Adaptation de Pride and Prejudice

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Reviewed by: PELLET Stella

Moviemaking Quality: Good

Primary Audience: Teens, Adults, Family

Genre: Romantic Comedy Musical

Length: 111 min

Year of release: 2004 (2005 in US)

Featuring: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Martin Henderson, Nadira Babbar, Naveen Andrews, Anupam Kher

Director: Gurinder Chadha

                     It's a Wonderful Afterlife (2010)

Producer: Gurinder Chadha

Distributor: Miramax Films (USA)

                          Pathé Distribution (UK)

[pic 1]

After the global success of his movie “Bent it like Beckam”, the Britannic film director of Indian origin, Gurinder Chadha decided to make an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice”. This romantic musical film transports us into another continent. With Indian songs, dynamic dance, majestic scenery and colorful costumes, it’s as if we were in Bollywood. But the characters approach the US style. This movie is original because of beautiful mixture of two different cultures.

I enjoyed the fact that it’s an analogic adaptation. The original novel is taken as a framework and then updated, more modern, and more Indian, it’s not a “classical” transposition in which the producer can’t express himself. I found the scenario built correctly, the actions linked together, and there is no long time.

In the other adaptation, more classical and more faithful as the novel, Pride and Prejudice of Joe Wright, the relationship between the characters is explained by the social classes’ conflict. Here, it is replaced by a confrontation between the US (civilized world) and India (underdeveloped country). The social divisions become cultural.

The actors convey emotion and they are really in their role. We notice anyway that no kiss appears on the screen, whereas love is one of the main themes in the film, so it disappoints. Aishwarya Rai, or “The Queen of Bollywood” embodies Lalita Bakshi (Elizabeth Bennet in the novel). She’s very beautiful, graceful, natural and not snooty. We are mesmerized by his eyes and his smile, and the film would not be the same without her.  His role recall that of  Madhumitha in Jeans (1998), role that earned him Filmfare Best Actress Award.

M. Darcy is played by Martin Henderson. We usually see him in serious role in action, thriller or drama movies (like Torque), but he showed us that he can do everything. First, even if Lalita thinks he is arrogant, pretentious and scornful for India, we attach to him and we hope that he managed to conquer her.

All the characters evolve and affirm themselves. The best example is Johnny Wickham, played by Daniel Gillies. At the end, we discover his real personality, dark and nasty, and we realize that he was false during the entire movie. At this time, I understood the choice of actor because he already played a cold, bad and dark character like Gary Dexter in Captivity or Elijah in Vampire Diaries. He has a face, physical expressions and a dirty look adapted to this kind of role.

...