Mansfield Park on Masterpiece

Captain's Log, Supplemental



Okay, I was going to hold this for next week but I can’t hold the frustration in any longer. I finally saw Mansfield Park on Masterpiece Classic and it’s horrid (to channel Jane Austen).

The story moves WAY too fast. The different issues dealt with in the book speed by so fast, I wonder than anyone who hasn’t read Mansfield Park can even understand what’s going on.

The characters themselves are completely changed. Fanny is lively and girlish instead of timid and demure. And I agree with Kaye and Ruth, what’s with the hair down on her shoulders? How could the hair and makeup department let her get away with looking like a hoyden? I also agree with Kaye about Fanny’s heaving bosoms throughout the movie—so out of character for a “poor relation” to have such low-cut gowns.

I do have to say one thing—I really enjoyed the moment Edmund tells Fanny that Mary Crawford is the only woman he could want for a wife—Billie Piper’s look is so exactly what I’d expect Fanny’s would have been, wanting to burst into tears and exerting herself to hide it.

Mary Crawford is still witty (at least the lines taken from the novel, not the lines given to her by the scriptwriter), but more demure and not as lively, gay, or teasing as she was in the book. The script also erased her growing friendship with Fanny after Maria married.

The script never really shows Mr. Crawford’s slimy, flirting side with Maria and Julia, so when Fanny refuses him in the movie, it made me wonder what’s so wrong with Mr. Crawford and so wonderful about Edmund!

Mrs. Norris is completely obliterated. The main emotional force who shaped Fanny’s character growing up has become bland and almost invisible. When she left, I could care less.

Plus the actors who played Mrs. Norris, Sir Thomas, and Lady Bertram are all too young to be their characters.

The humor of Lady Bertram’s indolence is gone. The actress has a few pert lines that makes her seem insipid rather than a figure of fun.

Sir Thomas appears mean rather than old-fashioned and strict, as he was in the novel. The scriptwriter took all his most hateful lines out of context—out of the awkwardness he originally spoke them in—and had them spring out of his mouth at moments that only make him seem like a boor.

Mr. Rushworth is no longer a thickheaded buffoon that you can’t help feeling sorry for despite the fact he’s an idiot. In the movie, he’s just a rather boring young man with 12,000 pounds a year.

Here I deviate from Kaye and Ruth—I think James D’Arcy is only okay-looking as an actor, and not all that fantastic as Tom Bertram.

And what’s with turning Fanny’s ball (in the novel) into a picnic and holding a dance on the lawn???

And, another big disappointment, they cut out Fanny’s entire time in Portsmouth, which is like a quarter of the entire novel. They replaced it with the Bertrams and Mrs. Norris going to see her mother! Like Lady Bertram would ever travel, let alone without Fanny!

Talk about inaccuracies with the time period, too. Edmund would never have been in Fanny’s room, which he is two or three times, and Fanny would never have been in Tom’s room, no matter that they’re cousins—especially with Tom shirtless! And the waltzing at the end was scandalous for the time.

And why did they have hand-held cameras for the entire movie? I started getting sick after only 5 minutes into it, which really really really annoyed me because I couldn’t watch without a roiling stomach for the entire 2 hours.

All in all, I wasn’t as antsy watching Mansfield Park as I was when watching Persuasion on Masterpiece, which I think is because I was rather prepared for a mediocre adaptation of one of my favorite books. Or maybe it’s an indication of how bad I thought Persuasion was.