Belief, the new Netflix movie, has two problems. First, it’s an inevitable comparison to Roger Michell’s excellent 1995 adaptation of the novel. In this case, the best of the novel spilled over into the public eye and made the film a cult hit. The other is the many dramas based on the English Regency that fill television. But the greatest influence bridgertons in historical dramas of the last five years. Director Carrie Cracknell tries to brilliantly replicate an exercise from the Shonda Rhimes series, but fails. And not just because Jane Austen’s novel doesn’t need reconstruction or a historical alternate universe. If not because the original story is already a brilliant statement about prejudice, exclusion and the search for happiness.
But Belief he fails to clutter Austen’s speech, notorious for its irony and twisted satire, with passive, aggressive, and tedious social commentary. Especially when the puns, thoughtful atmosphere, and powerful status of the novel as insight into complex ideas fade. Instead, Cracknell is far more interested in making it clear that Austin was a woman ahead of her time, which the plot doesn’t need.
The premise of a woman who must marry in order not to become an outcast of society becomes an ineffective critique of contemporary culture. In particular, because the source material does not require twisting. As such, Belief This is a drama with apparent simplicity, under which a deep secret pain beats. version Netflix movie robs history of charmits bittersweet tone and its ability to confuse.
Persuasion is a bad copy of a larger product
Most confusingly, the Netflix adaptation has a suspenseful atmosphere that seems to add little to an already familiar story. Director moves the camera with a sour look through luxurious salons and perfect exquisite costumes. But he lacks the cunning to make all the beauty the surface of something more painful and tenacious.
Even the English Bath, the writer’s birthplace and the film’s exterior setting, has a dull tone. A discolored soft feeling that doesn’t quite heal even in the most emotional moments. first half hour Belief made it clear: the idea you want to convey has no weight. Or he loses it when the argument loses beauty, power and eloquence.
Austin’s era-defining work
Cracknell clearly wanted to tell a story with exuberant energy. Bridgerton. Belief the same happy atmosphere inclusion of racial characters and the idea of time as an alternative idea. But the script lacks the charm of being able to move Austen’s work to the same places as in the popular series.
Instead, it shows Ann Elliot (Dakota Johnson) as a woman who wants to live. Who knows that she also wants to live, but is crushed by the social weight of loneliness. Of course, these are common themes in Austen’s literature, but the writer always treated them symbolically. Ann knows that her great advantage is to appear useful to her wealthier relatives. To be a woman who was persuaded to let herself be carried away by love.
Such a story runs the risk of seeming cheesy out of necessity. But Austin infused it with a sarcastic sense of humor that has endured in all of his adaptations ever since. Ironically, the Netflix version lacks this depth of origin, while the rationale for its presence is clear. Even worse, he turns his characters into caricatures.
Persuasion, tangled work
It is no longer about protecting women as individuals and seeking mental freedom. Like this Belief from Netflix ineptly plays with plot elements, turns it into an absurd melodrama. Because of the love Ann rejected, he returns, but instead of rethinking it, he becomes a cat and mouse game without depth. Ann is in love with Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), whom she dumped for being a simple sailor. But now that he has become a wealthy naval captain, the interest of the eternal bachelor becomes irresistible.
But if in the novel the dilemma is moral and intellectual, then in Belief this is a boring argument. Especially when he tries to force the novel into a contemporary dilemma that history doesn’t need. And that, in addition, they have a strange effect of slowing down. Why again and again insist on the injustice of assessing a woman for her social status? Why return to the theme of love as the main source of pleasure and hope, if the novel tells about it in a thin layer? If something is tiresome and at times unbearable in Belief, It’s your inability to bite wit. Its raw simplicity and downright innocence.
And in the end, they all ate the partridges, because there was no other way.
Dakota Johnson could be a memorable Austin woman. Moreover, she has a sharp intuitive malice of all her heroines. But the screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow fills the plot with ridiculous phrases. Intelligence statements that no one needs to hear because they are vague and hint at contemporary feminism without much depth. If the anachronisms bridgertons or in excellent works such as Marie Antoinette Sofia Coppola was the point of a brilliant provocation, in Belief They are pure waste. Blank spaces that the script can’t hold onto, let alone carefully crafted.
In the end, Belief It’s a shadow of what could have been. A hard, boring and soporific version of a piece that stands out alongside its opposite. A waste of drama with hundreds of facets and a particularly sinister sense of identity. In contrast, the Netflix movie is a bland backdrop. An unforgettable work that, in the end, will remain only a fleeting memory in the memory of the huge catalog of the platform.
