Steve Sailer writes: The TV miniseries adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberley isn’t bad. They should have had more scenes of Elizabeth Bennett sparring wittily with the grande dame, but it’s a pretty good Tory worldview TV, in the manner of Downton Abbey.
Comments:
* The miniseries is better than the book, I’d say: looks good (with one exception I’ll get to shortly), the plot moves along smartly (much more so than in the book), and its director/producers/actors mostly manage to avoid that fluffy tongue-in-cheek over-doing-it you sometimes see in bad historical dramas. Oh, and the actress who plays Lydia just burns up the screen; she’s extremely hot, and she plays Austen’s character much better than good ol’ Saffy Monsoon in the classic 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries.
The main drawback is the woman who plays Elizabeth. Solid enough actress — she’s great in the recent Bletchley Circle miniseries — but she’s too cranky-looking to play even a matronly Lizzie.
* The actress who plays Elizabeth Bennett would have been perfect to star in an Eleanor Roosevelt biopic.
Jenna Coleman as Lydia is terrific as a comic relief sex kitten version of Scarlett O’Hara. Would she be too distracting as Elizabeth Bennett? And then who do they cast as Lydia?
The actress who plays Elizabeth is terrific at the rapid fire exchange of polite insults with battle-ax Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but they don’t have any of that kind of Jane Austen humor until the third hour. They should have put more witty repartee scenes at the beginning and only then plunged into the somber murder mystery. They probably should have figured out how to bring onscreen William F. Buckley-lookalike Matthew Goode as Lydia’s rapscallion husband Wickham to banter with Elizabeth and get Mr. Darcy jealous again at the beginning, before the mysterious death makes everything so serious.
Anyway, it’s a very Tory miniseries. P.D. James was Mrs. Thatcher’s favorite mystery writer so she made her a Baroness.
* I hate to say it, but there does seem to be a certain viciousness, and gross irrationality and unfairness, in a non-trivial number of women in positions of power. Most women in these positions are, I think, alright enough–some even very decent and compassionate. But there are number of them who seem to believe that they need not in any way be bound by any sense of fairness or objectivity–or perhaps they don’t even have a good grasp of the concept of fairness or objectivity. They seem to be able to rationalize to themselves and others any negative impulse they have toward an individual; they can always find and exaggerate some defect to justify their preexisting bias; there need not be any basis for their extreme judgments in anything resembling reality. Men do this to, on occasion, but I just don’t see them doing so in anything like the numbers one sees in women. Men seem to get embarrassed when it is pointed out, or it becomes apparent, that their judgments are out of touch with reality. Women in these positions often don’t, and simply double down on their irrational conclusions.
The more I’ve seen of women in these positions, the more apparent this fact has become to me. It’s surprising how prevalent the phenomenon seems to be.
* The problem for the Christians is that the movie pulls the rug out from under their carefully crafted image of the essentially pure female (a contradiction of traditional Christian views, BTW), and does so in a way that’s impossible to ignore.
If our culture awakens to a more realistic appraisal of female sexuality – and that looks likely at this point – those selling us the sham version will be totally discredited.
* It’s the Hollywood Reporter taking sides with the Hollywood crowd.
Taylor-Johnson has ONE full-length film and 4 shorts to her credit in 19 YEARS as a director. Maybe boy toy is keeping her worn out! How did she get the gig in the first place? The fact that the studio has everyone but her wrapped up for the full ride is also telling; judging by her career, it’s not like she’s too busy.
Of course this is all about the gender. A male author would have just cashed the checks and spent the shoot banging assistants.
A male director would have walked after the second fight.
