Knightley’s performance is so light and yet fierce that she makes the story almost realistic; this is not a well-mannered Masterpiece Theatre but a film where strong-willed young people enter life with their minds at war with their hearts. The movie is more robust than most period romances. It is set earlier than most versions of the story, in the late 1700s, when Austen wrote the first draft; that was a period more down to earth than 1813, when she revised and published it. The young ladies don’t look quite so much like illustrations for Vanity Fair, and there is mud around their hems when they come back from a walk. It is a time of rural realties: When Mrs. Bennet sends a daughter to visit Netherfield Park, the country residence of Mr. Bingley, she sends her on horseback, knowing it will rain and she will have to spend the night.
The plot by this point has grown complicated. It is a truth universally acknowledged by novelists that before two people can fall in love with each other, they must first seem determined to make the wrong marriage with someone else. It goes without saying that Lizzie fell in love with young Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) the moment she saw him, but her pride has been wounded. She tells Jane: “I might more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine.”
The stakes grow higher. She is told by the dashing officer Wickham (Rupert Friend) that Darcy, his childhood friend, cheated him of a living that he deserved. And she believes that Darcy is responsible for having spirited Bingley off to London to keep him out of the hands of her sister Jane. Lizzie even begins to think she may be in love with Wickham. Certainly she is not in love with the Reverend Collins (Tom Hollander), who has a handsome living and would be Mrs. Bennet’s choice for a match. When Collins proposes, the mother is in ecstasy, but Lizzie declines and is supported by her father (Donald Sutherland), a man whose love for his girls outweighs his wife’s financial planning.
All of these characters meet and circle one another at a ball in the village Assembly Hall, and the camera circles them. The sequence involves one unbroken shot and has the same elegance as Visconti’s long single take as he follows the count through the ballrooms in The Leopard. We see the characters interacting, we see Lizzie avoiding Collins and enticing Darcy, we understand the politics of these romances, and we are swept up in the intoxication of the dance. In a later scene, as Lizzie and Darcy dance together, everyone else somehow vanishes (in their eyes, certainly) and they are left alone within the love they feel.
But a lot must happen before the happy ending, and I particularly admired a scene in the rain where Darcy and Lizzie have an angry argument. This argument serves two purposes: It clears up misunderstandings, and it allows both characters to see each other as the true and brave people they really are. It is not enough for them to love each other; they must also love the goodness in each other, and that is where the story’s true emotion lies.
The movie is well cast from top to bottom; like many British films, it benefits from the genius of its supporting players. Judi Dench brings merciless truth-telling to her role as a society arbiter; Sutherland is deeply amusing as a man who lives surrounded by women and considers it a blessing and a fate; and as his wife, Blethyn finds a balance between her character’s mercenary and loving sides. She may seem unforgivably obsessed with money, but better be obsessed with money now than with poverty hereafter.
When Lizzie and Darcy finally accept each other in Pride & Prejudice, I felt an almost unreasonable happiness. Why was that? I am impervious to romance in most films, seeing it as a manifestation of box office requirements. Here it is different, because Darcy and Elizabeth are good and decent people who would rather do the right thing than convenience themselves. Anyone who will sacrifice their own happiness for higher considerations deserves to be happy. When they realize that about each other their hearts leap and, reader, so did mine.
Say Anything
PG-13, 100 m., 1989
John Cusack (Lloyd Dobler), Ione Skye (Diane Court), John Mahony (James Court). Directed by Cameron Crowe and produced by James L. Brooks and Polly Platt. Screenplay by Crowe.
Then first time Lloyd Dobler calls Diane Court to ask her out on a date, he dials all but one digit of her phone number, then looks in the mirror and brushes his hair with his hand before dialing the final digit. He wants to look his best. He gets her father on the phone. Her father has received a lot of phone calls from guys wanting to talk to his daughter. Lloyd stumbles through his message, carefully repeats his number twice, and then says, “She’s pretty great, isn’t she?” “What?” asks the father. “I said, she’s pretty great.” “Yes,” says her dad, “she is.”
This scene, early in Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything, reflects many of the virtues of the movie. In a lesser film Lloyd would have gotten Diane on the phone with the first try. But it is important to establish her father, James (John Mahoney), as a major player, a man whose daughter chose to live with him after a divorce, and who tells her she can say anything to him. The movie is about honesty, which is why Mr. Court has to grin at Lloyd’s earnest closing line, and it is also about dishonesty.
Lloyd (John Cusack) is tall, loyal, and true, tells the truth, and seems especially frank about the fact that he seems to have absolutely no future. His career plans do not include college. He talks vaguely about a future as a professional kickboxer, but the only time we see him engaged in the sport professionally is when he’s teaching a class of preschoolers. Diane (Ione Skye), on the other hand, is a golden girl, the class valedictorian, winner of a scholarship to England.
She is also beautiful, which Lloyd appreciates with every atom of his being, but she doesn’t date much, because she intimidates the other students. When Lloyd confides his love to his best friend, Corey (Lili Taylor), she says simply, “She’s too smart for you.”’ When Lloyd takes Diane to the all-night party on high school graduation night, someone asks her, “Why’d you come with Lloyd Dobler?” and she says, “He made me laugh.”
Diane perceives that she does not laugh enough. She tells her dad how much she enjoyed the party, and says she missed that kind of fun in high schooclass="underline" “It’s like I held everyone away from me.” Lloyd and Diane begin to date, tentatively, and she notices that he is instinctively a gentleman. The moment he wins her heart is when he warns her not to step near some glass in a parking lot.
Lloyd’s biggest problem, in the eyes of Mr. Court, is his complete lack of a reasonable career plan. Even Lloyd hardly seems to think kickboxing is a workable profession. But he’s clear about what he doesn’t want to do: “I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything as a career.”
Most people go to love stories to identify, in one way or another, with the lovers. Usually they are unworthy of our trust, especially in the modern breed of teenage movies that celebrate cynicism, vulgarity, and ignorance. Say Anything is kind of ennobling. I would like to show it to the makers of a film like Slackers and ask them if they do not feel shamed. Say Anything exists entirely in a real world, is not a fantasy or a pious parable, has characters whom we sort of recognize, and is directed with care for the human feelings involved. When Entertainment Weekly recently chose it as the best modern movie romance, I was not surprised.