1995
Screenplay: Emma Thompson
Director: Ang Lee
This story is based on one of Jane Austen‘s famous novels which bears the same name as the film. This author’s novels are mainly based on the British social class called gentry, which consisted of wealthy landowners who based their fortunes on the rent of their properties and the products they could generate in them.
The works set in a historical period past to ours help us to take perspective on how society has advanced, especially regarding the role of women. This work should be situated in the time around 1792 and 1797, geographically in the beautiful and exuberant countryside of southern England.
The recreation of the period is, in my humble and unaware of any historical rigor, quite well done. It is a pleasure to hear such beautiful and polite English, a gift to the ear; also to a mind ever eager to continue learning this lovely language. The settings, medical customs, society and morality are everywhere in the film, while I was watching it there have been moments when I was there, which is always positive for any story.
I think, however, that the photography could have made better use of the natural settings, or perhaps played with the shots a little more when it came to emphasizing the characters’ emotions. It’s clear in my head that this type of film explores and shows human emotions struggling with what the historical context oppresses.
The story begins with the dying Mr. Dashwood asking his son John, the fruit of a first marriage, to take care of his second family. He agrees, but when his father has already died he shows that he is a wreck when his despiteful, posh wife emotionally manipulates him into not helping them at all. The four women, Mrs.Dashwood widow and mother of Elinor (Emma Thompson), Marianne (Kate Winslet) and Margaret, who have enjoyed a spoiled life, are left without money (since they are not allowed to work at the time, at least not at any decent job) and without a house, since the property becomes the property of John and his wife Fanny, who is a snobby snake.
Elinor and Marianne are the protagonists of the film, their romances and heartbreaks, and how they face the change of life are the central axis of this story; although both are very close, they could not be more different. The title has been chosen to describe what the personality of each one of them values most.
Elinor is a woman who uses her mind to calm her heart and do what is right. Considering how oppressive this era is for human nature, this character shows great mental strength to keep her, and her family, afloat. Much of this strength is to maintain the social decorum that was necessary in the social context in which the action takes place. The poor woman is repressing all the sadness, all the displeasure that is coming to her in life… although well, this type of behavior tends to lead to the person or to exploit or somatize and make her sick.
Marianne is the opposite; she is passionate, in general she represents the rest of her family, clearly, both her mother and her younger sister are passionate like her, but personally I think she takes the medal. She is incapable of concealing any feeling, she is incapable of having her body subjected by the mind to social decorum; her heart beats with passion, with fire, making it impossible for her not to respond to it.
