They finally got it right.  Movie makers have been trying to get Jane Austen's classic story Pride and Prejudice on film since the dawn of sound movies, and there have been some good attempts, but the 2005 version starring Keira Knightly finally captured the soul of one of the warmest and most inspiring stories in English literature.  And Keira Knightly was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Elizabeth Bennett, one of the most likeable heroines in English literature. 

Even Jane Austen herself was infatuated with Elizabeth Bennett.  "I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her...I do not know," wrote Austen.

Jane Austen was something of an anomaly.  She wrote novels at a time when it was uncommon for women to write novels.  She published them anonymously at first, but not to obscure the fact that she was a woman; her early publications simply said, "by a Lady" to describe who the author was.  She even wrote her novels secretly, behind a locked door.  She was soon discovered, though, and became very popular.  The Prince (later George IV) insisted on having one of her novels dedicated to him, and she complied, although she was unimpressed with the man.  She never married, and she died at the age of 41, leaving an unfinished novel on her desk. 

Austen's novels, and most of the films generated from those novels, are fascinating commentary on the ordinary life of people in rural middle-upper-class England in the late 1700s and early 1800s.  These books transport the reader into that time and place with fascinating detail.  What they ate, how they did their laundry, what they wore, how they entertained themselves, and especially the structure of their social manners are all subjects of study.  But the more fascinating feature of Austen's writing was her uncanny ability to paint a personality that is completely real.  By the end of an Austen novel, you have made new friends and acquaintances that are probably more real than some of your buddies from college.  It is this characteristic that makes her stories endure the more than two hundred years since she wrote them without descending into stiff classical studies.  With the possible exception of Charles Dickens, there is no English novelist who has so consistently delighted readers and filmgoers for so long – and Dickens prime was nearly 50 years after that of Jane Austen, who died a few years after Dickens was born. 

I first read the book Pride and Prejudice when I was about 16 or 17 years old.  It was one of the books that I remember as a milestone in my life.  I recall pacing the room when I completed the book, inspired by the beautiful story, and devastated that it was over and I could read no more – spend no more time with these fascinating people. 

Nearly all of Austen's significant works have been transported to film at one time or another and many of them have been made more than once.  Just in the last decade or so there have been widely-distributed versions of Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and other versions of Pride and Prejudice.  But setting aside any literary discussion of what her greatest work might have been, it is a fact that the charming and inspirational story of Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy has made Pride and Prejudice by far her most popular story.  At least 10 versions of the tale have been produced since 1938, including a successful 1940 version with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennett.  It's also been made in other languages, and the story itself has been the basis for many alterations, including the charming Bollywood (India) film Bride and Prejudice.  It's almost like the muses of English literature have been insisting that filmmakers try and try again, because (in my opinion) none of the other movies, many of them nevertheless good, really captured the astonishing richness and appeal of the original book.

What made the difference this time?  Keira Knightly for one thing.  She deserved her Oscar nomination.  The other actors were uniformly up to their characters.  Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennett was the best one I've seen.  Rosamond Pike as Elizabeth's sister and best friend Jane was perfect in the part. 

Another factor was the very cogent depiction of the time.  Too often when Hollywood (or the British film industry in this case) tries to make a period piece the authenticity is destroyed by applying 20^th and 21^st Century technology for sets, hair, makeup and costumes.  Hair gel did not yet exist, and Supercuts didn't yet have an installation in small-town England circa 1800.  Clothing was simpler.  Bathing was not a popular pastime.  People were more plain.  Nevertheless, they found elegance in manners, language and the arts.

In the public ball (dance) where Elizabeth first meets Darcy the closeness of the people, the slightly disheveled hair and flushed faces, the slightly limp costumes and the genuine enthusiasm of people dancing in a somewhat worn public building carried me past the story itself and into the time and place where it occurred.  You could almost smell the environment.  Anyone who has a feel for the past in Northern Europe would probably agree that this scene was real for the time – the way it really was.

The setting for Pride and Prejudice is rural England in about 1800.  Women of the middle and upper classes did not work for a living and it was socially unacceptable for them to do so (a theme that was explored even more vigorously in Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility).  As a result, it was incumbent on a young woman to marry well.  There was no alternative but penny-pinching poverty, unless the woman was independently wealthy (or wrote successful novels, apparently).  Mr. Bennett is able to see to the comfort of his family, but with five daughters, there will never be enough of an inheritance to go around.  Mrs. Bennett's shameless matchmaking is shrill and incessant.  All of her daughters are old enough to marry, and the oldest ones, including Elizabeth, have been on the shelf long enough they are approaching their expiration date. 

Nevertheless, Elizabeth's absolute integrity is greater than her sense of need, and she frustrates her mother by turning down suitors who would have made her comfortable and secure, but don't measure up to her lofty character requirements.  This includes, at first, handsome Mr. Darcy, who is the richest man anyone knows, living in an enormous Georgian mansion at the end of a glistening lake, alone with his sister.  And of course scads of maids and butlers, etc.

Within minutes, I was simply thrilled to be watching this movie, and the charm never abated.  I haven't known Elizabeth and Darcy like this since I was 16 or 17 years old.  It is nice to have them back.