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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
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Some athletes are so naturally gifted, so physically capable, that they are precociously thrust above their age-group level into very rarefied competition. (Think Michael Vick, or Kobe Bryant.) A very rare few of these wunderkinder have the maturity, discipline, or sheer intellectual love of their game that enables a Michael Jordan or a Wayne Gretzky to learn how to make his teammates better, and so becomes truly worthy of his talent. But most, their young heads turned by dazzling success, succumb to narcissism. Not for them are the tedious fundamentals of footwork, position, and study of game-film -- they precociously conjure breathtaking moments of grace and anticipation, capture the headlines and highlights -- and then, suddenly, they are stars -- with entourages, flatterers, a thousand reinforcements.
It happens too in movies. In Beetlejuice (1988), Winona Ryder was an acting prodigy … and what since then has equaled it? Eric Roberts (Star 80 1983; Coca-Cola Kid 1985) seemed destined for superstardom, as did Mickey Rourke (Body Heat 1981, Diner 1982), only to see themselves overtaken by Julia Roberts (Eric's sister, the bitterest irony) and Bruce Willis.
Judging by Pride and Prejudice, such a fate may -- I repeat, may -- await Keira Knightley (Bend It Like Beckham), whose breakout movie was Pirates of the Caribbean. When first we see her as Elizabeth Bennet -- that modest, studious, observant Austen heroine -- she is cutely wrinkling her nose as if playing Bewitched’s Samantha Stephens. Her exquisitely beautiful face -- she is the ideal Burne-Jones model complete with a perfectly slender column of alabaster neck -- cannot sustain a complex expression past a couple of seconds. Throughout Pride and Prejudice her manner of acting is to pull a face roughly appropriate to the desired emotion, hold it stiffly, realize it is failing, then burst into excited laughter as if it's all a big joke that she's been in on from the start. It's out of period, out of place, and becomes really annoying once you notice it.
What then is director Joe Wright to do? He has chosen a work-around strategy, overlooking that Austen's Elizabeth is plain and meek, and cushioning Ms. Knightley's performance by providing her with a nearly note-perfect supporting cast, among them: Brenda Blethyn (Secrets and Lies) hysterically flutters as Mrs. Bennet against the yielding trunk of Donald Sutherland's (The Dirty Dozen) slightly-too-self-satisfied Mr. Bennet; Tom Hollander (Gosford Park) is a perfect -- pathetic, awkward, and yet moistly irritating -- nebbish as Mr. Collins. Only Judi Dench (Die Another Day) rankles, with her two-scene turn incarnating ultra-arch Lady Catherine de Bourg as a barking fishwife incarnation, and in coming across as a phoned-in reprise of her Elizabeth (Shakespeare in Love) or Lady Bracknell (Importance of Being Earnest). Indeed, ever since her M of the Bond films (Goldeneye), Dame Judi’s been stamping out the same one-dimensional character, much as everything Al Pacino has done since he discovered, in Scent of a Woman, that bombast can substitute for skill if you're old enough and your name is well known.
The real star of Pride and Prejudice is not the delectable Ms. Knightley (who when not giggling is mugging the crowd scenes in a thoroughly anachronistic manner) but Matthew Macfadyen, whose Mr. Darcy skillfully balances intensity, introspection, mute yearning, even abject humility, all without ever raising his voice or smashing the crockery. He's a deserving heir to Colin Firth's (Bridget Jones and the Pride and Prejudice miniseries) mantle of smoldering dark aristocratic romantic.
In a way, it's a shame. Pride and Prejudice gets a green rating in spite of its heroine -- Ms. Knightley is no Olive in Bullets Over Broadway, she does not sink the production so much as weaken it, leaving the chivalrous (in two senses) Mr. Macfadyen to convey all the unspoken love for both of them. The staging is spot-on, the scenery and costumes refreshingly real and true to the late eighteenth century, the characters boisterously engaging, and Ms. Knightley's profile in repose (frequently presented) is quite lovely. She seems intelligent, and with a couple of years' work on acting's fundamentals at RADA, the RSC or Drury Lane, away from the camera's adoring honey-toned closeup and whisper-catching boom mike, she could be a very good actress. But I fear that money, Hollywood, and fame will do to her what it did, much further longer in his career than Ms. Knightley when he went to Babylon, to Kenneth Branagh.