Joe Wright’s 2005 film of Pride & Prejudice has aged, but it’s done so beautifully. The movie, back in theaters for its 20th anniversary, is well worth a revisit, both for the ways in which it’s changed and for the ways in which it hasn’t. 20 years ago, its moody tempestuousness and modern sensibility distinguished it from what many might have expected of a Jane Austen adaptation. That wasn’t entirely fair to the author herself, whose headstrong, unglamorous heroines and cutting observations about class and status had kept her work fresh for centuries. And many of the Austen adaptations of the previous couple of decades — including films like Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Roger Michell’s Persuasion (also 1995 — it was a big year for Austen) — had been marvelous in their own right. But Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach rediscovered a youthful vitality that had always been present in the original book, bringing it out in unexpected fashion.
“It’s written by a 21-year-old person who was discovering their own talent as they wrote it, and it has this youthful vibrancy and energy to it,” Wright told me in 2022, recalling his approach to the story at the time. “We have to make it about kids, and we have to make sure that it has that energy to it.” The film’s Elizabeth Bennet, Keira Knightley, was 18 at the time she was cast, and 20 by the time the movie came out; the actresses playing her younger sisters (including Carey Mulligan, in her screen debut) were about the same age. Its Darcy, Matthew MacFadyen, was in his late 20s and still had an awkward, youthful reserve that turned out to be perfect for this version’s take on the handsome, distant gentleman who falls for Elizabeth. In the novel, the moneyed and prideful Darcy’s aloofness betrays his uncertainty over whether to consort with those of lower station and lesser breeding. In Wright’s film, the character’s standoffishness is rooted in more basic shyness — understandable, since we no longer have 350-plus pages to gradually bring two such disparate characters together. Here, Elizabeth and Darcy’s attraction is immediate, even if they don’t quite realize it; playing out across their eyes and their gestures over the course of two hours, the intermingling waves of desire, fear, and melancholy come off like newly discovered emotions.
Throughout, Wright keeps his camera mobile and shoulder-level, centered around faces and movement. We never get the sense of grand, swooping omniscience so common in period pieces. Pride & Prejudice is filled with lovely images and even some occasionally breathtaking shots of scenery and great homes, but it’s all still so experiential, like we’re witnessing everything through the characters’ eyes. By the time Darcy emerges through the mist near the end, an apparition walking through the fields with hunky, solemn determination towards Elizabeth, we’re watching more than mere plot; we’ve entered our heroine’s mind and heart.
That’s the magic trick that Wright pulls off with this movie. He presents us with the trappings of reality while snaring us emotionally with the expressiveness of his filmmaking. (Is it any wonder that he’s turned out to be a big fan of the Italians, having made his last two pictures there?) For all the splendid costumes and settings on display in Pride & Prejudice, there’s also mud, mist, sweat, and rain. These characters live in nature, and their emotions have an animal immediacy to them. Chickens run and cluck around the Bennet home; the family’s clothes look worn, at times even dirty; the houses are cluttered, the people messy, their interactions chaotic. But nothing ever feels drab or dour. The girls’ liveliness, in all its broadness and occasional goofiness, shines through.
And the screen is abuzz with activity. Wright’s early showbiz career involved a stint working techno raves, so he loads up on the dance sequences and gives them the charge of both club scenes and tribal rituals. The press of humanity intrudes on individual dramas. Invigorating long takes follow characters through these throngs, conveying the interconnectedness of this society. At one party, the camera catches Elizabeth’s slightly daffy mother (Brenda Blethyn) somewhat tipsily walking through the crowd while eating a bowl of dessert. She accidentally flicks a bit of food onto the jacket of a guest, apologizes briefly, and continues along cheerfully. It’s a quietly heartbreaking moment: Mrs. Bennet believes her eldest daughter, Jane (Rosamund Pike), has found a wealthy suitor, and we feel the boozy contentment of this simple woman. But we also see the faux pas, and we understand that this is a world where everyone is linked in some way, where gossip and judgment travel fast and where a clumsy mistake on one poor mother’s part may well doom a daughter’s romantic fate. Later, a tracking shot outside the Bennets’ house at night glides from window to window, glimpsing the parents, then the sisters in their rooms, and also one of the maids walking up a flight of stairs singing a love song to herself. The movie thrums with life, and everybody in it has one — and the fact that they are all connected in intangible ways is both beautiful and terrifying.
Wright counters all this clamoring humanity with moments of solitude that shine ever greater from the contrast. Right before Darcy and Elizabeth first dance together, we see her dancing and talking with her cousin, the prim and status-obsessed clergyman Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander); their conversation is constantly interrupted by dance moves and others charging into the frame. When she begins dancing with Darcy, the camera follows them with closer and smoother movements, as if to embody the way they’ve begun to fixate on one another. Suddenly, the rest of the cast drops away and we see the two dancing alone. This could have easily read as corny, had Wright not so expertly filled the frame with such activity beforehand. Much later, in perhaps the movie’s most immortal scene, Darcy helps Elizabeth into a carriage by holding her ungloved hand. Then, as he walks away, we get a quick close-up of him flexing his fingers, savoring this briefest bare touch, and we sense the awesome force of his romantic anguish. Such a quiet moment gains power precisely because so much of the rest of the film is so busy.
The Austenmania that started in the mid-1990s never really let up in the years following. It’s continued through various adaptations and updates and TV shows right through to our day. (Laura Piani’s charming modern-day romance Jane Austen Wrecked My Life premiered on the festival circuit last year and opens theatrically next month.) Even so, Wright’s 2005 film continues to stand out, for the way it captures the book’s modern sensibility without dramatically twisting its story or setting around (or bringing it into the present, a la Amy Heckerling’s admittedly delightful Clueless). It was such a hit with younger viewers, and yet it didn’t try to reinvent anything. It revitalized Austen by remaining true to her.
