Pride and Prejudice A Film Review Essay - 1090 Words

Upon being assigned to write a film review for Joe Wright’s 2005 instant classic Pride and Prejudice, for a â€Å"Writing by Women† course my pulse quickened and my pupils dilated. This physiological reaction to the task before me was not founded in the same excitement that had the dozen or so young women in my class squealing and clapping with giddy approval. Rather it stemmed from a much more primal instinct—FEAR! A fear that was quickly confirmed; for, while my amygdila was still wrestling with indecision between fight or flight my fellow students had one by one shot their murderous glances, each like a pair of warning shots fired over my bow. I was under attack! My foe, the not-to-be-crossed cult-like Austen fan club sitting across†¦show more content†¦I found the film to be a surprisingly reasonable adaptation of Austen’s novel. Especially when one considers that, this latest film is only two hours long! Joe Wright, the producer and D eborah Moggach, the writer have done what the makers of the six hour long BBC made-for-TV three part mini-series failed to do—that is to make this epic-length classic accessible to the ‘now’ generation. Perhaps this is due to their three year preparation and deep consideration for Austen’s novel. After all, as Paul Webster (one of the film’s three directors) says of the novel, â€Å"it is arguably, the original romantic comedy† (italics mine). Without mentioning Webster’s lack of literary knowledge, (I am fairly certain that Shakespear’s Much Ado About Nothing came first), the book is without a doubt a classic and thus, should be treated as such. Wright and Moggach’s meticulous attention to the history, dress and geography of the Regency Period have definitely paid off. The viewer is easily transported back in time as the camera pans the lush English landscape and opulent interiors of some of Britain’s most majestic manors. In fact, Wright’s choice of Chatsworth, the country home of the Duchess of Devonshire, for the exterior shots of Pemberly (Mr. Darcy’s estate) was based off Austen’s own mention of it in the book and the widely held opinion that Austen was thinking of it when describing Pemberly. The decision to bring Austen out inShow MoreRelated Review of the 2005 Film version of Pride and Prejudice Essay494 Words   |  2 Pagesgreat reader, it is known that the book is always better than the movie. Try as they may, moviemakers can never fully capture the authors magic from the original text. I am happy to say that this is not the case in the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudi ce. Jane Austen was a fabulous writer and her novels have captured the attention of booklovers for centuries. The screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, takes Austens slightly rambling story and polishes it up and makes it easy for modern day people toRead MoreThe Representations of Femininity in Pride and Prejudice904 Words   |  4 Pageswith stories of love and romance through the transformation of her novels into film and television. All of her novels are about women dealing with romance, courtship, and marriage during a repressing period. Most of her characters and stories revolve around the lives of the upper class. It centers on the values, rituals, and manners of high society in England during the Regency Era. Her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 maintains the interest of its audiences as it did almostRead MoreThe Function and Importance of Letters in Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice1272 Words   |  5 PagesThe Function and Importance of Letters in Jane A ustens Pride and Prejudice Introduction In her classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen describes the tribulations of Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters, as she struggles to navigate the social mores and values of early 19th century England. During this period in history, correspondence was almost entirely through written letters but the postal system in London made deliveries a dozen times a day, meaning that it was possible to writeRead MorePride and Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright1305 Words   |  6 Pages For those that enjoy romantic costume dramas set in England, the 2005 film version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice starring Kiera Knightley and Mathew MacFadyen is the perfect movie to watch on a rainy day while sitting in a comfy chair, sipping hot tea, with a plate of biscuits nearby. Director Joe Wright’s and screen writer Deborah Moggach’s film â€Å"Pride and Prejudice† brings a romanticized slant to the world of the Bennet’s where the main dilemma facing the family is what to do with fiveRead MoreAnalysis Of The Film American History X1537 Words   |  7 Pagesonly a taste of the violence presented within the film American HIstory X (Tony Kaye). In his work, Kaye explores the origins of racism through the minds of Derek (Edward Norton) and his brother, Danny (Edward Furlong); however, the film tells the story of far more than these two brothers. It tells the story of all those who have ever overcame their prejudice feelings through the p rocess of introspection and their proximity to those they are prejudice towards. While the situations and character transformationsRead MoreThe Women of Brewster Place1495 Words   |  6 PagesKathleen review of how Mattie takes Lucielia in her arm and begins to rock her as a mother would rock a child that is unable to be comfored in any other manner. I can hear the cadence of my mentor stating get an education it can’t be taken away from you, you will be able to make a future for you and your children and no one will be able to take that away. â€Å"Mattie offers the soothing power of words and the water of symbolic baptism, Puhr (103-104), the baptism comes after the commission of an unforgivableRead MoreEssay on What Started the Zombie Craze and What Kept Them â€Å"Alive†?862 Words   |  4 Pagesdisease† and turns into a zombie themselves. The birth of the first zombie is attributed to the low-budget, locally made film â€Å"Night of the Living Dead†. This film helped â€Å"reanimate the horror genre, bringing a much more realistic vision of terror to the screen† (Machosky). Gary Streiner, the sound engineer for Night of the Living Dead said, â€Å"Bottom line, it was the first horror film to do what it did, which was devour flesh. For the real hardcore horror fans, that’s what they wanted and they had neverRead MoreLgbt And Indi Diversity2109 Words   |  9 PagesIndia includes its’ LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) community. This area of diversity in particularly isn’t without criticism, and faces many negative consequences such as prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. A Look at Prejudice, Stereotypes, and Discrimination The terms prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination are often used interchangeably. Often they will be confused between one another when each word means something different entirely and with each words comes a newRead MoreManners in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen3437 Words   |  14 Pages Pride and Prejudice Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice not only established her historical importance among scholars and critics, but continues to remain popular. Pride and Prejudice, a comedy of manners, was published in 1813, and is a staple of the English literature. It recreates the social world of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England and embodies the theme that preconceptions and egotism can overcome true love. Pride and Prejudice is somewhat autobiographical; emphasizes the key elementsRead MoreEssay Negative Stereotypes of Women1164 Words   |  5 Pagesthese negative stereotypes degrade a woman’s identity and pride. Many societal views placed on women such as occupational roles and their display in the media all express false facts. One distinct component of negative stereotypes is women and their jobs. While careers like surgeon, doctor and mechanic are referred as masculine, other jobs such as school teacher, nurse and secretary pose a sense of feminism. Society has placed many prejudices towards the way we see careers as being feminine or masculine

Essay on Saras Story A Short Story - 957 Words

I looked out the car window. Whatever might happen may it be moving to Texas. I used to live in California, but now we are moving to Texas to see if anything exciting would happen. We moved 16 times already, and I’m getting angry. We moved as old as I am. When I was born, we moved to Alabama. Then, when I was 2 we moved to Ohio. Then, when I was 3 we moved to Illinois. When I was 4, we moved to Michigan. When I was 5, we moved to Kentucky. When I was 6, we moved to Indiana. When I was 7, we moved to Washington. When I was 8, well, I don’t remember where we moved after I was 7. Oh, right! When I was 15 we moved to California.. I had only 7 friends! I thought Texas would be a change from all the cold. All we ever did was go to school. On the†¦show more content†¦She didn’t even guess that it was going to be triplets. My baby sister is on the way. She’s expected in one week. Just one week after we move to Texas! Mom thinks her name is going to be Emm a or Juliet. I think Eva is a good name for my little sister. â€Å"Ahh! Here we are! At home in Texas!† Dad exclaimed. â€Å"Sara, can’t you learn right from wrong?† asked Mom. Just in case you don’t know, I’m Sara Beth Henry. Don’t call me Sara Beth Henry. It bothers me! I have long dirty blonde hair, brown eyes, and a taste for My Little Pony, fashion, books, conversations, and typing on the family computer. Oh! And, call me Sara. Throughout this book you will find some extra sheets of paper with thick black lines on them. I climbed out of the Dodge grand caravan. Dad pulled out his phone. â€Å"2:22 p.m. Just at the right time!† He said. Michelle ran to the back of the car. Lilly stood by the door to the two story house. â€Å"We aren’t just renting the house, right?† I asked. My jeans with the patch ‘princess’ and ‘100% girl’ were falling off. I wore those jeans for seven days in a row, and mom didn’t do anything about it. She was having her baby soon and I said I couldn’t wait until it came. I thought about my new school we were goin to go to. I couldn’t help thinking about how bad it would be if I went the day after tomorrow. â€Å"Mom! May I please go to school the day before little sis comes?† I asked. Mom nodded. I said, â€Å"Yes!† so loud that our next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg andShow MoreRelatedMovie Analysis : The Movie Hitch Essay1489 Words   |  6 Pagesrelationship continues to progress while â€Å"The date doctor† realizes that none of his own methods are working for him while pursuing a relationship with Sara. At the end of Sara’s investigation she finally finds out the identity behind the much talked about â€Å"date doctor† that leads to her break up with Alex. 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The poem has many different readings, all of which are justifiable. The Aeolian Harp was composed on August 20, 1795. This was a short period when Coleridge was happy in his approaching marriage (Harper). SARA is the young lady he is supposed to soon marry. Throughout this poem Coleridge speaks to his wife (Wayne 73) showing his undying love for Sara in relation withRead MoreThe Jazz Singer1555 Words   |  7 Pageswas the first motion picture to have synchronized dialogue and words. It set the precedent for cinematography, live voice recordings, and real-time dialogue. The film was based on a short story written only a few years prior. The story was called â€Å"The Day of Atonement† and was authored by Samson Raphaelson. The short story was then adapted into an onstage musical in 1925 before finally becoming a full length feature film in 1927. The film follows a young man by the name of Jakie Rabinowitz. 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Saying Please free essay sample

17 On Saying Please The young lift-man in a City office who threw a passenger out of his lift the other morning and was fined for the offence was undoubtedly in the wrong. It was a question of Please. The complainant entering the lift, said, Top. The lift-man demanded Top-please and this concession being refused he not only declined to comply with the instruction, but hurled the passenger out of the lift. This, of course was carrying a comment on manner too far. Discourtesy is not a legal offence, and it does not excuse assault and battery. If a burglar breaks into my house and I knock him down, the law will acquit me, and if I am physically assaulted, it will permit me to retaliate with reasonable violence. It does this because the burglar and my assailant have broken quite definite commands of the law, but no legal system could attempt to legislate against bad manners, or could sanction the use of violence against something which it does not itself recognize as a legally punishable offence. And whatever our sympathy with the lift-man, we must admit that the law is reasonable. It would never do if we were at liberty to box peoples ears because we did not like their behaviour, or the tone of their voices, or the scowl on their faces. Our fists would never be idle, and the gutters of the City would run with blood all day. I may be as uncivil as I may please and the law will protect me aganist violent retaliation. I may be haughty or boorish and there is no penalty to pay except the penalty of being written down an ill-mannered fellow. The law doesnot compel me to say please or to attune my voice to other peoples sensibilities any more than it says that I shall not wax my moustache or dye my hair or wear ringlets down my back. It does not recognize the laceration of our feelings as a case for compensation. There is no allowance for moral and intellectual damages in these matters. 112 Textbook This does not mean that the damages are negligible. It is probable that the lift-man was much more acutely hurt by what he regarded as a slur upon his social standing than he would have been if he had a kick on the shins, for which he could have got a legal redress. The pain of a kick on the shins soon passes away but the pain of a wound to our self-respect or our vanity may poison a whole day. I can imagine that lift-man, denied the relief of throwing the author of his wound out of the lift, brooding over the insult by the hour, and visiting it on his wife in the evening as the only way of restoring his equilibrium. For there are few things more catching than bad temper and bad manners. When Sir Anthony Absolute bullied Captain Absolute, the latter went out and bullied his man, Fag, whereupon Fag went out downstairs and kicked the page-boy. Probably the man who said ‘Top’ to the lift man was really only getting back on his employer who had not said ‘Good morning’ to him because he himself had been henpecked at breakfast by his wife, to whom the cook had been insolent because the housemaid had ‘answered her back’. We infect the world with our ill humours. Bad manners probably do more to poison the stream of the general life than all the crimes in the calendar. For one wife who gets a black eye from an otherwise good natured husband there are a hundred who live a life of martyrdom under the shadow of a morose temper. But all the same the law cannot become the guardian of our private manners. No Decalogue could cover the vast area of offences and no court could administer a law which governed our social civilities, our speech, the tilt of our eyebrows and all our moods and manners. But though we are bound to endorse the verdict against the lift-man most people will have a certain sympathy with him. While it is true that there is no law that compels us to say ‘Please’, there is a social practice much older and much more sacred than any law which enjoins us to be civil. And the first requirement of civility is that we should acknowledge a service. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ are the small change with which we pay our way as social beings. They are the little courtesies by which we keep the machine of life oiled and running sweetly. They put our intercourse upon the basis of a friendly co operation an easy give and take, instead of on the basis of superiors dictating to inferiors. It is a very vulgar mind that would wish to command where he can Textbook 113 have the service for asking, and have it with willingness and good feeling instead of resentment. I should like to feature in this connection my friend, the polite conductor. By this discriminating title, I do not intend to suggest a rebuke to conductors generally. On the contrary, I am disposed to think that there are few classes of men who come through the ordeal of a very trying calling better than bus conductors do. Here and there you will meet an unpleasant specimen who regards the passengers as his natural enemies as creatures whose chief purpose on the bus is to cheat him, and who can only be kept reasonably honest by a loud voice and an aggressive manner. But this type is rare rarer than it used to be. I fancy the public owes much to the Underground Railway Company, which also runs the buses, for insisting on a certain standard of civility in its servants and taking care that that standard is observed. In doing this it not ony makes things pleasant for the travelling public, but performs an important social service. It is not, therefore, with any feeling of unfriendliness to conductors as a class that I pay a tribute to a particular member of that class. I first became conscious of his existence one day when I jumped on to a bus and found that I had left home without any money in my pocket. Everyone has had the experience and knows the feeling, the mixed feeling, which the discovery arouses. You are annoyed because you look like a fool at the best and like a knave at the worst. You would not be at all surprised if the conductor eyed you coldly as much as to say, ‘Yes I know that stale old trick. Now then, off you get. ’ And even if the conductor is a good fellow and lets you down easily, you are faced with the necessity of going back and the invonvenience, perhaps, of missing your train or your engagement. Having searched my pockets in vain for stray coppers, and having found I was utterly penniless, I told the conductor with as honest a face as I could assume that I couldnt pay the fare, and must go back for money. ‘Oh, you neednt get off: thats all right’, said he. ‘All right’, said I, ‘but I havent a copper on me. ’ ‘Oh Ill book you through, he replied. ‘Where dye want to go ? ’ and 114 Textbook he handled his bundle of tickets with the air of a man who was prepared to give me a ticket for anywhere from the Bank to Hong Kong. I said it was very kind of him, and told him where I wanted to go, and as he gave me the ticket I said, ‘But where shall I send the fare? ’ ‘Oh, youll see me some day all right’, he said cheerfully, as he turned to go. And then, luckily, my fingers, still wandering in the corners of my pockets lighted on a shilling and the account was squared. But that fact did not lessen the glow of pleasure which so good-natured an action had given me. A few days after, my most sensitive toe was trampled on rather heavily as I sat reading on the top of a bus. I looked up with some anger and more agony, and saw my friend of the cheerful countenance. ‘Sorry, sir’, he said. ‘I know these are heavy boots. Gotem because my own feet get trod on so much, and now Im treading on other peoples. Hope I dint hurt you, sir,’ He had hurt me but he was so nice about it that I assured him he hadnt. After this I began to observe him whenever I boarded his bus, and found a curious pleasure in the constant good nature of his bearing. He seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of patience and a gift for making his passengers comfortable. I noticed that if it was raining he would run up the stairs to give some one the tip that there was ‘room inside’. With old people he was as considerate as a son, and with children as solicitous as a father. He had evidently a peculiarly warm place in his heart for young people, and always indulged in some merry jest with them. If he had a blind man on board it wasnt enough to set him down safely on the pavement. He would call to Bill in front to wait while he took him across the road or round the corner, or otherwise safely on his way. In short, I found that he irradiated such an atmosphere of good temper and kindliness that a journey with him was a lesson in natural courtesy and good manners. What struck me particularly was the ease with which he got through his work. If bad manners are infectious, so also are good manners. If we encounter incivility most of us are apt to become uncivil, but it is an unusually uncouth person who can be disagreeable with sunny people. It is with manners as with the weather. ‘Nothing clears up my spirits like a fine day’, said Keats, and a cheerful person descends on even the gloomiest of us ith something of the Textbook 115 benediction of a fine day. And so it was always fine weather on the polite conductors bus, and his own civility, his conciliatory address and good humoured bearing infected his passengers. In lightening their spirits he lightened his own task. His gaiety was not a wasteful luxury, but a sound investment. I have missed him from my bus route of late; but I hope that only means that he has carried his sunshine on to another road. It cannot be too widely diffused in a rather drab world. And I make no apologies for writing a panegyric on an unknown bus conductor. If wordsworth could gather lessons of wisdom from the poor leechgatherer ‘on the lonely moor,’ I see no reason why lesser people should not take lessons in conduct from one who shows how a very modest calling may be dignified by good temper and kindly feeling. It is a matter of general agreement that the war has had a chilling effect upon those little every day civilities of behaviour that sweeten the general air. We must get those civilities back if we are to make life kindly and tolerable for each other. We cannot get them back by invoking the law. The policeman is a necessary symbol and the law is a necessary institution for a society that is still somewhat lower than the angels. But the law can only protect us against material attack. Nor will the lift mans way of meeting moral affront by physical violence help us to restore the civilities. I suggest to him, that he would have had a more subtle and effective revenge if he had treated the gentleman who would not say Please with elaborate politeness. He would have had the victory, not only over the boor, but over himself, and that is the victory that counts. The polite man may lose the material advantage, but he always has the spiritual victory. I commend to the lift-man a story of Chesterfield. In his time the London streets were without the pavements of today and the man who took the wall had the driest footing. ‘I never give the wall to a scoundrel,’ said a man who met Chesterfield one day in the street. ‘I always do’, said Chesterfield, stepping with a bow into the road. I hope the lift man will agree that his revenge was much more sweet than if he had flung the fellow into the mud. A. G. Gardiner 116