MANSFIELD PARK
Director: Patricia Rozema
Certificate 15
Another Jane Austen tale brought to the screen should have been a delight. But the lethal hands of political correctness and postmodernism have mangled Mansfield Park.
Fanny Price, an impoverished young woman, is sent to live with her uncle (played by Harold Pinter), on his country estate. In Austen's original, Fanny is very much an ordinary girl, neither particularly clever nor witty, but who, nevertheless, through humble ways, becomes the book's heroine. But such a female would not commend herself in today's world of 'girl power'. Hence the director felt the need to change her character and much of the plot, bringing in the obligatory sex scene, references to the slave trade and much else. It is redolent of a growing iconoclasm and lack of humility that is inevitable when priggish post-moderns handle past masters.
Although his performance in the film is one of its brighter elements, I left wondering what Harold Pinter would think if one of his plays were similarly mangled.
