When I was pretty young - I would have been about 8 - my mom took me to see "Sense and Sensibility", with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet. I think we went with Beth and Devin, another mother-daughter pair who were always and continue to be good friends.I remember three things from that movie: Edward Ferrars helping Elinor Dashwood with her shawl in the beginning, the red military coats at the wedding at the end, and the ceiling tile that fell from the ceiling, somewhere in between.
Years later, when I graduated from high school, I read the book. It was perfect to take to work, because the short chapters each took just under ten minutes to read, so I read one chapter in each of my 10-minute breaks and three chapters on my half-hour lunch break.
It was an intense reading experience. I related some of the characters in the book to customers in the cafe. I was consumed by Elinor, who is all sense, and yet, even though she masks her feelings from the world, her pain permeates every page of the book. And poor Colonel Brandon - I sympathized with him. He was so sweet, and so far out of luck.
It was the perfect read for Portland in August, to escape into on breaks, and for the change I was experiencing - I had just graduated from high school, Torrefazione was about to close, and things would be different. Sense and Sensibility seemed to represent the possible pleasantries that could result from change.
I watched the film again and loved it. I watched it again, and again, and now I own it. (My favorite scene is definitely when Marianne is ill and Brandon says, "Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad." Goosebumps. Every time.)
But now I'm watching the 2008 mini-series, and each episode lowers my opinion. I just finished the second episode and am very displeased with the Brandon-Willoughby relations. What is this, pitting them against each other from the beginning? Willoughby is NOT Wickham, people! Different character, different book! And why does Anne Steele have a lisp and act like a boy-crazy teenager from the 21st century? Oh, I hate it when people feel the need to over-dramatize the works of Jane Austen (don't get me started on the 2005 "Pride & Prejudice" - just thinking about it makes my blood pressure rise).
1 comment:
It's very interesting to think of how you read S&S at work. I read Ulysses that way, probably nowhere near as successfully. I had 45-minute lunch hours. You don't read a chapter of U. in 45 minutes; at least I didn't.
I like the idea of making connections between the S&S characters and the customers who come in to the café. There's a new layer of reality there, between the two layers of café reality and Austen's reality. I imagine this influenced your way of writing your own writing at the time. Fascinating to contemplate.
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