What is it that gives me such hope about British films? After watching endless protracted dramas and crime films made in the US, one becomes jaded, almost immune to blood and guts, torture, and the deviousness of the worldly mind.

 

Why do we watch them, you may ask? Waiting for another mutilated body or packaged body part, a dank basement masquerading as a graveyard, a filthy bathroom, rampant sex acts, or mental health problems becomes a way of life on modern TV channels. But I believe that present American film directors are fixated on blood and filth because those aspects of human life that are customarily hidden need to be fully illuminated. We live in an age of what Buddhists would call ‘hungry ghosts’ and depravity, and we must confront that full-on.

 

So, after such inurement, ‘Mansfield Park’, set in early and relatively innocent 19th century England, will lift the spirit and bring relief. Of course, horrors, unfairnesses, poverty, and life exigencies abound in this story, but the principal message is hope and light. Protagonist Fanny Price, sent away from her poor docks’ home at the age of 10 to serve the wealthy branch of her family, is heavily oppressed because of her class. Despite this gross handicap, in the end, she wins the true love and status she clearly deserves, and we are gratified.

 

This setting of one of my favourite Jane Austen novels truly lifted my heart after a spate of subjecting myself to deep cinematic darkness. Being British by birth, I am not proud of the British class system or the societal havoc reeked by the Industrial Revolution in any way, but somehow, the light always manages to get through in British culture. This is a fairy story that the British are so in tune with.

 

 

 

The beautiful and talented Fanny is marooned in a poor home, although her imagination is rich, and she entertains her siblings by writing stories and histories prolifically. The family is overburdened financially, and so it is agreed between her mother and her mother’s sister that Fanny will be sent to Mansfield Park to act as a servant and get an education in the meantime.

Having arrived there, Fanny is devastated at being treated as an outcast and given a neglected attic as her bedroom. She sorely misses her family’s genuine love, but she almost immediately meets Edmund, her cousin, who tries to comfort her with jokes. Then, their love is kindled and becomes a bond made for life.

 

 

 

But many shadows are cast amidst the sunshine and brilliance of the central figure and her deeply pious Edmund. For instance, Sir Thomas Bertram, Baronet, the owner of Mansfield Park, runs a plantation in Antigua with many black slaves at a time when slavery is starting to be abolished. Tom Bertram is a drunk and gambler, eventually becoming gravely ill due to his reckless lifestyle. Lady Bertram is vague and distracted, addicted to laudanum and lap dogs, and her sister, Mrs Norris, a skinflint and total snob, persists in keeping Fanny in her place. Henry Crawford is a lusty bachelor who falls in love with Fanny, but she refuses to accept his dubious morality.

 

At one point, growing tired of her social oppression and Sir Thomas’s demands to marry a wealthy man she does not love, Fanny returns home. Then, the class contrast becomes patently obvious. She is once more marooned in a dirty environment, presided over by a drunken father whose dark family secrets are palpable in the eyes of the girl-children. And now, she profoundly misses Edmund, who is betrothed to be married to someone of his own class.

 

 

 

 

The gay balls and elegant dancing suit Fanny so well once she returns to Mansfield Park to care for her son Thomas, who is declining rapidly, and as luck would have it, she confronts Sir Thomas with his exploitation of slaves while Edmund steadily realizes his mismatch. Eventually, his betrothed, Miss Mary Crawford, Henry’s sister, reveals her true meddlesome and insincere nature to the whole family, and Edmund breaks off their engagement and listens to his heart. He immediately proposes to Fanny and plans to publish all her literary works.

 

This is a rags-to-riches story par excellence, and Fanny is perhaps the most compelling of all Austen’s heroines. The light created by this beautiful story comes flooding through and reminds us that we, too, have a True Nature and should never lose track of our dreams and native knowing.

 

 

 

Watch this film soon. It is oozing with period accuracy and attentiveness to the original text to lift you quickly into the saddle of your heart. Fanny is a talented weaver of tales so reminiscent of Jane Austen’s.

1999 Version is best!