Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 classic starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfayden, followed Elizabeth Bennet (Knightley) and Mr. Darcy (Macfayden) as they worked through their pride and prejudice towards each other while simultaneously developing a true love connection.
Leaving the audience with angst, humor-filled moments and period piece fashion that has now become mainstream in the Bridgerton era, director Joe Wright shares with The Hollywood Reporter how he interwove the story’s themes into the movie adaptation.
“We were trying to give an authenticity to the costumes, a sense of how lived-in they were,” he says.
Ahead of its 20th anniversary and theatrical re-release, Wright looks back on bringing the historical looks to life by working with Barbie costume designer Jacqueline Durran, what that famous Darcy hand-flex scene actually meant and how Elizabeth’s feelings and fashion were interconnected in Pride & Prejudice.
Elizabeth’s style and attitude seem less colorful and more subdued than her sisters, and at the same time, she seemed the least interested in getting married. Was that intentional? And how did her fashion reflect that in comparison to her sisters?
Jena Malone, Rosamund Pike, Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn and Carey Mulligan in ‘Pride & Prejudice.’
Yeah, that was intentional. The idea for Elizabeth was that she was much more down to earth, of the earth, than her sisters. Although kind of paradoxically, she was also aspiring to poetry and to greater things as well. So where the sisters were kind of flighty and Jacqueline Durran, the costume designer, really managed to create beautifully drawn characters for all of the girls.
Jena Malone there in patterns, green and always kind of twinned with a very young Carey Mulligan. It was her first film, I think she was 18 at the time. And then Rosamond Pike [and] Elizabeth was always slightly more voluptuous and slightly more of a kind of Venus character. Talulah Riley in the background there, was much more sort of serious and studious.
There were only a few times that Elizabeth wore light colors, including the ball dancing scene where she danced with Mr. Darcy and when she visited Darcy’s house. Does her cream color dress reflect or represent Elizabeth’s growing interest or openness to Darcy?
Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in ‘Pride & Prejudice.’
Keira Knightley in ‘Pride & Prejudice.’
We chose to dress all the girls at the ball in white, in cream and ivory and white. However, I did feel like that. The sculpture gallery with her dressed in white, there were somehow this kind of hovering slightly above the earth atmosphere, something incredibly light. As she encounters, I mean, in the first scene in the ball scene, she almost touches upon the transformation that will take place much later. And then she recoils from that transformation, and then by the time she arrives at the sculpture gallery, that whole sequence is about the kind of total transformation of the character.
Can you break down the famous hand flex carriage scene from both Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s perspectives?
The hand scene was really a kind of articulation for me of this idea that sometimes our bodies know best. That our minds might be a little slow to catch up, and that both Darcy and Elizabeth’s bodies, their hands, their whole nervous system, is aware of the importance of that person in their lives and in their futures. She certainly isn’t, but he has a growing awareness at this point. And when he flexes his hand as he walks away, it’s a kind of almost a shaking off of that feeling of that reality.
Brenda Blethyn, Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in ‘Pride & Prejudice.’
How do you think period piece fashion has evolved over the years? How has Pride & Prejudice paved the way for success or interest in other period dramas like Bridgerton?
When I first met [for the] working title to talk about making Pride & Prejudice, I’d only recently read Jane Austen’s book and discovered that Elizabeth Bennett is only 18 in the novel. I think Darcy is 26 or seven. And in fact, Jane Austen herself was only 21 when she wrote it and that was an enormous shock to me and gave me an idea, a key, if you like, to how to present this story.
It’s a story about very young people falling in love for the first time and written by a very young person discovering her talent for the first time, so it was really important that the film had that energy. Previous iterations of Pride & Prejudice or other period movies had often cast actors, male and female in their kind of twenties, late twenties, even once they’ve become slightly more established. But that seemed wrong to me.
It was really important to find an actor to play Elizabeth, who was the right age. And of course, Keira popped up on the scene with an amazing kind of energy and fire and was the perfect choice. And I was a huge fan of Robert Altman and Mike Lee and directors like that. The costume designer, Jacqueline Duran, had really only worked with Mike Lee before this movie. She’s gone on to do Barbie and amazing work.
We were trying to give an authenticity to the costumes, a sense of how lived-in they were. The research had substantiated that you would wash your underclothes once a week or so, but the dresses themselves were designed not to be washed at all really, or very, very rarely. There’s a kind of dirt and a grubbiness to the whole existence that I felt was really important to try and capture authentically.
As for how that’s kind of had a ripple effect since—I mean, I don’t know. I guess that you can sort of look at some of the more contemporary period movies and understand that there was a reference there, but that’s not for me to say.
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the film, when you look back, are there any deleted scenes or alternative ending scenes from the book that you wished you would’ve included?
The original film has actually two endings: One version that was for America and one version that was for everyone else…I didn’t have final cut on the movie at the time, and after much debate, it was a kind of compromise solution. The American version had a final scene of Darcy and Elizabeth on their wedding night, speaking posies to each other, and I felt it was a little too sweet and sentimental. I much preferred the ending that ended on Mr. Bennett and his joy at his daughter’s betrothal. So there are two endings out there.
Any scenes from the book that you wish you had included?
No, there’s nothing I feel like I wish we should have included.
How was the theme “pride and prejudice” interwoven into the film visually?
Theme in storytelling is fundamental and you need to work out your theme and then direct everything to the articulation of that theme. Luckily for me, in my first movie, the theme was quite clearly stated in the title, and so every choice I made was, “How does this choice articulate the theme?” That helped me make decisions and it helped me kind of navigate my way through some of the kind of dense dialogue and so on. And you just keep that in the back of your mind at all times.
Pride & Prejudice re-releases in theaters on April 20
Source link
