Sorry, Austenites: This Actress Is the MUCH Better Lizzie Bennet

When I realized that this year marks the 20th anniversary of Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation starring Keira Knightley, I figured now is probably the best time to air my highly controversial hot take: When it comes to Jane Austen’s classic enemies to lovers tale, the Keira Knightley version will always win over the venerated 1995 BBC counterpart. Before you drop hate mail in my inbox, let me list off my own credentials: I host a classics book club. I’ve read every Jane Austen book (except Mansfield Park—but that’s a different story). I’ve read Pride and Prejudice 20 (!!!) times. Now that we’ve calmed down a bit, I’ll explain.

Do I love a faithful book-to-screen adaptation? Absolutely. I think that there should be guardrails. “Artistic license” isn’t a free-for-all. Though, done correctly, I can get behind a film or television show that deviates from the source material if the choice is in service of the story. In this sense, the 1995 adaptation was a little too faithful to the text. It felt stuffy, and Jennifer Ehle, who played Elizabeth, was too proper and prim to capture the youthful and rebellious spirit of this beloved heroine. 

On the other hand, Knightley had the essence of a young woman who knows life is literally on the line (marriage or destitution was a real possibility), yet chooses her own path anyway. When you ask to marry for love when everyone—including your best friend—does it for survival, that alone is a revolution.

Macfadyen rose to true prominence with his stint as Tom Wambsgans in Succession, but Pride & Prejudice catapulted him onto the international stage. He was a better-looking Mr. Darcy, in my opinion, though here I will give the BBC version credit because I thought that Colin Firth played the character better. One funny comparison I’ve often come across is awkward teenager Darcy (2005) versus stiff and reserved grown-up (1995). In my perfect world, it would have been a Colin Firth/Keira Knightley pairing. Though for these purposes, Macfadyen is quite easy on the eyes.

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can,” Elizabeth says. I, too, enjoy a good laugh, and for that Wright’s film endears itself to me even more. There are intentional, genuine comedic moments in this film. The best of them revolve around the Bennett family’s private life. One scene in particular is just all too relatable. At the end of the film, Lizzie, her mother and two of her sisters are lounging around their living room, which is in absolute disarray. Mrs. Bennett is stretched, unladylike, on the sofa cramming chocolates into her mouth.

Then…Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley arrive! Flurry ensues as everyone rushes to clean so that, upon the entrance of the gentlemen, the room is spotless and effortlessly composed like a portrait.

Director Joe Wright has a visual style that elevates him to the status of auteur, in the same vein of Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann and Damien Chazelle. His signature includes long tracking shots and heavy art history influences—Wright is known to take a page from classical paintings when composing his scenes. If you ask me to rattle off my favorite shots from the 2005 adaptation, I can read them like a litany. Meanwhile, can I recall anything from 1995? …I’ll get back to you on that.

Arguably, what really lent Wright’s shots that cinematic, romantic quality was the way Italian composer Dario Marianelli wrote the score. The classical melodies set the tone for this drawn-out lovers’ spat, conveying in equal measures great longing, amusement, tragedy, regret, disaster, the frivolities of youth and the magic of finally realizing you’re in love. I’m sorry, but the BBC adaptation didn’t move me in that way.

This is a major deviation from the text…but personally I couldn’t say no if someone asked me to marry them the way Darcy asks Elizabeth: “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love—I love—I love you. And never wish to be parted from you from this day forward.”

Like, yes, I want to bewitch someone, body and soul. 10/10, no notes, my man.

Ultimately, Wright packages up a romantic fantasy that makes me dream that I, too, could meet my feuding lover in an overgrown field at dawn, in our nightclothes, and agree to marry each other as the sun rises. The BBC version invited me into Elizabeth Bennet’s world. Wright allows me to imagine it might be mine. And for that alone, I’ll quote Jane Bennett: “A thousand times yes.”