Persuasion (1995, PG)

I’ve been know to say that Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen book, although I do tend to lean toward whatever work I’ve read or watched an adaptation of most recently – I know Mansfield Park isn’t my favorite, and probably not Emma, but that’s all the further I can narrow it down.  Regardless, Persuasion is gorgeous, and this BBC film version is entirely worthy of it.

Standard Persuasion plot summary:  years ago, a family friend talked Anne Elliot out of an engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a man of small means but great love and great ambitions, and she’s regretted it ever since.  Wentworth is now a captain in the navy, and he comes back into Anne’s life just as her aristocratic family is entering reduced circumstances thanks to her father’s lavish spending.  As Anne feels grieved by Wentworth’s presence and he seems wholly unmoved, she wonders if love, once thrown away, can ever be regained.

While this adaptation captures the more typically-Austen parts of the book – the arch satire, the moments of crisis, the romantic ending – it also does extremely well with the aspects that are more unique to Persuasion itself.  Chiefly, the sense of wistfulness, the regret of past mistakes and the hopes that are all but dashed and yet still can’t die completely.  There are some astonishing speeches here on being separated from one’s love, whether by distance or circumstance, and every single actor who gives one delivers it beautifully.  Captain Harville and Anne discussing the constancy of men vs. women, Anne and Benwick talking mournful poetry, “the letter scene,” even Mrs. Croft remembering the winter she spent away from the admiral; each one is just achingly lovely.

The acting is good all-around.  Special mention goes to Sophie Thompson as the unbearable Mary, Victoria Hamilton as the vivacious Henrietta, and, from the paragraph above, Robert Glenister as Harville and Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter’s Aunt Petunia!) as Mrs. Croft.  The film also features Simon Russell Beale (Falstaff from The Hollow Crown,) Redgrave sibling Corin, and Samuel West, best remembered by my childhood as Caspian in the old BBC adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In any Austen adaptation worth its salt, pride of place goes to the romantic leads, and Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds bring it in spades.  Both of them are so good in these roles that they earned my universal goodwill forever and ever – I love them so much.  Anne’s quiet heartbreak, dying within as she wordlessly keeps her head down and does what everyone expects of her.  Wentworth’s cavalier aspect at odds with the smoldering gaze he lets loose just at the moments when Anne thinks all hope is lost.  These two are just achingly romantic together, like something out of a Wong Kar-wai film (if Wong Kar-wai made Regency-era stories set in England, obviously.)  There’s a different tenor to this love story than Austen’s other works, and both actors absolutely nail it.

Warnings

A violent accident and some drinking.