The Review of Pride and Prejudice: the book, the movie (2005), and the series (1995). | Teen Ink

The Review of Pride and Prejudice: the book, the movie (2005), and the series (1995).

April 5, 2024
By Aschayka BRONZE, Chalfont, Pennsylvania
Aschayka BRONZE, Chalfont, Pennsylvania
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

As you know, Pride and Prejudice is a very popular movie/series that is known almost by every woman to live. It is a story of a man, Mr. Darcy, who almost falls in love at first sight with a handsome woman, Elizabeth or known as Lizzy, but shall not tell anyone about it. The father of Lizzy is Mr. Bennet, he and his wife must find a husband for all five of their daughters (Jane, Lizzy, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia) so the women of the family don't live in poverty for the rest if their lives.

 

The book: Written in 1813 by Jane Austen, has 61 chapters and totals to 279-448 pages. It mentions that while Mr. Darcy battles with his feelings for Lizzy, Mrs. Bennet is trying to find a suitable husband for each of her daughters and discovers a few men; Mr. Bingley who is new to town, very wealthy, best friends with Mr. Darcy, and falls in love with Jane, Mr. Collins, who is the daughters' cousin, makes an okay amount of money, falls in what he thinks is love with Lizzy, and the soldiers of London who dance with the youngest sisters, Lydia and Kitty. It continues with conflicts but ends with Lizzy marrying Mr. Darcy and Jane marrying Mr. Bingley.

 

The movie (2005): Is 2 hours and 8 minutes long. It has the major details from the book but lacking minor parts that could make the movie and storyline better. Like how it is more modernized with the way the rooms look, the dresses, and even the music played. I think it ruins the theme of how the book portrays the 1800's. Matthew Macfadyen plays Mr. Darcy and Keira Knightley who plays Lizzy. I think they work fine for the parts they were given but I also think Matthew portrays Mr. Darcy a little bit like a complaining big baby and also didn’t show a small glint of love for Keira's character in the first ball scene.

 

The series (1995): Unlike the movie, the series has 6 episodes which are each about 53 minutes long so there is a lot of attention to detail. From the clothes, hair, rooms and landscapes, music, the plot, to the characters themselves. For example: Mrs. Bennet is shown as a gossiping, very enthusiastic, and exaggerated woman. She is always too upset or too happy. She's either squealing with happiness or whining like a little girl to Mr. Bennet. Talking about characters, Colin Firth plays Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle plays Lizzy. I think they played their parts perfectly. Colin shows Mr. Darcy as a handsome, rude, mysterious man. Throughout of the series, he seems to be always to be staring at Lizzy whenever she enters the room. At first he cannot understand why she draws his attention. You can see him try to pry his gaze away multiple times.

 

For example, in the first episode, you can see that Mr. Darcy is a impolite to Mrs. Bennet and thinks that there isn't anyone fit for him while he and his best friend, Mr. Bingley, attends a ball. They have a conversation later in, Mr. Bingley points out Lizzy and how beautiful she looks. Mr. Darcy replies that the most handsome woman in the room would only be Jane and Lizzy is only tolerable. And might I add, Lizzy overheard all of this. She stands up, passes Mr. Darcy and walks to Charlotte, one of her friends, to tell her what she had heard. As soon as Lizzy passes by him, you can see a glint in his eyes that he was mistaken of her.

 

In the end, I would say that the series is my favorite out of all three because it has the details needed for the plot and the imagery of the clothes and background all correct. The book is good but is a just bit boring in my opinion. Again, it's not bad but doesn’t really pull me into the scenes written down and it is the original and the movie and series would probably not exist without it. The movie would be my least favorite because of the lack of small details and the modernization of the background information, clothes, music, houses and rooms.

 

I was drawn to watch this movie because my mother has been talking about it with me for a while, I keep hearing about it and wanted to know what the hype was about, and it's a girly movie about love, why not watch it?


The author's comments:

I loved writing this piece!


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