turning down men that she doesn't like.

When the single and well off Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods) comes to the neighborhood to take up residence at near by manor house. Jane immediately falls in love with Mr. Bingley and after dancing together at a ball he hosts, he falls just as hard for her. Also at the ball is Bingley's friend, Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), a complex man who hides his natural shy and caring personality behind a shield of indifference bordering on arrogance. Lizzie immediately writes him off as arrogant and uncaring despite his vast wealth. Her opinion of him is hardened after meeting Mr. Wickham (Rupert Friend) a lieutenant in the militia who grew up with Mr. Darcy. According to Wickham, his father worked for Darcy's father who treated him, Wickham, as a second son. When the elder Darcy died the young Mr. Darcy, according to Wickham was jealous of the stipend his father had left to Wickham and ordered Wickham off the land.

Of course Lizzie and Darcy come together in the end but the journey is strewn with obstacles created mainly by their pride, prejudices and ignorance on the part of both of them.