Vanity Fair
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Movie Reviews of Vanity Fair
Movie Review: Excellent adaptation
Summary: 5 Stars
I truly enjoyed watching all 5 hours of this BBC adaptation of Vanity Fair. I found it as humorous as the original novel was intended to be. While some parts of the story are necessarily left out of this miniseries, I couldn't really complain. The casting was excellent and I found myself laughing out loud at times. Although some have complained about the soundtrack, I found it only added to my enjoyment. It was a great story, and a great film, and I highly recommend it to fans of this genre.Movie Review: Awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
This story was taken from a time when people knew how to write. The characters are fleshed out, the dialog is witty, and the plot twists are worth the journey. I love that there are many shades of grey. I think that enhances the storytelling immensely. I was drawn in immediately and was disappointed when it ended. Love this movie and highly recommend it. It's the best version of Vanity Fair that I've seen.Movie Review: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
This was good. In fact I had the jibber creepers watching it because I felt as if I was really having a glance at the people of the time. I found them frightening in a way and pondering our ancestors sort of thing.
I am grateful to myself for having purchased it. What fun to get so lost into something.
Movie Review: Simply the best
Summary: 5 Stars
The best movie adaptation. I love this movie and I love the book. The actors are brilliant.Movie Review: An emotionally distant BBC version of Thackeray's novel
Summary: 4 Stars
"Vanity Fair," first published serially in 1847-48, is William Makepeace Thackeray's tale of the fortunes of two women. On the one hand we have the ambitious and amoral Becky Sharp, the orphaned daughter of a struggling painter and a French opera singer, and on the other the passive Amelia Sedley, the wellborn but sheltered daughter of rich merchant. The two young women meet at Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young ladies, where Becky is a tutor of French and Amelia a student, and become friends. We then follow their intertwined lives as Jane tries to climb the social ladder and Amelia follows the dictates of her heart.
"Vanity Fair" is celebrated for Thackeray's disparaging and negative portrait of the upper classes of early 19th-century England. The characters are rather vile, the relationships are hopelessly doomed, and readers who were not the targets of Thackeray's pen have enjoyed it ever since. Like others I watched this BBC mini-series version of "Vanity Fair" after watching the recent theatrical film from director Mira Nair with Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp. Ironically, Natasha Little, who plays Becky in this mini-series, plays Lady Jane Sheepshanks in the movie version. I was bothered by the decision to make Becky nicer, because stripped of her amorality the point of the character is lost. By the end of the first scene on the BBC version I knew that Little's Becky was indeed an amoral vixen. The problem is that she does not seem to be smart enough about it to really win our sympathies, and that results in us being detached from the story emotionally.
Becky Sharp has long been considered the prototype for Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara, which is an apt perspective in terms of the character's literary heritage. But whereas we root for Scarlett to save Tara, win Rhett, and overcome all her other obstacles, Becky goes her merry way without our really caring about her one way of the other. True, the subtitle for "Vanity Fair" is "A Novel Without a Hero," but there is a sense of irony since the focus is primarily on the two young women, and all of the men are ultimately orbiting around them one way or the other. Still, even in such a social satire I want to at least enjoy the anti-heroine's progression, even if I find her unsympathetic (Shakespeare's "Richard III" is unsympathetic, and I find him fascinating).
This mini-series was written by Andrew Davies and directed by Marc Munden, and the fault in Becky Sharp's characterization belongs more to them than it does Little's performance (Frances Grey plays Amelia). There is a scene early on where Becky impulsively decides to steal some things as she is sent packing, and I found myself thinking not so much that she was bold but that she was being stupid. What you have to remember is that Becky Sharp is disingenuous to one and all. The only point in the entire drama where I felt she was stripped to honest emotion and thoughts about anyone other than herself is when on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo her husband, Rawdon Crawley (Nathaniel Parker), otherwise known as her entrance into high society, is telling her what she needs to know if he does not come back. At that moment she has the good graces to pay attention, treat the matter seriously, and not let what might be her husband's last memory of her be anything other than honest concern for his safety.
The script certainly is faithful to Thackeray's novel, but time and time again I found the acting to be a bit too formal, even given the conventions of the time and place (David Bradley as the Sir Pitt being the exception that proves the rule). Maybe I made a mistake watching the mini-series so soon after the theatrical film, because I tended to favor the performances in the latter, which is usually not the case when I am talking about a BBC version of a literary adaptation versus a theatrical release. Davies makes a major decision, understandable but still a major mistake from my perspective, in deciding to forgo a narrator, since that is the only way to get a lot of Thackeray's satire and wit into the proceedings. Since this is a BBC production so we are talking the same level of production standards we always expect to see from such period pieces. However, if you are looking forward to any extras on this DVD, forget about it.