If there’s one classic novel that’s well known in the UK, it’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s been dramatised many times, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson in 1940 and televised on the BBC in 1967. But the most famous version to date has been the 1995 Andrew Davies adaptation with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Colin Firth still struggles to escape his wet-shirted Darcy. And next year we have Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen to look forward to in another film version.
In the meantime, Gurinder Chadha who previously directed films including, most famously, Bend It Like Beckham, has reset Pride and Prejudice in a contemporary setting with the locations being Amritsar, London and LA. Oh, and it’s a Bollywood style musical too.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film, although so far I haven’t found many people who agree with me on this. Jonathan Ross didn’t like it, and neither did some of my work colleagues who were also sat in the gods of the London Palladium last night for the World Premiere.
You can’t take the film enormously seriously. We all know the story, and therefore know how it’s going to end. The villain is of course a pantomine, and the comic turn is precisely that. I can’t pretend that I really know and understand Bollywood cinema, but I know enough to realise that we’re not talking about gritty realism here. The girls are supposed to glamourous (none more so than Aishwarya Rai who plays the Elizabeth Bennet character), the villains evil, and then there are the musical interludes.
I don’t think I’ve seen a contemporary musical for a long time. Is that because they don’t make them any more, or because I avoid the few that do get made? But quality of the songs not withstanding (and I’m sure they’re as good as any on the London stage), I was thoroughly carried away with the piece.
There are plenty of in-jokes and references, many of which I’m sure I missed. Let’s just say that they manage to stage a fight in front of the main screen of the NFT during a Bollywood film season.
For those who worry that this film might stray too close to Bollywood habit of producing three hour plus melodramas, have no fear that it runs under two hours. Just go along to have a couple of hours of escapism and fun.