The remake of the Jane Austen classic, starring Dakota Johnson, oscillates between raw and boring.
It's hard to overstate how attractive Netflix is and the number of ways.
As a runaway from Bridgeton Netflix's success, Persuasion is a lackluster version. Referring to the Regency pastiche that Bridgeton made fashionable, she is fully convinced of its own virtues of enjoying the foam that makes Bridgeton so satisfying. It's an anachronism for Bridgerton's monkeys ("A 5 in London is 10 in Bath!") as if their audience should see them as initiatives rather than lame jokes that are now more than just jokes.
As a show for Dakota Johnson, it's a disappointment. Johnson's easy presence on screen was the payback factor for many bad movies before this one, but in the starring role as Anne Elliot, she does nothing to discourage persuasion as he swings his emotional pendulum into unforgiving boredom. Instead, he winks at the camera with a smile on his face in his office, as if to say, "Don't we all agree he's a wizard?" We do not.
As an approach to impress Jane Austen, it's a disaster. While the original Austin movie is devastating in its restraint, this one is broad in its humor, shallow in its emotions, and rebellious in its characterization. Unforgettable, he wreaks havoc on one of Austen's most romantic moments, undermining the iconic letter-writing scene until it loses all inner logic and with it all of its emotional power.
Taken on its own, purely as a movie, the persuasion is completely wrong. it's boring. It is not romantic. It's not fun. It's not sad. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it to exist, and the reason it ultimately provides is an absolute insult to all involved.
Persuasion, directed by Cary Cracknell and written by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, follows Austin's original plot. Rich, beautiful and charming, Anne Elliot was madly in love with the penniless young sailor Frederick Wentworth. They were engaged. But Anne's friends and relatives convinced her that she should not abandon herself at the age of nineteen to a man who had no money and few possibilities, thus breaking Wentworth's heart.
When you open the novel and the movie, it's eight years later. Anne never got over Wentworth, but now celibate, she gave in to dedicate her life to taking care of her sisters and her sister's children. During this time, Wentworth became a captain in the Navy. Now rich and respected, he's looking for his wife, and he's still mad at Anne for ending their relationship the way he did. Circumstances conspire to make him a guest at his sister's house, while Anne is also staying there.
Anne Austen reacts to these circumstances as she reacts to most things: keeping her calm on the outside and as collected as possible, while torturing her on the inside. The tension between the social pressures that forced Anne to act and her deep emotional pain is part of what drives Austen's persuasion and is what makes the reading so harrowing.
True, this type of internal partition is difficult to represent on the screen. Admittedly, the solution envisioned by Cracknell and his collaborators is unprecedented: they have gotten rid of it entirely.
In persuading Netflix, Anne criticized the mediocre behavior of l'heroine de la comédie romantictique des années 90, pleurant dans la baignoire, pleurant de grande quantités de vin rouge, pleurant alors qu'itelle tresde in tredssa viavert Head. When she's not crying, she's stealing loved ones' weaknesses for the camera or ignoring rejection in difficult social situations. "Sometimes I dream of an octopus sucking my face," he said at a party.
Meanwhile, Wentworth has lost the refined magic and energy of his biblical counterpart. Portrayed by Cosmo Jarvis, Wentworth is shy, enthusiastic and mysterious. Darcy cyborg without intimacy. Clearly visible, but there is no evidence of anything behind it.
The film changes briefly when Henry Golding arrives to play Mr. Elliot, Anne's cousin and Wentworth's rival for her heart. Golding is positioned throughout as the pure villain (although Cracknell inexplicably omits the plot in which Mr. Elliot actually appears as a villain). Your presence adds a welcome boost of energy to the actions.
Energy isn't usually here, a fact the movie seems to ignore completely. The persuasion continues under the apparent assumption that all of its anachronisms will bring Austen's former life back to life. where she writes Austen, with her subtle sense of irony and social irony: worse than strangers, because they don't recognize them. It has always been alienation. No, worse than strangers. We are old friends. Then you pull the camera back to scan the score, as if this movie is meant to impress you in the 21st century, the way Clueless assimilated Emma in the 20th. .
But the point is, Austin's persuasion makes sense in the 21st century. (So, by the way, Emma doesn't, a fact Clueless was well aware of.) Of course, social rules changed, causing Anne Elliott to hide her pain. But the emotions at the heart of the novel (loneliness, longing, despair) breathe strongly into the present.
Emma's adaptation of Clueless worked because moving Regency Standards to SoCal High School in the '90s was fun and smart. Emma has not explained any ignorance to an audience that is too stupid to understand. He was having fun with his fans.
A secret attempt to transfer modern customs to Regency England seems clumsy and condescending. The movie seems to think you're too stupid to spot Jane Austen on your own, so instead of trying to revive her work, she decided to give you a brief synopsis.
In an indelible moment of persuading Austen, Wentworth told Anne, "I'm half sad and half hopeful." Persuading Netflix is a huge pain.
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