Death Comes To Pemberley - General Discussion

[Milburn Stone]

If it was me, and an innocent man's life hung in the balance, I wouldn't be relying on the aging judge to move his ass fast enough. Fortunately his voice soon joined hers. But I get why she felt the need to violate Georgian propriety.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Milburn Stone

[dcalley]

I guess if Lizzie hadn't had the judge with her they would have shoved her aside and ignored her. Because otherwise, why not skip the visit to the judge's house and just go directly to the gallows if you're going to be the one to yell "stop, I've got a signed confession!"? They were almost too late. I know, she's a woman. But was there no other authority present who could have looked at her evidence and stopped or delayed the hanging?

Edited November 13, 2014 by dcalley

[proserpina65]

I guess if Lizzie hadn't had the judge with her they would have shoved her aside and ignored her. Because otherwise, why not skip the visit to the judge's house and just go directly to the gallows if you're going to be the one to yell "stop, I've got a signed confession!"?

 

Maybe if the magistrate was there, he could've intervened (I can't remember whether or not he was in attendance), but otherwise, yes, they would've shoved her aside and gotten on with it.  Without someone in a position of legal authority saying to stop, the execution would've gone on as scheduled immediately after they dragged Lizzie off the platform.  Her antics would only have delayed things.  She had no authority to order the executioners to stop, but then again, neither did Darcy or any other of the men in attendance (except, as I said, perhaps the magistrate); they all would've been ignored as well.  That's why the scene was so fricking ridiculous.  No executioner would've stopped their assigned duties on the say-so of anyone who wasn't in a position of legal authority.

[Driad]

 

The "Stop the execution!" scene was not in the book.  IIRC, the confession appeared right as the trial ended, and the judge reversed the conviction in the courtroom.

[stillshimpy]

The only redeeming quality of the whole production was the house. The entryway and staircase were gorgeous, as were the grounds.

 

Agreed, that made watching it worthwile...ish...for me.  It's on Netflix so I plunged in and then just kept watching as ye olde "show I'm watching while working out" and wow, I'm glad that's how I saw it.  I think I would have been more critical of it it if I had time to look forward to it and hope it would be good.  Instead I saw the title and figured, "Oh...fun.  Everybody in."  

 

Strange casting choices though, as I see others have also noted.  Matthew Rhys is a truly gifted actor and a very versatile one, but Mr. Darcy is supposed to be (among other things) tall.  I enjoy the actor enough to try and overlook it, but combined with the actor playing Lizzie, it just didn't work.  Not to be unkind, but it isn't just that she was a bit plainer than Lizzie was meant to be, after all, (people sometimes fade a bit as they get a bit older, particularly in the days before makeup.  It's that she was completely unkempt throughout.  What the hell?  Yes, I know the whole "loves a good walk, didn't mind getting her petticoat dirty as she walked to see Jane"  thing, but there's no reason other than that to think that Lizzie was generally ungroomed.  

 

Plus, they sort of canceled out the "well, people can look a little washed out as they get a little older" thing, by flashback to both Darcy and Lizzie looking sort of ....spiritless.  The flashback to the first proposal was an entirely bloodless thing, whereas it was a fairly heated thing in P&P....and I also understood the whole "memory is slippery" thing the story was playing with , but when Lizzie flashbacked to her first ball as lady of the house and she still looked a complete fright, who still hadn't bothered to have her hair done (almighty Zeus, she'd have a damned maid, there's no reason her hair should look like she was badly startled all.the.time).   

 

Anyway, I'm seriously not trying to rake the actor over the coals.  She has a lot of things that are very attractive about her.  Her voice is impressive, well lit and she's an attractive person even if she's not a great beauty, but did they have to make her so purposefully dowdy on top of all that? 

 

Tonight we've switched your regular Elizabeth Bennet with Charlotte Lucas, do you think the diners will notice?  [/Folger]

 

Not a great story and although everyone involved is so capable and versatile, it was badly miscast for the leads.   

 

Plus I take it they added in Darcy and Lizzie bickering rather than allowing them to be happy?  Oh joy.  Because that really added to the bitter edge to this tale.  Ugh.  

[SusanSunflower]

 

Tonight we've switched your regular Elizabeth Bennet with Charlotte Lucas, do you think the diners will notice?  [/Folger]

Well done!  I'm about to re-watch.

Yes, they made Lizzy look like Lydia's poor relation.. care worn and unkempt as befits an over-extended mother, but not around prying eyes or guests. I'm too fond of the actress to reject that casting, but better costumes and a bit of pink in her cheeks would have let her shine as an wild English rose (still contrasted to  her china doll older sister and her rather coarse and flashy younger sister Lydia)  Six years later, Lydia's utter obliviousness wrt "living above their station" (even if feigned bugged me terribly). Who decided what about that?  It would make sense for Lydia to continue to put on airs and wear clothes that were not paid-for, but several years later she must have had a few confrontations with the financial reality of her marriage (even if Darcy was helping them out).

I was thinking about P&P and how easily, given time, Austen could have written a sequel of the couple's first year -- mostly Elizabeth's rapprochement with Lady Catherine, having Charlotte and Mr. Collins as a married woman, even Mrs. Bennett hysteria over Lizzy's first pregnancy, with some much more domestic crisis (one of the younger sisters? Mr. Bennett?) driving the plot.

Edited January 25, 2015 by SusanSunflower

[SusanSunflower]

I liked and appreciated this much more on re-viewing. There's a lot of texture to the relationships that I had largely missed or resisted (particularly conflict between Elizabeth and Darcy) that's well developed and then well resolved. It was disconcerting to have Darcy (Matthew Rhys) "upstaged" by the stunningly gorgeous Wickham  (Matthew Goode) with those blue-eyes (oh my) and Fitzwilliam (all lanky sun-kissed charm); and then to have Elizabeth (Anna Maxwell Martin) overshadowed in the physical beauty department by Jane,  Lydia, Georgiana and sundry other young women. (For some reason, on my TeeVee, the color was "better"  and she looked much less washed out and/or made sallow by the green costumes they put her in.)There were so many characters barely touched on that I really didn't remember them, having failed to register them on first viewing. I'm not sure I'd watch it a third time, but I might well on some dreary weekend afternoon. Yes, it probably could have been a franchise. 

Edited January 29, 2015 by SusanSunflower

[editorgrrl]

The entire notion of poor Louisa being able to raise her illegitimate baby in an area when everyone would've known the child was illegitimate (I'm to assume without anyone caring) was utterly absurd; obviously the writers and producers knew nothing of Georgian societal mores when they wrote that crap.  Or maybe that falls on P. D. James' shoulders, but still total crap.

 

The TV PTB did it because they thought this would be kewl:

Very odd that they're setting up Wickham's son to mirror Wickham's own childhood relationship.  As a kind of companion (more than a servant ) to Darcy's son.

 

[Eolivet]

For some reason, one of the local PBSes was playing part 2 of this last night, so we watched. I've read Pride & Prejudice once in high school and only in the last few years saw the 1995 adaptation. But I had fun with this. A large part came from Spot the British Actor (could not recognize Demelza Poldark at all without her "red/ginger hair"), but I also really liked the court scenes. The notion of "objecting" in the middle of the opposing counsel's argument must be a "modern" thing, because it was comical how incensed the judge became about it. That, and the prosecuting attorney didn't have a believable "period drama face" -- he looked like he could be in a teen drama. The defense counsel wasn't much better. And the whole "pre-trial testimony/dramatic farce" that was people sitting at tables, having a drink while evidence was being heard was hysterical. Again, I'm not familiar with the period, so I don't know if this is commonplace, but it made good television, to me.

 

I was wondering why Darcy wasn't more annoyed at Wickham for trying to "frame" him (or at least smear his good name) by using an alias so close to Darcy's own name to seduce the maid.

 

But as someone who enjoys period dramas when they have modern pacing, and always enjoys seeing good actors in interesting roles, this was good Friday night viewing.

[Milburn Stone]

...the prosecuting attorney didn't have a believable "period drama face"...

 

This brings up a general question about period dramas. Can it really be true that people had different faces then? That hardly seems possible to me. Yet I understand what you mean. We, as an audience, seem to demand that faces look like what we suppose them to have looked like back then. And it's not wrong for directors to cast people in conformance with this supposition. Yet the supposition, rationally, cannot possibly be valid. Evolution has not caused actual differences in the human face in 200 years.

Edited August 30, 2015 by Milburn Stone

[SusanSunflower]

actually, I think it can ... I'm half Czech and growing up looked like none of the other kids in my class ... I was considered pretty, but no, I didn't look like the So.Cal ideal ... I was stunned in middle school to look Czechoslovakia up in the encyclopedia and see a photo of a whole bevy of girls who looked a lot like me ... not so much "German" or "Russian" or even "Hungarian" ... 

Much of the Europe didn't have much immigration until fairly modern times ... people were poor and only some were educated and staying put, near family and the family trade -- be it farming or some skill -- left even travel to a tiny number of people ... regional faces were homogenized across generations, but it's funny to realized that even "Germans" or "Irish" were considered recognizable physically on-sight in England. The United States had so many cultures it was more difficult so identity could be more fluid, but I remember as a kid being baffled at how other-people could identify others as "Italian" or "Greek" or "Arab" ... Granted this was 60 years ago, in Southern California where almost everyone was originally from somewhere else ... 

As for beauty, there are "new faces" considered beautiful these days that startle me ... Kate Moss's little cat-face for one. I think Natalie Portman is classsicly gorgeous in a true Audrey Hepburn way, and Audrey Hepburn was gorgeous but "funny looking" in her day.  

 

Deportment reflected class and standing within class.  Posture, speech and facial expressions generally more restrained by those trying to demonstrate their superiority.... a life time of which shows in one's face.  Think Soames versus Young Joselyn in Forsyte ... even Old Jos when we first meet him compared to his elderly man of retirement and generosity at the end. 

[Roseanna]

On 8/30/2015 at 5:35 PM, Milburn Stone said:

Can it really be true that people had different faces then?

Well, they looked older than people in the same age today, they had bad teath, or missing teeth, and they could have smallbox scars, decent women didn't smile so that teeth appeared (if a woman does that in an old painting, she is a prostitute).