Rating: 
Summary: Not True To The Novel, But An Enjoyable Movie
Review: As an ardent Jane Austen fan, I approached my Mansfield Park viewing warily. I knew that it would be different from the book, but felt that since it was not one of my favorite Austen efforts I would be able to survive the inaccuracies without exploding with indignation. Happily, my concerns were unnecessary! I very much enjoyed the film. Fanny, who in the novel is quite insipid, in the movie very much resembles her creator (Miss Austen), and, in fact, much of the character's literary endeavors are taken from Austen's juvenalia. Frances O'Connor does a great job of portraying a woman who is happier in the background, yet fiercely resists being pushed into actions that violate her inner values. Another underrated plus for this film is Jonny Lee Miller's performance as Edmund. He is perfectly restrained and yet affectionate! This movie's no Pride & Prejudice, but it is a very rewarding experience.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinarily, I'm a bit of a Jane Austen snob.
Review: In "Mansfield Park,"--a film adaptation of the Jane Austen novel--young, poor Fanny Price is sent from her overcrowded and squalid Portsmouth home to live with her widowed Aunt Norris. The invitation from Aunt Norris was based on a fleeting, charitable whim, but the whim is already gone when Fanny arrives. Fanny is quickly passed to her wealthy relatives, Lord and Lady Bertram, who live at Mansfield Park with their 4 children--Tom, Edmund, Maria & Julia. Fanny's loneliness is compounded by Aunt Norris who is determined that Fanny should never forget her humble place in the Bertram household.Fanny grows up at Mansfield Park and remains in touch with her impoverished family in Portsmouth. Dreadful Aunt Norris more or less rules Mansfield Park by default--this is partly due to Lord Bertram's interests in the West Indies and partly due to Lady Bertram's inertia and inebriation. Maria is engaged to the doltish Mr Rushworth, and while Maria acknowledges that her future husband is a fool, she is willing to overlook this fault as it is ameliorated by a large fortune. Fanny's sole friend is Edmund--the younger son, and he is slated to become a clergyman. But then an attractive and worldly brother and sister--Henry and Mary Crawford join local society, and their presence sparks everyone's dormant passions. I was prepared to dislike this production--Jane Austen is close to my heart, so I intend to be a bit picky when it comes to screen adaptations of Austen's novels. I did not, for example, like "Emma" (the Gwyneth Paltrow version), and I couldn't abide "Sense and Sensibility" (Emma Thompson). I do like the BBC adaptations of Austen's novels, however. I must admit that I almost didn't even bother watching "Mansfield Park" as I dreaded yet another disappointment. However, encouraged by another Janeite I decided to give this DVD a go. The strength of this production is in its acting and in its humour. All of the actors and actresses are top notch, and the script flowed forth with a light, ironic touch. Henry and Mary Crawford were simply perfect. Unfortunately, the script writer did seem to mingle Jane Austen (the real person) with Fanny Price when creating the Fanny Price for this film. This gave Fanny Price pertness and wit that was largely absent from the novel. Also, many excellent parts from the novel were cut, and the PC additions to the script were--quite frankly--out of place and slightly ludicrous. However, overall, I enjoyed this film version of the book--it's not perfect, but for perfection, I can always go and read "Mansfield Park" yet again--displacedhuman
Rating: 
Summary: WOW!
Review: The cast in this film is awesome! Franis O'Conner was wonder as Fanny Price. I thought that it did justice to Jane Austin's writtings. It portraited subjects, that Jane Austin rarely ever wrote about, with great style. It will be a treasure to my movie collection for years to come.
Rating:
Summary: It is A Movie and not The Book
Review: Come on! No one expects a movie to be completely faithful to the novel. The other reviewers are right, Fanny Price from the movie is nothing like Fanny Price from the novel (maybe that's for the best, though!). But this is another person's interpretation of the book, not Jane Austen's. It's a very good movie--holds your interest and raises some intriguing issues that Jane Austen, perhaps, only hinted at.
Watch the movie, as Luna said, for itself, not because you think it's going to be an exact replica of the book.
~A
Rating: 
Summary: Seriously Love This Film!
Review: All right, by now you probably know that this film differs quite a bit from Austen's novel and this fact can't be denied. Nevertheless, if you can loosen those convictions (and irritating PC-consciousness notwithstanding) IMO this is a great, great film, beautiful to watch and oh-so-elegantly acted and directed. I've been known to watch this twice in one day, that's how much I love it! (Then again, I've watched the entire A&E "Pride & Prejudice" per night, 3 nights in a row, so you know what kind of an Austen fan you're dealing with here.) Oh there are so many perfect cinematic moments here, scenes of tender, varyingly repressed emotions so tangible you can feel them. Yes, this film is more openly sensual than the other popular Austen films available (most of which are excellent as well) but I thought those scenes were tastefully done and added to the overall mood of the film. I do feel it would be great to see a 'truer' version made of this novel, but I don't think you can beat the wonderful casting in this film and overall, I'd encourage you to enjoy this lovely and satisfying version.
Rating: 
Summary: Unwatchable Garbage
Review: Any one who is inclined to care about Jane Austin's wonderful characters would not care for this Fanny. She is unrelated to the Fanny in Mansfield Park, and the movie is altogether an insult to Jane Austin. Want to make a movie? Great, but don't steal a famous book, write your own plot entirely and slap it together. That's a cheap publicity stunt.
Rating:
Summary: Well-done, but not Jane Austen. Read the book first
Review: This is a clever, boisterous, and cheeky film. It is extremely well-photographed, and, for its purposes, well cast and well written. The trouble is, it isn't Mansfield Park. Fanny Price isn't Fanny Price, Sir Thomas isn't Sir Thomas, and Jane Austen isn't Jane Austen. The outline of the plot is there, but it is an altogether different reading from the book. Rozema has incorporated (or crammed) some of Austen's letters and juvenilia into the character of Fanny, and has created a heroine who is neither Fanny Price nor Jane Austen. Throughout the film the viewer barely gets a whiff of Jane Austen's wit and style. What we see more often is what may pass for the author's subtext, and still more often Rozema's superimposed contemporary interpretation. It amounts to a contemporary study of Mansfield Park, and how much you like it will be largely determined by how much you like contemporary values and mores; those in the film are not those of Jane Austen. If you like the movie, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will like the book, or Jane Austen. I think the director/screenwriter is more fond of her own ideas about Jane Austen than of Jane Austen herself. Some have suggested that this is how Austen would have written it if she lived in our day. Quite frankly, Mansfield Park (the book) could not have been written in our day by anybody. I am sure that Austen would not approve of her most moral novel being displayed in such a comparatively raucous tone (more like the tone of the condemned Lovers' Vows), nor would she wish it to be a vehicle for feminist themes. By the time Miss Crawford's true character is revealed, so little attention has been paid to morality that she does not sufficiently shock. For my part, the heroine constantly winking, as it were, at the audience, was rather off-putting. I saw it because my curiosity could not be satisfied any other way. It is, however, an interesting movie to see, but not before you've read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Austen Askew, Too Askew
Review: Jane Austen fans can be a rabid lot so when a writer/director "tinkers" with one of Austen's books, no matter how well-meaning, I think it's likely the film won't be well received. There wasn't much I liked about writer/director Patricia Rozema's adaptation of MANSFIELD PARK although I can understand why she made some of the choices she did. MANSFIELD PARK is, I'll admit, probably the most difficult of Austen's novels to translate into film. It's long and complex, it's highly interior and MANSFIELD PARK'S heroine, Fanny Price isn't particularly likeable. Still, I feel there are far better ways around those problems than the choices Rozema made. MANSFIELD PARK is the story of the "poor relation," Fanny Price, who, at the age of ten, is sent to live with her wealthy relatives at their country estate, Mansfield Park. Her relatives (Uncle Sir Thomas Bertram, Aunt Lady Bertram, cousins, Tom, Maria and Julia) treat Fanny more like a servant than one of the family. Only Fanny's cousin, Edmund, treats her with the kindness one human being owes to another. Flash forward ten years and a brother and sister duo, Henry and Mary Crawford arrive at Mansfield Park from London. Mary becomes infatuated with Edmund and he with her (something Fanny dislikes greatly), while Henry sets his sights on a very reluctant Fanny. I didn't like the way Rozema added to and subtracted from Austen's text to suit her own purposes. She's made Fanny a writer, just as Austen was. And, she's softened the character of both Fanny and Henry in order to make them more sympathetic to the audience, then, in an effort to "explain" Henry's true nature, she tacks an awkward epilogue onto the film. And why skip over Fanny's teenaged years entirely? That seemed unnecessary to me. I found Fanny's comments and winks to the camera (audience) highly annoying and distracting. Perhaps Rozema thought this was the only way to convey the "interior" quality of MANSFIELD PARK, but gestures and facial expressions can often say much more than mere words. I also disliked the fact that Rozema felt the need to insert nudity into this film, however brief. It certainly wasn't necessary and added nothing to the film and I feel Jane would have been horrified despite the fact that she was certainly no prude. Neither am I, but I don't like nudity when the story doesn't call for nudity. Hannah Taylor Gordon and Frances O'Conner as the young and grown Fanny give wonderful performances. Unfortunately, Johnny Lee Miller as the grown Edmund can't begin to match O'Conner's performance. Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas Bertram delivers a strong performance but Alessandro Nivola as Henry Crawford isn't so good or so convincing. The best thing about MANSFIELD PARK, at least for me, was the gorgeous cinematography. The luscious views of the sun-dappled English countryside surpassed even those of the sumptuous A&E presentation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. If you've never read MANSFIELD PARK, you'll probably be inclined to give Rozema more leeway that those of us who are intimately familiar with, and lovers of, the work of Jane Austen. For me, this film just departed too much from Austen's book to be truly likeable.
Rating:
Summary: TERRIBLE!
Review: I love Jane Austen books and all the other movies based on her books that I have seen. This, however, is not only not even remotely true to the book, it's a pretentious, pompous, anachronistic movie that I cannot recommend to anyone. I don't know what the screenwriter was thinking, aside from the fact that he needed to belittle the values of the time by weakly justifying all the book's antagonists with anachronistic 'he was forced into it' pseudo-explanations, and weakening the strong characters with completely speculative and blown out of proportion modern-day sins, making the movie not a period piece, but a pompous and preachy modern-day tale dressed in Georgian garb. Also, when viewing a Jane Austen adaptation, one rarely expects to see frontal nudity, another misplaced and anachronistic piece that I found highly distasteful. If you scorn the values and history of the society that Jane Austen expressed in her writing, you will love this movie. Its goal is more mockery and disrespect than anything honoring Austen's work or ideas -- many have said that the screenwriter has a right to adapt how she wants to, but why make a movie off a book you so obviously dislike and want to completely change? I can see only 3 reasons: 1) marketing to an audience on a false pretense, getting many viewers who would not normally pay to see the movie (though this will eventually breed more contempt for the movie, from misled viewers) 2) a cocky need to preach against the very values cherished by the fans of the original work, or 3) wanting to seem 'innovative' when the ideas you actually want to get across would be completely bland and trite in the modern slew of PC-movie-preaching. Ick.
Rating:
Summary: Did not read the book
Review: but I love period movies and decided to try this one. People who have read the book don't seem to support this movie but from my point of view it is perfect. The acting is so well done and every scene is beautiful in it's own way. The heartwarming story tugs at my heart and nearly every line of the well thought-out dialogue forwards the plot. Great replay value!
|
