Over & Overs: Sense & Sensibility (1995)
Thursday, December 5, 2019 at 11:00AM
Cláudio Alves in Ang Lee, Emma Thompson, Jane Austen, Kate Winslet, Over & Overs, Sense & Sensibility

by Cláudio Alves

Films don't change. It's the viewer who is changed by the passage of time. When you watch the same film over and over again, it's easy to imagine that a transformation has occurred. What one day were negligible details, suddenly become the crux of a drama. Sentimental reactions change and so do the feelings each character brings out in the heart. To watch and rewatch across the years is to become starkly aware of how much you've changed as a person and as a cinephile.

At least, that's the experience I've had with those films that have stayed with me over time, cyclically revisited, especially in times of personal strife, as if they were the sweetest of comfort foods. Ang Lee's masterful Sense & Sensibility is one of those special films…

Jane Austen has been dear to my heart since I was a teenager. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read Pride & Prejudice, for instance. From the first time I dove into its romantic reveries and banquets of biting humor, I've been drawn to return to it and doing so is something of a summer tradition. I adore losing myself in the story of Darcy and Elizabeth and their literary love affair has introduced me to Austen's other great works. From Pride & Prejudice to the unfinished novels, I've read almost everything she wrote. Being the passionate cinephile I am, these literary infatuations ended up affecting my movie-watching habits.

I quickly dove into the vast pool of Jane Austen adaptations, whether they were Greer Garson-starring melodramas or BBC retellings. Many of these works are close to my heart, but few are able to capture in film form that most elusive of feelings, the elation of reading one the novels they are based upon. It's not a matter of books being better than cinema or any of that nonsense. In fact, the film that best captures Austen's magic is one that conspicuously alters the original text, throwing crucial moments out the window and creating new characters along the way.

Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning adaptation of Sense & Sensibility is quite a work of cinematic transfiguration. Its humor is broader than that of the novel, but the spirit of the original author runs all through it. Despite some obvious concessions for a contemporary audience's attention span, one never feels that Thompson dumbed down the comedy. She simply reworked it into the language of cinema rather than the idiom of printed books. It's a matter of translation across art forms more than a case of undue modernization. The heart of the matter is still there, precisely presented with explosive feeling and romantic storms, spiky showers of cold reality and an everlasting tenderness that blooms from familiar intimacy.

It's not just a case of a good screenplay either. Ang Lee's first foray into the world of literary adaptations is a masterclass of subtle directing choices. The way he blocks actors and sets the precise rhythm of gesture and speech is amazing, simultaneously able to spun absurdity from heartfelt romance and powerful melancholy from the cheeriest of passages. Almost as spellbinding is Tim Squyres cutting of the scenes, dividing the audience's attention across the sprawling cast with deft ability, neither shortchanging or overindulging any of the colorful personalities onscreen.

The characters are what have most transformed over the years. When I was younger, Kate Winslet's Marianne Dashwood was loveable, but always a great source of annoyance. Thompson's Elinor, on the other hand, was the character I most related to and empathized with. Bizarrely, my sentimental connections to each character were flipped when it came to the appreciation of their actress's work. It was easy to recognize Winslet's mercurial distillation of romantic folly even at a young age, but I underestimated Thompson's more reactive work for many years. Nowadays, I see such control in her performance that I'm ashamed of my teenaged self's views on what constitutes good acting.

That's what going to Theatre school and working alongside actors does to you, I guess. More surprisingly, however, was the way my sympathies flipped when it came to the characters themselves. Today, I brisk at Elinor's harshness and just want to hug Marianne during her more tearful conundrums. As time goes by, I have lived through more of the emotional situations both sisters find themselves in, both happy and sad, and my perception of their life choices has incontrovertibly changed. I can say with joyful certainty that I'm looking forward to seeing how the next few years further transform my perception of their story and Ang Lee's splendid film.

It might sound hyperbolic, but these cinematic experiences help me understand who I am. More than a photo comparison posted on twitter, looking back at how I saw a film in the past and contrasting it with how I see it now tells me precious truths about my personal transformation. I'm not necessarily a different person, but the eyes that watch these films, the heart through which its emotions reverberate, aren't the same. It's true Sense & Sensibility hasn't changed since its premiere all those years ago, but that doesn't stop it from being a radically different experience every time I rewatch it. Such is the power of great cinema and I am eternally grateful for it.

Previously in Over & Overs...

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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