Jane Addiction Part 3 - Mansfield Park

Welcome to my 10 week critique of films based on the works of Jane Austen. I will review each installment of PBS's "Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen" and also take a look at other adaptations of the same novel. Enjoy!

Mansfield Park
Synopsis: 10-year-old Fanny Price, the impoverished daughter of a drunk, disabled sailor and a once wealthy woman, is sent to live with the Bertrams, her wealthy, estranged relations at Mansfield Park. Being timid and awkward, Fanny is initially overwhelmed by those she encounters: her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, the imposing patriarch; her Aunt Norris, the domineering moocher; her well-bred cousins, Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia; and her aunt, the listless Lady Bertram. Though most everyone is pleasant toward Fanny, only Edmund reaches out to her as a friend. His scholarly interests shape her mind. She learns to find solace in books, being helpful and her secret love of Edmund. Though never treated as the equal of her cousins, Fanny quietly accepts her second class status and is grateful to her relatives for their generosity.

When Fanny is 18 years old, Sir Thomas leaves the family to tend to investments abroad. No longer oppressed by the shadow of his grave presence, the inhabitants of Mansfield Park rejoice in their newfound freedom. Maria Bertram becomes engaged to the very stupid but very rich Mr. Rushworth. Tom continues to indulge in drinking and gambling. And at the same time, brother and sister duo Henry and Mary Crawford descend upon the neighborhood. The Crawfords charm all of the young Bertrams, but Fanny is not impressed. She quickly notices Henry’s inappropriate flirtation with Maria and is further appalled and heartbroken to find Edmund enamored of flippant, money-hungry Mary.

After Sir Thomas returns home and Maria marries Rushworth, Henry is left to find another conquest. He surprises his sister by announcing that he plans to make Fanny Price fall in love with him. Fanny shrugs off all his advances and unwittingly becomes Henry’s obsession. He then determines that she will marry him and everyone but Fanny believes that this is her best and only chance at marital bliss. When she rebuffs his proposal, an infuriated Sir Thomas sends Fanny to her parent’s broken home in Portsmouth to contemplate her situation. Pressed between her wretched past and an uncertain future, Fanny is forced to make an extremely difficult decision.

Mansfield Park may be Austen’s most aggravating story. It is long and dense, full of ignorant, spoiled children, starring a seemingly un-heroic heroine who barely exists until the second act. Sure, there will be a happy ending – there always is – but, ultimately, what can we hope for Fanny? To gain the respect of a rather cold uncle? To comfort her cracked-out auntie? To win her dupe of a cousin’s heart? No woman I know would want any of these outcomes. Sadly, as you get to know the circumstances of Fanny's upbringing, these endings appear happier, indeed.

The problem with Fanny Price as an Austen protagonist is that no reader would want her life, because it’s just too hard. The problem with Iain B. McDonald’s 2007 adaptation of Mansfield Park is that Fanny’s life isn’t hard enough. The right/wrong, good/bad of this universe is rendered too stark. For example, take Billie Piper’s Fanny – she’s entirely too pretty and not particularly shy. Instead of portraying a woman who struggles her entire life to feel comfortable with herself, she plays Cinderella. Contrary to the Mary Crawford we find in the novel, who is so painfully perfect in her wit and charm, Hayley Atwell gives us a Mary no more complex than a bitchy flirt.

But that isn’t her fault. The worst part of this Park is Maggie Wadey’s script. She imported little dialog from the text and replaced it with vapid, plot-moving banter. She reduced every character to a paler, less complicated version of the original, including an Aunt Norris who barely harasses Fanny, and a Lady Bertram who sits up straight instead of lying in a stupor. These particular people just aren’t fucked up enough. And worst of all, we never see Fanny’s return to Portsmouth, because in this version, Sir Thomas isn’t quite so mean that he would send his niece away.

In the end, we have a heroine who doesn’t struggle that hard against circumstances that aren’t too unfair, only to triumph over a couple of really awful villains that you would never imagine liking in the first place. This is a complete waste of time.

Yet, it is no more maddening than Patricia Rozema’s 1999 Mansfield Park, which stars Frances O'Connor as Fanny. This adaptation is quite enjoyable, so long as you've never read the book. Who can resist the rich cinematography, the brilliant acting, the inherent feminist messages – the WHAT? Rozema, who also adapted the screenplay, brazenly recasts Fanny as an outspoken tomboy. Though O'Connor effectively wows the audience with her very modern pluck, she just doesn't have anything to do with Austen's Fanny. Harold Pinter's Sir Thomas winds up a true villain - brutish and cruel - and lest you think that he has any redeeming qualities, he’s revealed as a rapist slave owner in the New World, to boot!

To be fair, it is certainly true that the enterprising Sir Thomases of Austen’s time, the men who colonized the East Indies, were slave owners. But, Ms. Austen did not consider the issue in this or any of her texts. If you want to write a screenplay about an English abolitionist, by all means, do. But why make Fanny Price that person? By espousing modern-day "liberal" values, Rozema certainly makes Mansfield Park more palatable to the art house crowd for which it was intended, but in doing so, she completely overlooks the essence of Fanny’s majesty – her silent, infectious integrity.

David Giles’s 1983 Mansfield Park is truest to the text’s events and themes. With an ample 312 minutes spread over six episodes, Giles takes the time to develop a large ensemble of characters. The results are delightful. Sylvestra Le Touzel’s Fanny is appropriately invisible at first, with her unnervingly ghostly face and manner. She’s a disappointing heroine at the start but becomes more engrossing and sympathetic as we see the events unfold from her point of view. Socially sequestered from her wealthier peers, Fanny is able to see others for who they really are.

Within this crew we find a stoic but kindly Sir Walter, an equally tender and thoroughly doped Lady Bertram (portrayed brilliantly by Angela Pleasence), a pair of truly charming Crawford sibs, and an Aunt Norris that you long to smack from the get-go. The characters actually resemble those that Austen crafted, Fanny’s interactions with them even make sense, and her eventual triumph is all the more thrilling and believable.