I have to admit that I have, for a while now, been a fan of Masterpiece Classics on PBS. The latest Masterpiece Classic, Jane Austin’s Persuasion, is possibly the most unique and perfect adaptation I have seen on the Masterpiece series.
If you know the story, Persuasion can be a bit of a drag, telling the tragic story of a spinster named Anne who regrets breaking off her engagement to Captain Wentworth eight years earlier. When Captain Wentworth returns a rich war hero, she is sorry she every allowed her family to persuade her to refuse him. Will he ever forgive her? Will she ever tell him she has never stopped loving him? Of course! Jane Austin always graced her readers with a romantic and happy ending.
There is not a lot of action in this story, and it is much shorter than Jane Austin’s other novels. But from the beginning, this film pulls us in with little tricks I had not seen before on Masterpiece Classics. One of the most notable was having the actress, or Anne, peer subtly into the camera, especially after writing in her journal. When the camera and her eyes slowly adjust to meet, we are in synch with her emotions. In other scenes, the position of the camera conveys a closer point of view. The camera moves in so closely that the actors nearly walk into us. And at times, Anne’s face is cut off by the shot. These “tricks” bring us into the mise en scene, giving us the feeling of being there rather than just being an observer. Another affecting piece of the film’s composition is the use of shadows. The shadows here are exaggerated and very black. A few times the two main characters exit the scene by walking into the shadows. The black in their costume meets the black in the shadow until we can no longer differentiate the two. The characters were literally swallowed up by the dark.
The director was very successful in creating a dark yet passionate mood. And the lead actress, Sally Hawkins, grew more beautiful as time went on, as one might in real life. I’m not sure if my opinion is biased here… as I said earlier, I do enjoy Masterpiece Classics, and this was one of my favorite so far. How it fares with a general audience, I’m not sure. But if there were any of these films you’d want to see, I’d choose this one. Not only is it good, but it's shorter than the other films in the Masterpiece series (the award winning Little Dorrit was six hours long!).
