Sense and Sensibility (film)

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Sense and Sensibility

Original poster
Directed by Ang Lee
Produced by Laurie Borg
Lindsay Doran
Sydney Pollack
James Schamus
Geoff Stier
Written by Emma Thompson
Starring Emma Thompson
Kate Winslet
Hugh Grant
Alan Rickman
Greg Wise
Gemma Jones
Emilie François
Elizabeth Spriggs
Harriet Walter
Imelda Staunton
Imogen Stubbs
Hugh Laurie
Robert Hardy
Tom Wilkinson
Music by Patrick Doyle
Editing by Tim Squyres
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) Flag of the United States 13 December 1995
Flag of Canada 13 December 1995
Flag of the United Kingdom 23 February 1996
Flag of Australia 29 February 1996
Running time 136 min.
Budget $16,000,000
Gross revenue $134,993,774
IMDb profile

Sense and Sensibility is a 1995 British drama film directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay by Emma Thompson is based on the 1811 novel of the same name by Jane Austen.

Contents

[edit] Plot synopsis

When Mr. Dashwood dies, his wife and three daughters - Elinor, Marianne and Margaret - are dismayed to learn their inheritance consists of only £500 a year, with the bulk of the estate of Norland Park left to his son John from a previous marriage. John's scheming, greedy,snobby wife Fanny immediately installs herself and her spouse in the palatial home and invites her brother Edward Ferrars to stay with them. She frets about the budding friendship between Edward and Elinor and does everything she can to prevent it from developing.

Sir John Middleton, a cousin of the widowed Mrs. Dashwood, offers her a small cottage house on his estate, Barton Park in Devonshire and she and her daughters move in. It is here that Marianne meets the older Colonel Brandon, who falls in love with her at first sight. Competing with him for her affections is the dashing but decietful John Willoughby, who steals Marianne's heart. When Brandon's ward is found to be pregnant with Willoughby's child, his aunt Lady Allen disinherits him. He moves to London, breaking Marianne's heart in the process.

Emma Thompson portrays Elinor Dashwood.
Emma Thompson portrays Elinor Dashwood.

Sir John's mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings, invites her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, to visit, and they bring with them the impoverished Lucy Steele. Lucy confides in Elinor that she and Edward have been engaged secretly for five years, thus dashing Elinor's hopes of romance with him. Mrs. Jennings takes Lucy, Elinor, and Marianne to London, where they meet Willoughby at a ball. They learn he's engaged to the extremely wealthy Miss Grey, and the clandestine engagement of Edward and Lucy comes to light. Edward's mother demands he break off the engagement and, when he refuses, his fortune is taken from him and given to his younger brother Robert.

On their way home to Devonshire, Elinor and Marianne stop for the night at the country estate of the Palmers, who live near Willoughby. Marianne can't resist going to see him and walks five miles in a torrential rain to do so. As a result she becomes seriously ill and is nursed back to health by Elinor.

After Marianne recovers, the sisters return home. They learn Miss Steele has become Mrs. Ferrars and assume she is married to Edward, who arrives to explain he released Miss Steele from their engagement, after which she wed Robert instead. Edward proposes to Elinor and becomes a vicar, while Marianne falls in love with and marries Colonel Brandon.

[edit] Production notes

Emma Thompson spent four years writing the screenplay, which went through countless revisions. She hoped producer Lindsay Doran would consider sisters Natasha and Joely Richardson, the daughters of Vanessa Redgrave, for the key roles of Elinor and Marianne, and when Ang Lee insisted she play Elinor, she protested she was too old to play the 19-year-old girl. Lee suggested she change the character's age to 27, which would make her distress at being a spinster easier for contemporary audiences to understand [1].

Sense and Sensibility was filmed at several locations in Devon, including Saltram House, the village church in Berry Pomeroy, Compton Castle, and the cobbled streets of Barbican in Plymouth. Settings in London include Somerset House on The Strand, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Additional scenes were filmed at Trafalgar House and Wilton House in Wiltshire, Mompesson House in Salisbury, and Montacute House in South Somerset.

The film was budgeted at $16,500,000. It grossed $42,993,774 in the US and $92,000,000 in foreign markets for a worldwide box office total of $134,993,774 [2].

[edit] Principal cast

[edit] Critical reception

On the Rotten Tomatoes website, 100% of 46 critics gave the film a positive review [3].

In her review in the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "grandly entertaining . . . a sparkling, colorful and utterly contemporary comedy of manners . . . Emma Thompson proves as crisp and indispensably clever a screenwriter as she is a leading lady." [4]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "entertaining and amusing" and "enjoyable, civilized, yet somehow not as satisfying as Persuasion . . . because the earlier film looked simpler and more authentic, and this one seems a little too idealized." [5]

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle described it as "an exuberant, well-crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over . . . Taiwanese director Ang Lee might at first seem an unlikely choice to direct an adaptation from English literature. But he does it with the right balance of irony and warmth. The result is a film of great understanding and emotional clarity, filmed with an elegance that never calls attention to itself." [6] Barbara Shulgasser of the San Francisco Examiner enthused, "What a glorious time is had by all in this wonderful adaptation of Jane Austen's novel . . . Ang Lee serves up this sweetmeat without fuss, without the super-seriousness of filmmakers awed by their literary material . . . [He] and Thompson create a world so believable in its absurd rigidity that we feel we have known these characters all our lives. We are unshakably interested in everything that happens to them. The movie is so intelligently wrought, and so full of good spirit that even those who have behaved badly are at the end given the chance to seem human and pained by their own weaknesses." [7]

Todd McCarthy of Variety observed, "Thompson's script manages the neat trick of preserving the necessary niceties and decorum of civilized behavior of the time while still cutting to the dramatic quick. But she and Lee have always kept an eye out for the comedic possibilities in any situation, assisted by a highly skilled cast of actors, which, down to the most briefly seen supporting player, collectively seems to understand the wit and high spirits of the approach. The choice of Lee to direct this so specifically British and period film, and his great success in doing so, will no doubt be the source of much wonderment. Although his previously revealed talents for dramatizing conflicting social and generational traditions will no doubt be noted, Lee's achievement here with such foreign material is simply well beyond what anyone could have expected and may well be posited as the cinematic equivalent of Kazuo Ishiguro writing The Remains of the Day. [8]

In Newsweek, Jack Kroll opined, "As writer and actress, Thompson has all the right Austen rhythms and filmmaker Ang Lee orchestrates with sensitivity and style. The screen teems with brilliant costumes and crackles with dialogue that turns English into verbal Mozart." [9]

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sense and Sensibility at Turner Classic Movies
  2. ^ Sense and Sensibility at TheNumbers.com
  3. ^ Sense and Sensibility at RottenTomatoes.com
  4. ^ New York Times review
  5. ^ Chicago Sun-Times review
  6. ^ San Francisco Chronicle review
  7. ^ San Francisco Examiner review
  8. ^ Variety review
  9. ^ Newsweek review

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films Directed by Ang Lee
Pushing Hands (1992) • The Wedding Banquet (1993) • Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) • Sense and Sensibility (1995) • The Ice Storm (1997) • Ride with the Devil (1999) • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) • Hulk (2003) • Brokeback Mountain (2005) • Lust, Caution (2007)


Awards
Preceded by
Forrest Gump		 Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama
1996		 Succeeded by
The English Patient
Preceded by
L'Appât		 Golden Bear winner
1996		 Succeeded by
The People vs. Larry Flynt
Preceded by
Four Weddings and a Funeral		 BAFTA Award for Best Film
1996
tied with The Usual Suspects		 Succeeded by
The English Patient