Jane Austen described her writing as small and more detailed just as a fine brush in a piece of ivory (not two inches wide). We all know...
Jane Austen described her writing as small and more detailed just as a fine brush in a piece of ivory (not two inches wide).
We all know that small is better, right? Austen can be described as one of the greatest English-language novelists to ever write. Her novels include six classics such as Pride and prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield park. It is also the 250th birthday of her birth in December 16 1775.
Her books are classic and, in a lot of sense, the best. They are composed in a new, plain language in which she made manifest her quick wit and her high moral and psychological insight. The mood of the two works is different, though, that readers think, "What Jane Austen book are you? for years.
You can also pose the same question as far as film and television versions of Austen are concerned. Her books have been brought to the cinema and television numerous times; the first to a severely costumed adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1940. Her style and humour, her attention to finer points and her stories built well around romance also conform quite well to the conventions of contemporary romantic comedies, often with a breath of Merchant-Ivory good taste. Yet any adaptation that is a success, however radically transformed, will bring out her larger themes, her class, money, morality, position of women, family, and heart and mind education.
And that can be a long way. Sense and Sensibility has had eight adaptations, such as the Indian musical Kandukondain Kandukondain, and 2011 film Scents and Sensibility, a pun on the title. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a YouTube show where Pride and Prejudice was given a contemporary twist. And then, there is the contemporary movie hit Clueless that is 30 years old on July 19. Clueless is an adaptation of Emma, although you will not find the name in the credits.
The austere intellect of her writing, as clean as masonry in a garden walk and with just a slight shine of irony, can be depicted, Austen fans might say, with none of their faves of the movies and television. This quote by Mansfield park marks, It was a gloomy future and all she could do is to cover it with mist and hoping that one day when the mist was no more, she could see what was destined otherwise. But even Austen herself said that the most important thing to her as a writer was that she was able to laugh at society, at herself and at other people. I am positive I should be hangd, before I had got through the first chapter, she told me.
It comes directly to Austen movies and couple of televisions shows, in order of my least favourite to my favourite. The books of Austen are surprisingly good, however, when you read them with love and respect. The latter one would be the only one considered unrewarding. All of them can be streamed.
1. Clueless (1995) Well, you definitely can say that this adaptation is by far the least faithful to any of the works of Austen. writer- director Amy Heckerling transports the action to contemporary Beverly Hills and transforms Austen (by way of her incarnation, Emma,) the smart but not very smart girl, into smart but not very smart high school girl Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone that can describe a cute boy as in the language of 1995, "Okay, so he's kind of a Baldwin."
Although, Clueless transforms Cher, the queen bee of a culturally diverse community, in love with Christian (Justin Walker), a gay boy who loves to shop, she never loses the loving, funny eyes that Austen has on her problematic heroine. Heckerling, who can also have such feelings towards Silverstone, makes dazzling ties back to the original story.
a) In the book, a bunch of beggar children terrorizes and bully the Harriet Smith, a friend to Emma the one, who is not as fortunate as she is. In Clueless, Harriet has chimed into an ugly girl in a high school newbie whom they call Tai (Brittany Murphy). There were some boys who rocked at the mall and she is afraid of them.
In the book Emma receives a letter of Harriet after they have grown painfully apart due to Mr. Knightley. According to the letter, Harriet comments that she thought that there was some resentment of her. This animosity is quite shinier in the movie by the famous insult given to Cher by Tai, as "You are a virgin who cannot drive". Driven to the core, Cher wonders what can be done, with a saddened, low-pitched voice she keeps repeating, "That was way harsh, Tai."
The kittenish softness of a performance that was all the more attractive because of the attractive beauty of Silverstone delivers this line with precisely the right amount of self-consciousness and chagrin (which can be affirmed of her reaction a few seconds later: I could feel the chunks start to rise up in my throat). Her Cher is one who is so similar to the heroine that Austen created in 1815, but a century and eighty years later. Emma has the right to be perfect. And Silverstone is all good.