All agony, no hope: A review of Persuasion (2022)

 

Leave it to the new adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion to bring me out of my school/pregnancy/newborn baby-imposed hiatus. I'm embarrassed to admit that out of all of the Austen adaptations in the world, my newborn daughter's first exposure to the brilliance that is Jane Austen came in the form of the newest version of Persuasion. I have plenty of time to make up for this, however.

I know this film is getting a lot of backlash right now. I'm not here to burn it to the ground, nor am I an Austen scholar. Frankly, I'm just proud of this post's title because it parodies a famous line from the novel. That said, I think it's worth briefly discussing the modern 'take' on this classic novel and why it doesn't work for certain (dare I say the majority?) of viewers. There's a lot of talk of gatekeeping when it come to adapting classic works of literature-- let me be clear now, I LOVE movie adaptations of books and I'm not trying to gatekeep literature.

I think what's messy about this particular adaptation is the mixture of modern conventions (the "Fleabag-ification," if you will) and period setting, costumes, and plot. Austen is famous for her marriage plots and her critique of her own society's fixation on class, status, and wealth. While Emma and Elizabeth Bennet are two heroines who can challenge the status quo (Emma because she is wealthy and Elizabeth because she is independent), Anne is not traditionally a heroine who boldly pushes back against convention. Here she drinks a lot of wine, cries in the bath, and drunkenly disrupts dinner parties with embarrassing statements while cheekily breaking the 4th wall and addressing additional commentary to the camera/audience. Anne's lack of rebellion in the novel (and I guess in the film) is the whole reason she misses out on love initially-- she was persuaded not to marry Wentworth because he was poor and beneath her, thereby showing that she embraces societal expectation when she is young, rather than pushing against it. It feels like in order to make this story palatable to a modern audience, the writers felt like they had to jazz her up and make her 'relatable' like when she drunkenly yells Wentworth's name from her bedroom and then immediately ducks away, dumping wine on her head, and lamenting her own insecurity. Whomst among us, am I right?

If you are on Twitter, or the internet in general, you may have seen memes floating around with lines from the film. While the "five in London, ten in Bath" line is perhaps an efficient way of explaining social dynamics and perceptions to a modern audience, I think the most heinous alteration comes in the form of Anne's line about her dream that an octopus is sucking on her face. While this scene is meant to show Anne breaking the awkwardness of forced acquaintance brought about by her social-climbing father and sister, the characters' reactions to her description of her dream are such that I like to imagine that only Dakota Johnson knew the lines and everyone else is reacting in real time. 

There are some things I did enjoy about the film. The colors are beautiful, the houses divine. I really like the costumes Anne's sisters wear. I appreciated the diversity of the cast, although it's not fully revolutionary given that the romantic leads are white. I also have to say that maybe this film is one that will get non-Austen readers to consider checking out her books, which is a good thing. That said, there are so many amazing adaptations of her works out there so why settle for this one?