Clockwise from top left: Pride & Prejudice (Focus Features); Emma. (Focus Features); Sense And Sensibility (Columbia Pictures); Clueless (Paramount Pictures)
As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].
Emma (2020)
Having written about one of my favorite Pride & Prejudice adaptations recently, I want to shout out another film close to my heart: The Autumn de Wilde-directed Emma. The chemistry between Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn—who play Emma Woodhouse and George Knightley, respectively—could power up an entire city. Taylor-Joy, in particular, makes for a terrific Jane Austen heroine in this film, playing a snarky, sweet, clever, and quirky lead; unlikable at times, and yet easy to root for, just as the author intended. I was also taken by Emma’s colorful Regency-era aesthetics and costume design. Plus, you can’t go wrong with an ensemble that includes Josh O’Connor, Bill Nighy, and Tanya Reynolds. [Saloni Gajjar]
Sense And Sensibility (1995)
Ang Lee’s Sense And Sensibility is the Austen adaptation par excellence—I just don’t think any other reimagining boasts as perfect a union of filmmaker (Lee), screenwriter (Emma Thompson, who also stars as Elinor Dashwood), and cast (Kate Winslet at her most English rose; Alan Rickman as a dashing captain; Hugh Laurie, hot, tall, and disdainful; an unnervingly chirpy Imelda Staunton; I could go on). This is a movie that aches, not just from the simmering passions and dashed hopes, but all the effort made to push those feelings down, either out of a sense of propriety or fear. The two qualities in the title are interpreted here as seasons—sensibility/summer (embodied by Marianne, so often flush with emotion) and sense/autumn (Elinor and her cooler head)—which Lee captures with golden lighting of varying intensity. Thompson proved herself one of the keenest observers of Austen’s writing—intuiting the most apt Shakespearean sonnet to mark the beginning and end of Marianne Dashwood’s (Winslet) and Willoughby’s (Greg Wise) brief love, and using her own performance to make evident what might have only been hinted at in the novel. Lee’s just as adept with stories of restraint, and marking the moment when the dam breaks. [Danette Chavez]
Clueless (1995)
The ’90s were lousy with adaptations of classic literature reimagined in a contemporary setting, and Clueless remains a high-water mark of the trend. Amy Heckerling’s film, which reimagines Jane Austen’s Emma in 1990s Beverly Hills, feels both timeless and extremely of the time in which it was made. Part of the reason for Clueless‘ success is how it taps into the frothier elements of gossip and messy young romance that readers have loved in Austen’s work forever. And, sure, I totally get the appeal of the yearning-forward, rain-soaked Pride & Prejudice adaptations, but there are few line readings I think about as much as Brittany Murphy’s “You’re a virgin who can’t drive.” [Drew Gillis]
Persuasion (1995)
Is Persuasion Jane Austen’s most underrated novel? Maybe. It’s certainly the author’s most mature, bittersweet work, featuring a prickly, older heroine and heavy themes of loss and regret. (Spoiler alert: It’s beautiful, and you should read it right now.) But the 1995 film version is almost certainly the most underrated Austen adaptation, complete with an achingly romantic second-chance love story and a pair of gorgeously understated performances from unconventional stars Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds. I’ve always been a Colonel Brandon girl (R.I.P., Alan Rickman) at heart, but Hinds manages to make a strong case for Frederick Wentworth supremacy by way of some seriously impressive yearning. The scene in which Anne reads Wentworth’s confessional letter, owning up to decades of repressed love and longing—”You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope… I have loved none but you”—basically hits like a Mack truck. Fitzwilliam Darcy could never. [Lacy Baugher Milas]
Love & Friendship (2016)
Of course snide and mannered Whit Stillman adapted Jane Austen (forging her posthumous epistolary novella Lady Susan into a sugar-coated dagger), and of course it was everything one could hope for from each artist: acidic, frank, deceptively elegant, and almost too clever for its own good. While Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny play off each other wonderfully, it’s Tom Bennett (who would go on to play Ulf White in House Of The Dragon) who steals the film as the complete doorknob Sir James Martin. It’s less married to the plot than to the mood of Austen, where words and wit win out the day, which makes it all the easier to enjoy without worrying about making comparisons. [Jacob Oller]
Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
This is a pick colored by nostalgia—for a high-school production of Pride And Prejudice where I played what I’m sure was a very convincing Mr. Bennett at age 17. For a healthy publishing industry. For a time when romantic comedies played in movie theaters and had Renée Zellweger in them. But I just threw Bridget Jones’s Diary on, and you know what? It still gets off to as good and quotable a start as you can hope for from a funny movie, literary source material or no. (Who’s to argue with a script that has “Great. I was wearing a carpet.” in the first five minutes?) There’s so much more to Pride And Prejudice than the Lizzie-Darcy-Wickham love triangle, but that plot makes a sturdy structure for 90 minutes of cheeky voiceover asides, Hugh Grant in peak-cad mode, and Colin Firth being just the sort of aloof leading man who could play Mr. Darcy twice over. [Erik Adams]
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Just when you think you’ve seen the best adaptation of a beloved story, a director comes along and refreshes it for a new generation. Joe Wright’s nature-filled reimagining of Pride & Prejudice breathed new life into one of Austen’s most famous books, and with it came a new free-spirited Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and a smoldering and mysterious Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen). Wright’s film is filled with period opulence, scenes shot during golden hour to give the movie a romantic glow, and swoon-worthy details like that shot of Darcy flexing his hand after letting Elizabeth go. It’s the unmistakable chemistry between Knightley’s headstrong Elizabeth and Macfadyen’s forlorn Darcy that keeps fans returning to this movie like a favorite book. That rain-soaked confrontation in the gazebo? Just kiss already. For a generation or two of Austen fans, this might be the movie version that sets their hearts aflutter, and for good reason. [Monica Castillo]
Keep scrolling for more great stories.