| Overall Grade: |
B+ |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
A- |
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| Visuals: |
A |
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Iron Butterfly
by Webster (movies profile)
Apr 4, 2007
8
of
10 people found this review helpful
Reese Witherspoon was born to play Becky Sharp, who in the Thackeray novel on which this film is based, is what we would now call a hippie or beatnik, a bohemian with guts or someone with the smarts and drive to push herself into the upper classes of Regency-era England society. Witherspoon's Becky has the chutzpah to go from penniless urchin into the aristocracy, gets booted out only to return once again, triumphant: she's Elle Woods with a heart of Steel and the guts of Achilles.
Director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) choreographs the proceedings with a keen eye towards the preposterousness of the character's behavior; particularly when she is dealing with the likes of Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), Mr. Osborne (Jim Broadbent) or Pitt (Bob Hoskins) whose pretenses to the Aristocracy are as silly as their over-the-top costumes. The physical production is gorgeous, particularly when Nair chooses to bring in the influences of her Indian roots into the proceedings.
But the main thrust of Nair's mise-en-scene is the societal: what makes this particular social strata tick? What is it about this group of people that makes them act as they do? Unfortunately what is dis-heartening to a modern audience is that very little has changed since 1802 and that is probably Nair's point: we still have the same prejudices, we still hold back those we see as different. The scene in which Becky is alone in Styne's (Gabriel Bryne) parlor with a group of "upper-class" women says volumes about these women and how they are unwilling and unable to accept someone from outside their social class: it's telling and chilling.
"Vanity Fair" is beautiful to look at and at times it's social commentary stings, but overall
there's just not enough bite for your buck here; which is a shame in that, though in most instances it is best to show and then step back, here in the world that Nair and Thackeray have created, it would have helped to show, show and show again. |
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