Sense and Sensibility
by Hope Madden
Has it really been 31 years since Emma Thompson and Ang Lee beguiled us with Jane Austen’s iconic tale of love, sisterhood, and the crushing effects of patriarchy in Georgian England?
Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) helms the latest look inside the Dashwood family. Level headed Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her free spirited sister Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) face perils of heart and home after their father’s death leaves them, their mother (Caitriona Balfe, Belfast) and younger sister (Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Shelter) facing homelessness as the estate passes to the sisters’ dullard half-brother and his greedy wife.
Class, the economic powerlessness of women, love, and sisterhood are among Austen’s most cherished themes, and every adaptation of each of her novels chooses its primary target. Usually, it’s love. But for Oakley and screenwriter Diana Reid, Sense and Sensibility is about sisterhood.
That hardly means that the quiet aching between Elinor and Mr. Ferrars (George MacKay, ideal) goes ignored. Or that Marianne’s passions for the rogue Willoughby (Frank Dillane) don’t throw the Dashwoods into a chaos of emotion. The new Sense and Sensibility is perfectly swoony in those important ways.
But Reid’s adaptation streamlines tangential characters to draw focus, and Oakley’s attention is paid to the effect love, passion, worry, and dependence has on Elinor and Marianne. Their relationship anchors the film and colors the rest of the tale with a sense of hope and struggle for agency that reminds you how timeless Austen can be.
Oakley also lets the girls’ hair down. The Dashwood women are less cinched and coiffured this go-round. Marianne, in particular, prefers her hair loose. It makes her connection to the wilds more vivid, but this earthiness carries over to the story as a whole. The Dashwoods are far easier to connect to as they do their own laundry and then stain their dresses eating wild berries.
The bones of Austen’s story are absolutely intact, but Reid and Oakley amplify interactions that may mean more to a modern audience than those attended to in previous interpretations, big screen and small.
