Remembering: “Mansfield Park (1999)”
Within the world of film, Jane Austen is a sub-genre of its own.
Author of seminal classics Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin was a prodigal writer, a literary-realist who commentated and satirized English high-society. Born 1775 in Steventon, Austen developed her voice amidst a tumultuous period of British imperialism. Until her death in1817, she continued writing at an almost prolific pace, leaving behind two novels to be posthumously published, along other works. Today, her writing remains celebrated, a window into one pre-suffragette’s transcriptions of the world through sharp-wit, cementing her place as an artful storyteller.
Mansfield Park wasn’t the first time Austen’s novel of the same title was adapted to film, and it wouldn’t be the last. Director Patricia Rozema, who adapted the novel and penned the screenplay, took creative liberties with the plot and modernizing certain aspects. The results of Rozema’s creative liberties we see in the 1999 film were divisive amongst Austen-enthusiasts, contentious, alleged as controversial. Mansfield Park’s screenplay is more or less an adaptation in-spirit, combining major themes of the novel and simultaneously, adjoining personal letters written by Jane Austen herself. There can be a whole write-up about how and why Mansfield Park differs from its source material, but I want to focus on the film alone, for what I believe is an interesting, well-made commentary about the moral hypocrisy and failings of aristocracy.
Frances O’Connor as “Fanny Price” in Mansfield Park
The plot of the film is vehicular, in the sense that it’s about as A to B as it gets, serving more of the subtextual and philosophical themes, rather than being a film of pure-storytelling. Fanny Price, the main heroine – who’s characterization is an amalgamation between Austen and the protagonist of the novel – is an earnest, poor girl from Portsmouth brought about high society from a young age within Mansfield Park. Over the course of her adolescence into adulthood, Fanny is instructed that she is of no equal to her aristocratic relatives, but is also treated to a life of luxury at the same time, albeit as a second-class witness. To help pass time she writes stories, simultaneously improving her abilities and communicating with a younger sibling back in Portsmouth. The closest person to her is her cousin Edmund, second-heir to the Bertram estate, of which she is afforded her life and education. Fanny and him daren’t follow-up with their romantic feelings, lest they risk jeopardizing their joint futures and security. In a world of political-religious pedigree and hierarchy, love isn’t as simple as telling the person you do, when, with every rule to transgress, lies an equally-severe consequence to consider.
Things at Mansfield Park change when the Crawfords, a pair of modelesque siblings, descend onto the estate and begin infiltrating the familial ranks. Scandal, hilarity, drama ensue shortly after the Crawfords arrive, and things that lay beneath the surface of the Beltram estate start to surface. Within this adaptation, Fanny (played amazingly by Frances O’Connor) is less demure and a wallflower, her essence pronounced outspoken, unafraid to stand up and say no at a time where women were treated as literal commodities to be traded by men. From an early age she recognizes the plight of classism and womanhood in relation to the chattel-slave trade, to which her wealthy side of the family directly profiteers from. Abolitionism is in the air, and the cognitive-dissonance between the Beltram patriarch, Sir Thomas Beltram (excellently played by Harold Pinter) and his aesthetics of moralism are only further exacerbated as Fanny continues standing up for herself. The racism is on full-display, Beltram’s common beliefs of eugenics dressed up and masquerading within the fancies of institutionalism and pseudo-intellectualism. How and why the Beltrams acquired their wealth remains taboo, an ugly truth nobody wants to acknowledge, yet behind-closed-doors, the facts speak for themselves, at-times, depicted with explicit detail. In one scene, there is a lingering shot on a particularly racist effigy of an indigenous person, to which the cavalier ineptitudes of high-society laugh in its presence, cruelly indifferent, visually depicting where everyone is in this world regarding their wealth.
Alessandro Nivola as “Henry Crawford” and Embeth Davidtz as “Mary Crawford”
This film is about many different things, and it’s difficult for me to label this simply as a period-piece, drama, or especially a comedy. Mansfield Park on its own, as a film, is very much about class as it is about race, high-society, love, sexism, austerity and imperialism. The intrapersonal dynamics alone feel like intricate cogs to a greater mechanism, each character serving a set role within the menagerie of affluent hypocrisy, their myopic and self-involved natures both as products of their time, as well humanistic caricatures to be examined. Fanny and Henry Crawford’s (played by The Many Saints of Newark’s Alessandro Nivola) relationship blossoms with an astute complexity, elevating the would-be-gentleman-caller from a one-dimensional villain to perhaps a misguided, impulsive man out of his depth. Sir Beltram’s relationship to Fanny feels equally challenging and complex, as he is a monster outsides the confines of Mansfield Park, sometimes a tyrannical within in, and at other times, a benevolent, understated father-figure. Edmund, Fanny’s closest confidant, subservient to his father’s desires, is of equal measure, oscillating between a sibling-relationship with Fanny to a romantic one, though to me, their love is perhaps the tamest of all though it makes sense, but I digress.
Frances O’Connor and Embeth Davidtz as “Fanny” and “Mary” in an intimate scene
What strikes me as subversive are the exploratory homoerotic scenes between Mary Crawford (strongly played by Embeth Davidtz) and Fanny. The pretext for their relationship is expounded upon with a sense of playful if-innocent platonic-flirtation between women. One scene in particular, where Fanny is soaked by the rain and taken into the parsonage by Mary, feels rife with tension, the emotion between them compelling, engaging even on a visual level. There can be an argument about Mary’s intentions serving only her ambition to seduce the Beltram’s by any means necessary, and if it includes subterfuge, so be it, though conversely, I also felt Mary and Fanny’s scenes were a compassionate vignette of Mary’s unrequited, impossible-to-act desires. The film spends enough of its hour and fifty-two minute runtime to explore Mary’s and Fanny’s relationship, and although their relationship doesn’t necessarily germinate beyond emotional-betrayal in the third act, it’s nonetheless what I see as an interesting direction to explore, given the source-material.
While I myself don’t eagerly engage with films of this type, I think Mansfield Park is a worthy film to be seen at-least once, if not for the performances and distinct wardrobe choices. The score itself is of particular note, and while not outshining the pack, I believe it gets the job done where it needs to for all the big beats. There’s a late-90’s/Y2K je ne sais quoi embedded within the film’s production, editing, shot-choices, aesthetic, and I’m forever weak-in-the-knees for pop-culture around this period. Personally, I love the parts where Fanny breaks the 4th-wall and speaks directly into the camera, like a tongue-in-cheek expose, the film’s self-aware declaration that it’s something unique, different than its source material, and in that way, Mansfield Park is an intimate film for me. Seeing this film is a no-brainer for Austen fans, even if it takes creative liberties to explore its themes, and for everybody else, Mansfield Park is a smart, challenging movie as it is popcorn theatre.
