mossgrymk

I see where the film makers have considerably sexed and jazzed up Austen's most somber novel. It is undoubtedly more entertaining and a whole lot less stodgy but as an admirer of the 1814 work I confess to a feeling of dismay (an emotion often felt by Austen women) that things that in the novel were left beneath the surface, such as the heroine Fanny Price's feelings about slavery and the sexual ambiguity of Mary Crawford are, in Patricia Rozema's film, shoved rather rudely in the viewer's face. I also did not like altering characters to fit turn of the 21st century Me Too tropes such as making Sir Thomas a leering, incestuous old man rather than the interestingly ambivalent person he is in the book with half of him in sympathy with Fanny for her travails and the other half in opposition to her desire not to marry the sleazy Henry Crawford because of Sir Thomas' conventional, paternalistic views on submissive womanhood.

So, have a good time watching but after you're done might I suggest picking up the original work and doing a little cost/benefit analysis? B minus.

It's sweet as all get out with great affection for its characters and for those reasons I REALLY wanted to like it but I just could not shake off the cloak of boredom that enveloped me from the film's first scene. The characters, while occasionally touching and even at times charming, are just not very interesting and director/co writer Nancy Savoca doesn't give them much to do beyond being generically Italian. There is also in the dialogue and cinematography an annoying ersatz Fellini by way of "Marty" vibe that makes you wish you were watching the real thing rather than this second hand stuff. After about an hour I pulled the plug. Solid C.

This is a wonderful Dylan music video (including great but lesser known works like "Farewell Angelina" and "When My Ship Comes In") and a passionate love story (Dylan's romance with himself) that is, alas, wrapped around a rather standard biopic. Unlike director and co writer James Mangold's much better musical biopic of Johnny Cash (who makes an arresting cameo in this film courtesy of a fine turn by an actor I'd not known before named Boyd Holbrook) there is no inner conflict that the subject must resolve. Dylan is pretty much sure of himself and his artistic course throughout the film and thus Mangold and his co scenarist Jay Cocks have the burden of coming up with a dramatically compelling outer conflict. And their choice of Dylan versus The Folk Establishment, as personified by Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax, is, to put it kindly, a bit on the bland side. Better is the admiration/dislike relationship between Dylan and Joan Baez, mainly because Monica Barbaro, in my opinion, gives the best performance in the film, by turns sensual, scornful, and sad. Unfortunately, Mangold and Cocks soft peddle Dylan/Baez and instead promote the extremely dull pairing of Dylan and Suze Rotolo which wastes Elle Fanning's considerable talent by constantly having her look either hurt or wistful or both. Still, the. Performance of Barbaro and the excellent work of Edward Norton as a slightly priggish but still likable Pete Seeger, to mention nothing of Timothee Chalamet's ability to channel the voice and self centered persona of Dylan, lift this film above the mediocrity line. B minus.