Jane Austen with sex and politics
Mansfield Park
Starring Frances O'Connor and Harold Pinter
Directed by Patricia Rozema
Review by Jonathan Strauss
I haven't read the Jane Austen novel of the same name, upon which this film is based, as well as her early letters and journals. But I don't think this matters for seeing the film.
Jane Austen kept sex and politics very much more remote from her books than Patricia Rozema has kept them from this film.
For example, one strong theme of the film is the rejection by some of the younger generation of Mansfield Park of the slavery on which the wealth of its patriarch, Sir Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter), is based.
Such modernisation, however, rightly takes account of the knowledge and sensibilities of a contemporary audience. For example, lesbian allusions in the film acknowledge both the existence and the repression of lesbianism.
Austen's works did express her conservatism, of course. Her leading female characters move in a narrow world dominated by a desire for marriage and a need to marry according to their station in life — that is, their class.
But within this framework there was a progressive element central to the development of Austen's stories. According to Austen, a woman should be well-educated, have opportunities to develop her talents and marry someone she chooses and with whom she will be happy — rather than whichever dolt her family or finances foist upon her.
Rozema's Mansfield Park is true to this. Fanny Price (played as a child by Hannah Taylor-Gordon and as an adult by Frances O'Connor) is sent from her poverty-stricken family to live with her aunts, where she is received like a servant. Sir Thomas' younger son, Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller), takes a liking to her and the force of her character eventually compels Sir Thomas (presented simultaneously as dictatorial, lecherous and gentle) to treat her as a member of the family.
Fanny's discovery of life and love is as much about her understanding of the real character of slavery as it is about her refusal of the considerable charms of Henry Crawford (Alessandro Nivola), visiting Mansfield Park from London with his sister, Mary (Embeth Davidtz).
The film's treatment of the Crawfords shows, though, how difficult it is to take a feminist statement from the original story.
Henry breaks his promise to wait for Fanny, although only after she first accepts and then rejects his marriage offer. Mary, on the other hand, is calculating as she speculates on how the possible death of Sir Thomas' older son, who is ill, may bring wealth to her prospective marriage to Edmund.
You wouldn't wish anything less than a happy ending for Fanny, since you've enjoyed her company for the last two hours, but still her happy ending can only come by painting Mary in a bad light.
Suckers for costume drama (admit it) should see Mansfield Park, not for its representation of the past, but for its reflection on the present.