BEFORE: Well, those last two films were a bit of a bust - so let's get back to basics with some, I want to say, Jane Austen? Yep, I checked, this is based on an Austen book. Hugh Bonneville carries over from "Iris" - technically I could have dropped "Downton Abbey" in here, it's been running on PBS except A) I have no idea if that movie qualifies as a romance and B) I never saw the series that the movie followed, so I fear I'd be totally lost. Maybe not, but we're not going to find out this week, I've got a schedule to keep.
"Mansfield Park" had been on one of the streaming services, Netflix maybe, and I just didn't get around to it in time - but that turned out to be a sign that it might be moving to another service, or even back to cable, and sure enough a search turned up that it was on Hulu with the Starz add-on, and that meant, YEP, it was running on the Starz cable channel too, I caught it last month. Sometimes it seems like the whole streaming and cable universe is complete chaos, but it's also possible that I might be STARTING, after all this time, to be able to figure out the patterns in the chaos. I put this on a DVR with another film on my list, "Easy Virtue", though I don't think I can get to that one this time around.
THE PLOT: Fanny, born into a poor family, is sent away to live with wealthy uncle Sir Thomas, his wife and their four children, where she'll be brought up for a proper introduction to society.
AFTER: "Mansfield Park", of course, is based on that Jane Austen novel where all the ladies and the gents in their fine dresses and dandy attire all go to that famous British water-park and all have a cracking good time, they let their hair down and change into swimsuits and they all get wet and wild. No, that's not this one? I must be thinking of something else - I forgot about my theory they didn't invent FUN in England until a few years after World War II. I think the four Beatles and the six members of Monty Python had a lot to do with that, when it finally came.
But I've now seen a fair number of movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels - two versions of "Emma" (also "Clueless"), one of "Pride and Prejudice" and one of "Sense and Sensibility". And don't forget about "The Jane Austen Book Club", which I also tackled last year. Of the six major Jane Austen novels, that leaves only "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey", and I'm not sure if anybody ever made movies out of those books. The BBC probably made some TV movies, for sure, but I'm just not aware of them.
Clearly there's a Jane Austen "formula" that repeats again and again - the central character is a woman, she's probably a stand-in for Jane herself, two people fall in love but there's a miscommunication or a misunderstanding, and they can't get married, not at first, anyway. Other suitors are entertained, there's probably a big fancy ball at some point, then a SCANDAL, and then eventually the two lovers who were always fated to be together can finally get together. Put a ribbon on that novel, Jane, and move on to the next book with a nearly identical plot, just change the characters names, am I right?
This "Mansfield Park" one manages to get a little political, there's some shade cast at the socio-economic system of the time, under which the oldest male child inherited like EVERYTHING and the other children got squat, so they really had to choose a promising career, or else marry well. Splitting up the estate, nope, can't do it, wouldn't be proper, anyway that's how so many kingdoms crumbled during the Renaissance, by divvying up each estate among the heirs until every bastard child ended up with an apartment, and eventually there just wasn't enough land to go around. So oldest child gets everything, and if you're not first, you might as well be last. That's how Fanny started out, as the child of one of those poorer families, but that means she's got a rich aunt SOMEWHERE, and one day her mother packs her off to go live in Mansfield Park with him and his wacky, lethargic family of weirdos.
Actually, Fanny's got two aunts, the middle of the three sisters is Lady Bertram, married to Sir Thomas Bertram. The older sister is Mrs. Norris, who works at the Bertram estate. Young Fanny is given a room upstairs, and she makes the acquaintance of the other children - Thomas, Edmund, Maria (pronounced like "Mariah") and Julia. Over time as Fanny grows up, she grows a lot closer to Edmund, who is her...cousin? Well, I guess that was a bit more socially acceptable back then. But maybe he's only a cousin by marriage, and they're not related by blood, because ewww.... Thomas is the older son, but at some point he takes ill, and we don't see him for the majority of the movie.
It seems like maybe Fanny and Edmund are headed for romance, but a pair of neighbors gets thrown into the mix, they move into the parsonage after Mr. Norris dies, and they are Henry and Mary Crawford, a brother-sister combo that also acts a bit like a couple. Again, ewwww.....
It seems like Mary's got her sights on Edmund, and Henry Crawford starts pursuing Fanny. Sir Thomas thinks it's a great idea for Fanny to marry Henry, only we all know she's in love with Edmund. She hems and haws and says something about how he "seems untrustworthy", but you know how it was back then, women didn't really have a say in who they were allowed to marry. No personal choice, and if you didn't make the "right" move and marry who "they" wanted you to, you could easily get cut off and inherit nothing.
Since she doesn't want to marry Henry, Sir Thomas sends Fanny back to Portsmouth, back with her mother and father, in the slums, until she decides to be reasonable. Henry comes to visit her there and even manages to charm her family, but he still can't seem to win her heart - is it because she's still holding out for Edmund, or because she still thinks Henry doesn't have the best intentions? She accepts his proposal though, but then wants to delay the wedding, so it seems she still has some misgivings about the idea. But Henry freaks out over the delay, and really, that's what you want to see in a prospective husband, somebody who's impatient and not willing to wait for the woman he loves to make a decision. That's a tip-off, Fanny, you're making the right move, he's shown his true colors now!
Late one night, after returning to Mansfield Park, Fanny makes a wrong turn in a dark hallway and stumbles into a room and finds Henry in bed with Maria, who's at this point married to Mr. Rushworth. How long have they been doing this? It's unclear, but perhaps they'd been secret lovers for some time, and true scandal hits the family when both lovers disappear the following day. Mary Crawford has an extensive, detailed plan for allowing Maria and her brother back into the family, after a period of exile, of course, but Sir Thomas decides it's better to throw all the Crawfords out of Mansfield Park, and this re-opens the opportunity for Fanny to get back together with Edmund, which is really what should have happened in the first place. Things look so bright that even the unseen brother, Tom, manages to get well, get out of bed and rejoin society.
Meanwhile, the true scandal here is that the family's been making money from plantations in the New World, where the work is done by slaves. I'm not sure if this secondary plotline was always part of Austen's novel, or the movie added this to be more "woke" and in-touch with the modern world. Anyway, eventually the Bertrams give up their plantation in Antigua and instead invest their money in tobacco, which is harvested in the New World. Umm, by slaves. OK, so we'll call that one a wash, and we'll try to be more socially aware in the future, mmkay?
Also starring Frances O'Connor (last seen in "The Importance of Being Earnest"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), James Purefoy (last seen in "Churchill"), Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Howl"), Harold Pinter (last seen in "Sleuth" (2007)), Lindsay Duncan (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Victoria Hamilton (last seen in "Scoop"), Justine Waddell, Sheila Gish, Charles Edwards (last seen in "Philomena"), Hilton McRae (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Sophia Myles, Anna Popplewell (last seen in "Girl with a Pearl Earring"), Hannah Taylor-Gordon (last seen in "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"), Talya Gordon, Gordon Reid (last seen in "The Others").
RATING: 6 out of 10 doves released during a marriage proposal (classy!)
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