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Mansfield Park (1999)

Mansfield Park (1999)

A decent, contemporary spin to Jane Austen’s lesser known novel

7.0

Movie

United Kingdom
English
Drama, Romance
1999
FEMALE DIRECTOR, PATRICIA ROZEMA
Alessandro Nivola, Amelia Warner, Anna Popplewell
112 min

TLDR

It's not a terrible adaptation, and it's intriguing to know that Austen sympathized with the abolitionists, but it does feel a bit disjointed relegating it only as a subplot.

What it's about

Born to a poor family, Fanny Price is sent away to live with her wealthy uncle Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, to improve her prospects. She’s unfavorably treated by the family, except for her cousin Edmund, however, this shifts when the family is introduced to the beautiful and worldly siblings named Henry and Mary Crawford.

The take

While better known for Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen wrote Mansfield Park, a novel that garnered differing critical interpretations, but still intrigued readers even today. The 1999 film adaptation does capture some of the original novel’s ideas, such as Fanny’s modesty, the Cinderella-like submissiveness as means for survival, and the quiet strength to remain as herself, but it also expands on certain elements that were mostly only alluded to in the original, such as the elements pulled from Jane Austen’s actual life and her own sympathies for anti-slavery. While the film isn’t fully faithful to the original novel and should be considered its own, Mansfield Park does retain some of the essentials that makes it distinctly Austen.

What stands out

A lot was changed. Purists beware.

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