Fanny Price, the daughter of a poor family in Regency England, goes to stay with her wealthy relatives, the Bertram family, in their elegant stately home, Mansfield Park. (Fanny's mother and Lady Bertram are sisters). Fanny falls in love with her cousin Edmund, the younger son of the family, who is in training for the priesthood, but he seems to be infatuated with the beautiful Mary Crawford. Fanny herself is pursued by Mary's brother Henry, but she distrusts him and rejects his proposal of marriage.
The BBC made "Mansfield Park" into a TV series in the eighties, but although it was done in the best BBC style and kept faithfully to the book, it was a rather lifeless affair, with Fanny seeming just as dull on the screen as on the page. Patricia Rozema's 1999 film aimed at a radical reinterpretation, touching on modern concerns such as racism and working-class poverty, but for me this was a failure, the weakest entry in the Jane Austen cycle of the nineties. If you are trying to make a serious film about slavery in the nineteenth-century Caribbean, or even unemployment among the labouring poor in nineteenth-century Britain, I would not recommend Austen's novel as a starting-point.
This latest adaptation has come in for a lot of criticism, some of it based on the preconception that a commercial channel such as ITV cannot do period drama as well as its public-service rivals at the BBC. Most of the criticism, however, was aimed at the casting of Billie Piper as Fanny. Piper is blonde, attractive and sexy, and a frequent tabloid pin-up. She also started her career as a teenage pop starlet, Britain's answer to Britney Spears, and was at one time married to the radio presenter and producer Chris Evans. Consequently, many purists find it difficult to take her seriously as an actress. A "Dr Who" girl, possibly. A Jane Austen heroine, never.
Criticism was also aimed at the way the heroine was played. Although in the original novel Fanny is a quiet, demure girl (and this is how she was played by Sylvestra Le Touzel in the BBC serialisation), Piper played her as lively, outgoing and high-spirited, closer in spirit to other Austen heroines such as Elizabeth Bennett or Catherine Morland. She even dares to challenge her autocratic uncle Sir Thomas, who owns slave plantations in the Caribbean, on the question of slavery, asking him if he thinks that the institution will ever be abolished.
In my view this was the right approach (and the one also taken by Frances O'Connor who played Fanny in Rozema's film). This is perhaps the Jane Austen novel in which it is most difficult to interest a modern audience, to whom Fanny and Edmund can seem at best dull and insipid and at worst self-righteous and priggish. By contrast Mary and Henry, whom Austen obviously intended to be the villains of the piece, can today seem more interesting and lively, even more sympathetic. Fanny as interpreted by Piper may not be the Fanny of Austen's novel, but to my mind hers was a characterisation which works well in the context of this particular film. Could one imagine Billie Piper inhabiting the early nineteenth century? Undoubtedly, if one rids oneself of the idea that anyone born before 1900 was a member of a quite different species, only distantly related to modern Homo sapiens.
Unfortunately, the film did not manage to make most of the other characters interesting in the same way. This was probably because the two-hours-minus-commercial-breaks format allows less time for character development than does the alternative TV format for dramatising novels, the serial extended over several episodes. Some characters in particular, notably the Bertram sisters and Mrs Norris, came across as very one-dimensional.
The one exception was perhaps Hayley Attwell's fascinating but unreliable Mary Crawford, a character who plays a key role in the book as her values are contrasted with those of the more solid characters such as Fanny and Edmund. Jane Austen was a devout Christian, but her religious views do not intrude much into her other five novels. Although she was herself the daughter of a country parson, her portrayals of clergymen, such as Mr Collins in "Pride and Prejudice" and Mr Elton in "Emma", are often sharply satirical. The sympathetic Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey" is also a parson, but little in the book turns upon his profession. In "Mansfield Park", however, there is more serious discussion of religious topics. Whereas the likes of Mr Collins may have chosen a career in the Church out of mercenary motives, Edmund has done so out of genuine religious conviction, which makes him an unsuitable match for the aggressively secular-minded (and in this respect very modern) Mary. This contrast was well brought out in this version.
I doubt if any filmed version of "Mansfield Park" is ever going to achieve the popularity of some Austen adaptations such as Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility", the recent "Pride and Prejudice" or even the Gwyneth Paltrow "Emma". Nevertheless, of the three versions, this is the one that I prefer. The BBC series was too slavishly close to the original novel, while Rozema's film departed too radically from it. ITV seem to have got the balance right. 6/10
The BBC made "Mansfield Park" into a TV series in the eighties, but although it was done in the best BBC style and kept faithfully to the book, it was a rather lifeless affair, with Fanny seeming just as dull on the screen as on the page. Patricia Rozema's 1999 film aimed at a radical reinterpretation, touching on modern concerns such as racism and working-class poverty, but for me this was a failure, the weakest entry in the Jane Austen cycle of the nineties. If you are trying to make a serious film about slavery in the nineteenth-century Caribbean, or even unemployment among the labouring poor in nineteenth-century Britain, I would not recommend Austen's novel as a starting-point.
This latest adaptation has come in for a lot of criticism, some of it based on the preconception that a commercial channel such as ITV cannot do period drama as well as its public-service rivals at the BBC. Most of the criticism, however, was aimed at the casting of Billie Piper as Fanny. Piper is blonde, attractive and sexy, and a frequent tabloid pin-up. She also started her career as a teenage pop starlet, Britain's answer to Britney Spears, and was at one time married to the radio presenter and producer Chris Evans. Consequently, many purists find it difficult to take her seriously as an actress. A "Dr Who" girl, possibly. A Jane Austen heroine, never.
Criticism was also aimed at the way the heroine was played. Although in the original novel Fanny is a quiet, demure girl (and this is how she was played by Sylvestra Le Touzel in the BBC serialisation), Piper played her as lively, outgoing and high-spirited, closer in spirit to other Austen heroines such as Elizabeth Bennett or Catherine Morland. She even dares to challenge her autocratic uncle Sir Thomas, who owns slave plantations in the Caribbean, on the question of slavery, asking him if he thinks that the institution will ever be abolished.
In my view this was the right approach (and the one also taken by Frances O'Connor who played Fanny in Rozema's film). This is perhaps the Jane Austen novel in which it is most difficult to interest a modern audience, to whom Fanny and Edmund can seem at best dull and insipid and at worst self-righteous and priggish. By contrast Mary and Henry, whom Austen obviously intended to be the villains of the piece, can today seem more interesting and lively, even more sympathetic. Fanny as interpreted by Piper may not be the Fanny of Austen's novel, but to my mind hers was a characterisation which works well in the context of this particular film. Could one imagine Billie Piper inhabiting the early nineteenth century? Undoubtedly, if one rids oneself of the idea that anyone born before 1900 was a member of a quite different species, only distantly related to modern Homo sapiens.
Unfortunately, the film did not manage to make most of the other characters interesting in the same way. This was probably because the two-hours-minus-commercial-breaks format allows less time for character development than does the alternative TV format for dramatising novels, the serial extended over several episodes. Some characters in particular, notably the Bertram sisters and Mrs Norris, came across as very one-dimensional.
The one exception was perhaps Hayley Attwell's fascinating but unreliable Mary Crawford, a character who plays a key role in the book as her values are contrasted with those of the more solid characters such as Fanny and Edmund. Jane Austen was a devout Christian, but her religious views do not intrude much into her other five novels. Although she was herself the daughter of a country parson, her portrayals of clergymen, such as Mr Collins in "Pride and Prejudice" and Mr Elton in "Emma", are often sharply satirical. The sympathetic Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey" is also a parson, but little in the book turns upon his profession. In "Mansfield Park", however, there is more serious discussion of religious topics. Whereas the likes of Mr Collins may have chosen a career in the Church out of mercenary motives, Edmund has done so out of genuine religious conviction, which makes him an unsuitable match for the aggressively secular-minded (and in this respect very modern) Mary. This contrast was well brought out in this version.
I doubt if any filmed version of "Mansfield Park" is ever going to achieve the popularity of some Austen adaptations such as Ang Lee's "Sense and Sensibility", the recent "Pride and Prejudice" or even the Gwyneth Paltrow "Emma". Nevertheless, of the three versions, this is the one that I prefer. The BBC series was too slavishly close to the original novel, while Rozema's film departed too radically from it. ITV seem to have got the balance right. 6/10