a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Mira Nair’s film adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair is complicated by two simple problems.
One: It tries to cram far too much story into 141-minutes. We barely get acquainted with a crowd of characters and a context, and then we’re rushed ahead through time to a different place, a different crowd of characters, and a whole new set of melodramatic crises. Thus we eventually quit trying to get our bearings and we just watch, increasingly detached, wondering what catastrophe will happen next.
Two: The storytellers can’t decide whether we should sympathize with the heroine or cheer for her clever, manipulative, sometimes ruthless endeavors to gain status, position, and wealth. Is she a heroine at all? Should we be aghast at her heartless behavior… or should we pity her and blame her circumstances for her wrongdoing?
If you don’t know the story, here’s a quick set-up. It’s the mid-19th century, and Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) is trying to overcome the miserable circumstances in which she was left by her opera-singing mother and oil-painting father. She proves to be smart as a whip, ravenous for a better social position, and keen to impress and endear herself to anyone who’s in a wealthier and more respectable position than herself.
Becky quickly climbs from being a poor governess to being the friend and caretaker of a wealthy old woman, Mathilde Crowley (Eileen Atkins). Finding that she does not loathe Rawdon, the old woman’s handsome son, the way she loathes most men, Becky takes a hasty plunge into a strategic marriage, and spends the rest of her life dragging the baggage (including the husband, played by James Purefoy) around on a series of exploits that makes her the most notorious, admired, and reviled figure in high society. In her wake, she leaves the debris of wrecked hearts which were, admittedly, already doing a good job of wrecking themselves.
Lacking a character we really care about, we’re left floundering in what is, underneath the dazzling costumes and breathtaking backdrops, a mud puddle of human misbehavior.
Granted, Thackeray set out to write a novel without a hero, a story that showed us just how vain and cruel human beings could be to each other. The problem is that director Mira Nair is trying to take a tale of sordid behavior and pepper it with valentines. She leads us to laugh in disbelief at some of the mistakes, marvel at others, and applaud for others. Further, the script by Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet, and Julian Fellowes (who wrote the extraordinary Gosford Park), seems to have added hints of sensitivity and sincerity to the main character, leaving us confused about what to make of her at all. When the music swells in a way that shouts “Isn’t it romantic?” … it is anything but romantic. It’s unsettling. It’s like Nair is turning over every rock in Thackeray’s novel looking for a way to make it more like her previous film, the enchanting, masterful Monsoon Wedding.
Accustomed to Jane Austen romances, we look around in a tale like this for a hero. If we don’t see a hero, we want to see hope for those who are not heroes. And for those who are persistently villainous, we want to see them earn their just desserts. If we are comfortable with stories that offer us only villains and the ironies that, sometimes, villains in this life succeed, well then, we are content to nod at those ironies and injustices. There can be value in stories like those of Tom Ripley, the fascinating and compelling antihero of Patricia Highsmith’s novels, who moves from story to story disposing of his good neighbors with clinical and hard-hearted regularity. We turn these stories into opportunities to study the ruthless methods of evildoers, and learn to appreciate men of conscience all the more.
Becky Sharp has a streak of Tom Ripley in her. Her eyes light up at the thought of an indiscretion. She thrills at the possibility of taking a risk in order to gain more power, prestige, and influence. And she seems to disregard her care for those who love her. When she eventually becomes a mother, we never see her flinch for her child or even care where the boy ends up.
The problem is, the film doesn’t seem to notice these things. It’s as uninterested in her child as Becky is. The film becomes a parade of visual pleasures and revelries, with only a few token nods to the cost of such squalor. The very title—Vanity Fair—seems to have been all but forgotten, as the filmmakers seem as intent on enjoying the opulence and indulgences as the misguided characters do. Its tendency to glamorize Becky’s exploits and then ask us to pity her when things go wrong just doesn’t work out. In fact, rather than take seriously the idea that Becky’s choices have consequences, the film’s last chapters suddenly present us with a far more sinister villain, and the storytellers seem to be hoping that Becky will suddenly seem admirable and sympathetic by comparison.
Since we can’t make up our minds about Becky Sharp, we find ourselves more interested in supporting characters. There’s her friend Amelia (Romola Garai), who has a healthier conscience and a stronger sense of ethics, but who has a habit of vanishing from the film just when we really start to care for her and her various crises. There’s Matilda Crawley, a crotchety old woman who manages to upset everyone’s false realities by speaking the truth frankly and fearlessly. And there’s Mister Osborne (Oscar-winner Jim Broadbent), a bitter old man who, we hope, just might eventually find redemption for his sour heart.
Broadbent uses his scant moments to perform so brilliantly that he makes Mister Osborne an unforgettably broken and bitter old man. (In one scene, he responds to the world “morality” with such comical bewilderment, we can only assume he’s never heard the word before in his life.) Bob Hoskins, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, James Purefoy, and a host of others (the film has re-assembled half the cast of Gosford Park, it seems) all make strong impressions, but it feels like their parts were severely pruned to keep the film near two hours.
Atkins and Garai deserve Oscar nominations for their supporting work here. Atkins chews up the scenery and the company with spectacular venom. She’d be a good match for Gosford Park’s Maggie Smith in some sort of Spinster Smackdown. Garai, on the other hand, has the same glow, the same irresistible beauty and charm that made her the beating heart of I Capture the Castle last year. Garai’s so gorgeous, beguiling, and natural onscreen, I’d watch a four-hour film about her reading stock market statistics. And so, when she disappears from the picture for long periods of time, it’s as though the film’s heartbeat has stopped, and now we have only the glamour of Reese Witherspoon and the grit of the snarling, snippy, and snarky companions to keep us entertained. Worst of all, Garai is forced to perform the film’s most unexpected, unrealistic, and preposterous change of heart, in a moment that made me burst out laughing in disbelief. It’s not her fault — it’s the director’s, for not giving the moment its due time and attention.
Rhys Ifans shows up as an admirable and virtuous soldier, but when the last act brings him to actions of paramount importance, his ridiculous wardrobe changes overpower his quiet, heartfelt performance, and he becomes inadvertent comic relief.
Ultimately the film feels like an extravagant attempt to earn a nomination for Witherspoon. She’s always wearing brighter colors, always lit in flattering and arresting ways, her skin shines like ivory, and she flirts with the camera as voraciously as Julia Roberts ever has. She careens from erotic dances to sobbing breakdowns, from singing to snarling, from melancholy to manipulation. Witherspoon hits all the big notes, but somehow never finds the quieter notes that should connect one to the other. She gets the façade right, but she never finds the character’s heart and can’t disappear into the character. Thus, the film feels strangely like a rich and believable world into which a Hollywood actress has been dropped. We’re always aware that this is Witherspoon, that she’s acting up a storm, and isn’t she just so confident and talented? She seems out of place in a film full of characters who seem more “lived-in,” more convincing, dustier, rougher, and more interesting.
Perhaps the DVD of Vanity Fair will present us with a four-hour version of Vanity Fair that will give us the missing pieces. But for now this big screen extravaganza is a lot like Becky Sharp, doing its best to draw our attention away from its hollow core by dazzling us with seductive and spectacular flourishes. It’s a film worth seeing, but it leaves us with that aching sense of what it could have been.
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Director – Mira Nair
Writers – Matthew Faulk, Mark Skeet and Julian Fellowes, based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray
Director of photography – Declan Quinn
Editor – Allyson C. Johnson
Music – Mychael Danna
Production designer – Maria Djurkovic
Producers – Janette Day, Donna Gigliotti and Lydia Dean Pilcher
Focus Features. 141 minutes. Rated PG-13.
STARRING: Reese Witherspoon (Becky Sharp), Eileen Atkins (Miss Matilda Crawley), Jim Broadbent (Mr. Osborne), Gabriel Byrne (The Marquess of Steyne), Romola Garai (Amelia Sedley), Bob Hoskins (Sir Pitt Crawley), Rhys Ifans (William Dobbin), Geraldine McEwan (Lady Southdown), James Purefoy (Rawdon Crawley) and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (George Osborne).
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