POSTHOC RATING:  ***

MANSFIELD PARK: costume drama. Starring Francis O’Connor, EmbethDavidtz, Jonny Lee Miller, Alessandro Nivola and Harold Pinter.  Screenplay by Patricia Rozema from a Jane Austen novel.  Directed by Patricia Rozema.  Rated PG-13. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

Mansfield Park is the latest Jane Austen novel to make the big screen in the last several years, a wave of literary adaptations that started with Ang Lee’s take on Sense and Sensibility.  Sad to say matters of time, my gender and my auto-didacticism have kept me away from Jane Austen so I can’t answer the question. “Is it as good as the book?” beyond what I’ve gathered from other sources.  But I can confidently say Mansfield Park is a rich, witty and enjoyably complex romp from the downstairs to the upstairs of English society circa 1806.  Don’t worry if you think Jane Austen is the capitol of Texas.  You’ll do fine.

Mansfield Parktells the story of Fanny Price (Frances O’Connor), the oldest daughter of a desperately poor overgrown family in Portsmouth, England. Played by Hannah Taylor Gordon as a child, Fanny is given away by her mother (Lindsay Duncan) to live with her Aunt Norris (Sheila Gish), who, in turn is the head maid at the Mansfield Park Estate of Sir Thomas Bertram (Harold Pinter). Bertram grimly lords over a gloomy household that includes his laudanum swilling wife (also, intriguingly, played by Lindsay Duncan) and his two sons, Tom Jr. (James Purefoy) a troubled, anguished drunk and Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller from Trainspotting) a sensitive, bookish young man whose goal, as the second son, is to become a man of the cloth.  There are also two daughters Maria (Victoria Hamilton) and Julia (Justine Waddell).

Fanny (who yearns to be a writer, an aspect of her character apparently not in the novel) is at the bottom of the social deck in this household. But she’s full of internal resources that allow to her to get along and blossom as she grows into a beautiful woman even though it seems to her that she will never leave the confines of the estate.  She forms a deep, abiding and almost wholly platonic attachment with the young Edmund, based on their mutual passion for the written word.  That these two are somehow meant to be together is plain to us, but not to them.

At least not until the arrival of two friends of the family, the brother and sister tag team of Henry and Mary Crawford (Alessandro Nivola and the exquisitely wild Embeth Davidtz).  Henry and Mary are worldly sophisticated outsiders, considered “modernists” at the time: both richly seductive and ruthlessly pragmatic.  They bring such life and energy with them that they wind up as more or less permanent houseguests.

But with the sunlight of the modern world outside, comes trouble.  Henry sets about working his devious wiles on the women of the house, until he finally gets to the bottom of the social deck, meaning yes, Fanny. But Fanny, a prudish girl at heart, will have nothing to do with this dashing boyish rake.  Meanwhile, Mary, who schemes to gain further wealth and privilege, starts working her own magic on Edmund. 

And so Fanny and Edmund, sensitive, literate, decent up-standing traditionalists are pulled slowly apart by the garish, shallow temptations of the Modern.  Soon Fanny is temporarily exiled back to Portsmouth, where among other things, she comes hilariously face to face with the cruel paradoxes of love in the guise of a wise observation from her mother.

Meanwhile, Edmund’s older brother Tom, Jr. slowly destroys himself on hard-living to numb his tortured conscience over the fact that the Bertram wealth is founded on his father’s investments in the slave trade (this detail is also one of several changes wrought by writer-director Patricia Rozema.  It feels like it, too). 

But whatever changes Rozema has wrought that may twist the petticoats of Austen devotees, she has directed an entertaining, sharp, atmospheric and stylish portrayal of the complexities and hypocrisies of life among the classes in 19^th Century England, that at least is much more visually appealing than your average episode of Masterpiece Theater.  While Rozema overuses the slow-motion (especially when Edmund and Fanny roam the countryside. Shampoo commercials!?  In 19^th Century England!?), she also amusingly has Fanny addressing the audience (it’s here, I understand, that Rozema took many passages from Austen’s diaries and letters).

Her screenplay apparently retains Austen’s sharp trenchant observations on the social life of the times.  In drawing from Austen's letters and diaries she is supposed to have made Fanny a more active character than she is in the novel. This may twist the points Austen was making about the conflict between the active and contemplative stances towards life, but it makes for better drama and conflict overall. Without them Fanny may have faded into the faded tapestries and taken the film with her. Rozema has also added lesbian implications to the relationship between Fanny and Mary that raises another level of tension (luckily, Rozema leaves it implied. To add anymore would only have been a hilarious post-modern anachronism).  

Performances are all around excellent.  Frances O’Connor balances and blends the facets of Fanny’s character: her extreme, almost neurotic, modesty, steel-trap intelligence and passion for literature and virtue to create a woman of rich and complex appeal.  She and Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund make a very believable and sweet couple, though I sometimes wondered how they could be so obtuse about the depth of their feelings for one another. Both of them have the repressed qualities of men and women brought up in strait-laced circumstances, but you never feel their souls have been smothered under a wet blanket, despite the best efforts of the Bertram patriarch.

Harold Pinter by the way is also excellent as Sir Thomas, playing him as a tortured soul, bleached and burned out by his own greed. His prudish sense of decorum comes from a much darker place than any of the other characters.

Alessandro Nivola as the maybe not so treacherous Henry is superb, gracefully balancing both charm and treachery in such a way you’re never really sure just where he stands.  While he often seems passionately sincere in his pursuit of Fanny, he gives him just enough of a fickle air to make his betrayal believable.

And Embeth Davidtz comes through with another excellent performance as the dynamically gracious, but dangerous Mary Crawford.  She’s like a wild cat barely locked up in her corset, clawing through with graceful ease when necessity beckons.   In Feast of July, another period piece of a couple of years back, her beauty was used a signpost to danger, a thing over which she had no control.  Here Davidtz’s Mary Crawford is a character who’s quite in control, who knows the power of her feline beauty and schemes to make the most of it.  It’s a bracingly sharp performance, especially when she counsels the Bertrams on how to take advantage of the potential passing of Tom Jr.  No lawyer could ever be so persuasive.