Customer Reviews

Mansfield Park (Widescreen)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Mansfield Park is a love story set in Regency England. Elements of the plot and the characters will be familiar to Jane Austen fans, as this novel shares much in common with her other works. (In addition, the actress playing Maria also appears in Persuasion.)
The movie uses the main characters and basic plot of Austen's novel as well as her early works and letters as a departing point, being forced by time limits and the director's interests to pare down the novel and change some of the story's focus. This speeds along the plot but hinders the development of some characters and cuts out some of Austen's witty banter and biting social observations.
Patricia Rozema, the screenwriter and director, took some risks in making this adaptation. She has presented Fanny as a strong individual who writes, speaks her mind, and thus appeals to modern viewers. In addition, she has infused the movie with modern sensibilities. It is true that the other adaptations--and Austen herself--often neglect the world beyond the well-to-do as well as the darker side of their society. The frank depiction of Fanny's lower class family is the best realized of the director's intentions to more fully capture life at the time. Suggestions of sexuality, including an erotic scene between two female characters, for the most part intend to flesh out characters but may offend some viewers. The inclusion of drug use and slavery especially would have been more effective if woven into the story better, and a subtheme of the role of music and other arts is sadly dropped after suddenly appearing.
Although the screenplay undoubtedly could have benefited from some editing, the movie is enjoyable to watch. The modern elements detract from the sense of authenticity but do make this movie approachable for a modern audience. Frances O'Connor is captivating as Fanny Price, and Alessandro Nivola gives Henry Crawford a real sense of humanity. I liked listening for bits of Jane Austen's juvenalia and letters--some of the movie's best lines come from these works.
This is, however, my least favorite of the recent Jane Austen adaptations due to its unevenness. Nevertheless I recommend that all who are intrigued by this movie go ahead and see it, especially before you purchase it. You may love it; you may simply like it, as I do; or you may be so appalled at the changes from Austen's novel that you hate it. Bottom line: Give it a chance. It's not the best Austen adaptation, but it's not bad.
Note: the DVD has a widescreen version of the movie, the theatrical trailer, a short feature with brief interviews of the director and four main actors discussing what about the story and Fanny Price (as presented in the movie) appeals to them, and a rambling commentary by Ms. Rozema about her modern take on Jane Austen's work.

i think it's far too easy to get hung up on whether or not a film was "faithful" to the book it was based on. admittedly, many fans may end up disappointed that certain elements they expected were absent or changed, but the fact that film and the written text are such different media requires that, often, a novel will necessarily have to undergo alterations in order to work in the filmic medium. and that's ok, so long as we recognise that the film, whatever adaptation of whatever book it may be - in this case, mansfield park - is an entirely separate thing from austen's text, and treat it as such.

personally, i've always liked this film, if not as a "faithful" adaptation of a novel, then at least as a wonderful piece of postcolonial filmmaking.

I am a huge Jane Austen fan, and have read all her books at least ten times. This must be clearly understood, or nothing useful can come from this review. (To paraphrase Dickens.)

Mansfield Park is probably the least well-loved of Austen's novels in general, and this is partly because the book is far more serious in tone than her other, more famous works (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey). The heroine, Fanny Price, rather than being healthy, hearty, lively and witty, is a bit weak and sickly of body, serious and studious of mind, and, frankly, a bit of a tedious old stick sometimes. Of all Austen's other characters, Fanny Price most closely resembles Mary Bennet from Pride & Prejudice, who was ridiculed even within her own family for being so serious, so studious, and so completely plain.

Fanny is not an easy character to identify with, or to love, particularly in this day and age of self-help books, support groups, and psychotherapy (all of which she would most likely be involved in were she alive today). She is highly judgmental (or so I found her), for she has extremely high standards of behaviour that her family are all too likely to fail to live up to, and in the novel she seems to serve primarily as a moral compass for the reader. She is also, however, timid to a fault. When she speaks her mind in public, which she is seldom able to do, given how she is treated by most of her family, she often speaks so gently that those who would most benefit from her message never even hear her words.

Given this, the task of bringing Fanny to life on film, would be a daunting one indeed. How to write a screenplay starring a completely un-heroic heroine? The obvious answer - perhaps the only answer - is to change the character of Fanny, and this is what the screenwriter did. In this film, Fanny is everything she is not in the book - funny, lively, healthy, firm, decisive, active, and a writer. (In the book, she is a reader.) She is engaging and easy to identify with. We cheer for her and want her to come out on top, as in the end she must.

The story of Mansfield Park so hinges on Fanny being exactly as Austen wrote her that, after seeing the trailer for the film, I watched the movie more from curiosity than interest. As a film, it is entertaining enough. The story is similar enough to Austen's to satisfy anyone with a taste for the period but no extensive knowledge of the novel, and the casting and acting is good, as I remember. As an adaptation of the work of one of the greatest authors in English literature, however, it falls far short of expectations raised by the excellent recent versions of several other Austen works, Pride and Prejudice (BBC 1995), Emma (also BBC), and Sense and Sensibility (with Emma Thompson). It is no more faithful an adaptation than the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice (starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson), whose Lady Catherine disappointed me by being nice at the end.

The most jarring difference between the book and the movie, for me, was the reference to slaves providing the family's income. The eldest son's (Tom's) discovery and knowledge of exactly what has provided him with his comfortable life, is one of the movie's most dramatic, and certainly its most brutal, moments. In the book, Austen makes no reference whatsoever to what provides the family's income. She was, after all, a (mostly) gentle satirist about society and manners, and although she likely knew about slavery, there could be no need to mention it in her works of fiction. Indeed, in the book the prolonged absence of Sir Thomas Bertram (the story's other moral compass) seems engineered solely to allow his family to behave very badly indeed, and get themselves into such situations as could never have arisen had he been around, for life was very dull and predictable when he was around. There was no especial need for the destination to be Antigua; anywhere some weeks' distance away would have done just as well.

The injection of the modern sensibility of abhorrence of slavery seemed to me to be gratuitous, and an indication that, although he had a flair for the dramatic, the screenwriter had no particular understanding of or love for the original work, nor the patience to work through Austen's own plotline to the end. We did get there eventually, but I found this movie much less satisfying than the book.

Having been prepared to be lulled to sleep, I found this version of Jane Austen's book most witty, entertaining and engrossing. Doubtless some would disagree but I agree with other reviewers that it is an excellent production and representation of the work. Well worth owning.

I really did not enjoy this movie. It wasn't anything like the book. When I buy a Jane Austen movie I expect it to be based on the book. I think that the screenplay was crap. There was nothing about the slave trade in the book. There was nothing about Fanny being disgusted with her uncle because of Tom's drawings. Fanny wasn't a story teller this gives the completely WRONG impression of her character. The whole point of the book was to demonstrate the sweetness of her character and to demonstrate how different she was from her cousins. At the end of the book her uncle says that the making of a responsible and with a heart and good principles is to have some hardship when younger. Jane Austen as with many other other books likes to laugh at the aristocracy. She does this in Mansfield Park by making her uncle prouder of her Fanny, her sister and her brother.

Loved this movie and Johnny Lee Miller. Very romantic and well-played. Gives hope that true love exists. I would recommend this movie to another Jane Austen fan.

I was really enjoying the movie. I mean the first part was clean and inoccent. Then after she comes back from visiting with her family it just went down hill. The pictures of the slaves were horrible and when Fannie catches the couple in commiting sin. It was absolutly terrible at how much you saw. Definietly NOT one I would suggest watching.

If you love Jane Austen stories, as the British say, "Give this one a miss!" Our heroine, Fanny, is terribly mis-characterized (as compared with the book, and after all, what else is one to compare it with?); so too, her benefactor, Sir Thomas. Fanny is made out to be somewhat bold-instead of timid- and the Bertram scion is portrayed as positively mean. If these changes to Austen's brilliant story aren't travesty enough, this screenwriter chose to make the story into a campaign against Slavery--a theme never touched upon by Austen-on the flimsy excuse that the Bertrams have financial interests in Antigua. To give you an idea of just how far-fetched and far-afield this is, try to picture the lovely movie, Emma Thompson's "Sense and Sensibility" as being turned into a rant about the Abuses and Excesses of The Church of England, merely because one of the central characters wants to be a vicar! It's a clear case of taking too much 21st century liberty with a 200 year-old story.

As an enormous fan of Jane Austen, Mansfield Park is one of my favorite books. The emphasis on integrity in the book and it's innocence is completely destroyed by vile additions in this movie. How can anyone be so egotistical to think they could improve on a Jane Austin story by adding "politically correct" modern elements never even hinted at in the origional story? Jane would roll over in her grave to see the shocking, in your face sexuality gratuitiously added to her beautiful love story. I enjoy Jane Austin so much mainly because I don't have to worry that my senses will be asaulted by the kind of immorality Hollywood loves to depict so graphically. Shame on the makers of this film.

THE WORST ADAPTATION OF A JANE AUSTEN NOVEL THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN. THIS RIDICULOUS FILM DISPLAYS A COMPLETE MISREADING OF THE NOVEL FROM THE BEAUTIFUL ACTRESS WITH ATTITUDE PLAYING AUSTEN'S STRONG BUT MEEK FANNY PRICE, TO THE MANIACAL, MONSTROUS PORTRAYAL OF SIR THOMAS BERTRAM AS LITTLE BETTER THAN SIMON LE GRIS! GIVE THIS ONE A MISS AND READ THE BOOK!