Annie Wagner interviewed Joe Wright in advance of the release of his Pride & Prejudice. Heâd like you to call it âthe Keira Knightley version.â
I hear you hadnât even read the book before taking on this project?
Thatâs not strictly true. I had never read the book before I went for the interview. I had thought Pride and Prejudice was for girls, really. I read the script, took it to the pub with me one afternoon, and discovered that by about page 60 I was weeping into my pint of lager. I found it very emotional. And that quite shocked me, really. Then I thought I better read the book. So I did read the book, and discovered it to be quite a radical piece of writing. It seemed really fresh. Her hand reaches right through time at us, she was observing people very, very closely, and I felt like I was almost reading the birth of British realism. It did feel political, as well. People have charged Jane Austen with avoiding anything political and vaguely conservative and I actually disagree. I think she was quite radically political in the sense that, the whole story, for instance, is kicked off by the fact that if Mr. Bennet dies the house goes to a male relative and not to any female. Thatâs the whole impetus for the story, which at the time, I think, was quite a bold statement politically. Sheâs just very clever, sheâs not overt in her politics.
I just reread the book recently. I love the way Austen puts all the complaints about the entail into the mouth of Mrs. Bennet.
Yeah, absolutely. Mrs. Bennet isnât completely stupid. Mrs. Bennet is the only one thatâs really taking the whole problem seriously. I think that a lot of kids todayâif youâre a kid, youâre thinking about the here and now and what youâre doing. Thereâs not much sense of rough times to come.
Certainly. And most of the judgmental statements about Mrs. Bennet come from Lizzy.
Yeah, absolutely. But I think Mrs. Bennet, especially as played by Brenda Blethyn is played very seriously. She got very angry with an interviewer, and Iâve never seen Brenda get angry. And Iâve never seen her angry. It was a press conference in a hotel, and this interviewer starts kind of patronizing Mrs. Bennetânot Brendaâbut Mrs. Bennet. So Brenda got very angry and said, âI donât give a shit about your ideas of Mrs. Bennet, I think sheâs the only one that takes the situation seriously. Sheâs the only one trying to help her family and I think sheâs doing it because she loves her daughters so much.â
Your film definitely diverges from a lot of Jane Austen adaptations. Had you seen the earlier BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries?
No, never watched it. I saw the Greer Garson versionâI think itâs terrible the way people say âthe Lawrence Olivier version,â or âthe Colin Firth version,â do you know what I mean? Itâs a story about a young woman falling in love. Why do you always call it the âmale-lead versionâ? So this is the âKeira Knightley version.â And weâre very careful to put Keira, to put Lizzy, at the center of the film. Itâs a story told from her point of view. I hadnât seen the BBC version, not becauseâbasically, I didnât want to plagiarize it. I was worried that Iâd see it and Iâd think it was really good and I knick ideas.
What about Ang Leeâs Sense and Sensibility?
Oh yeah, which I love. And I saw the previous film version, because there hasnât been a film of Pride and Prejudice since 1940. So I watched that, and I guess the only decision I made⊠The story doesnât make sense if you have someone as old as Lawrence Olivier playing the roleâhe was in his 40s, Greer Garson was in her 30sâit just doesnât make sense. Jane Austen wrote very young characters. Elizabeth Bennet is 20, Darcy is 28, and itâs about young people falling in love and they donât quite understand the emotions, the feelings that theyâre having. If you have a 40-year-old man not quite understanding the feelings that heâs having, than it just becomes a bit pathetic. It just makes a mockery of the whole story. The story only makes sense if itâs young people; otherwise it becomes the 40-Year-Old Virgin or something. [Laughs.]
[Brief interruption.]
I love doing interviews for eighteenth-century stuff in this hotel. It tries to be Georgian, but it doesnât quite make it.
Everything is mock these days.
Well, in Seattle you obviously couldnât get the real thingâŠ
Thatâs true. But in England, as well, everything is mock-Georgian, mock-fucking Tudor. I hate it, all this mock-shit. I love the original, you know, I love real Georgian houses and I love real 20th-century, 21st-century houses. But that mock stuff is just such a lie. People do it in England, you know. They get these Barratt homes that were built in the 1980s, then they plaster them white and stick black wood planks over them to make them look Tudor. Itâs gross.
Even in the eighteenth century they were doing that. They were doing fake Grecian ruins.
Right, right, right, thatâs true. Fake Grecian ruins are one thing, but you know, those are ridiculous.
Hilarious.
Exactly. But I guess, Adam and the whole architecture of that period, is kind of referencing classical architecture. But thatâs different, thatâs called âreferencingâ rather than âmock.â I think you have to have a sense where youâre referencing. So I did make references to Far From the Madding Crowd, for instance, and I thought it was really good and I wanted to try and get a bit of that atmosphere, that reality, and also that kind of subjectivity to the camera that I hadnât seen in very many period films. And I watched Russian Ark, as well, although I hadâ
Did you think about doing it in one take? [Laughs.]
Well, Iâve been really into doing long, single takes since a project I did called The Last King, I think itâs called hereâitâs called Charles the Second in England. So in that thereâs kind of seven-and-a-half minute Steadicam shot around twenty-five different characters or so. Which is lovely. But, yeah, I watched Russian Ark and thought it was a superb piece of choreography.
Yeah, itâs choreography, really. Itâs almost hard to call it filmmaking.
Itâs wonderful, I love it. Thereâs a three-and-a-half minute shot in my film, in that ballroom scene, and that was a joyous day of choreography. An actor-camera relationship.
Yeah, I was reading that scene in the book recently. Theyâre dancing, and thereâs this dialogue and then the dance ends, but thereâs no indication of how that happens.
Itâs a lovely thing with that book, for a filmmaker itâs great, because Austen gives very, very little description of anyone. Thatâs really nice because it leaves space for you to imagine. Maybe thatâs why thereâs been so many Austen adaptations, because itâs really a blueprintâit gives you fantastic structures and wonderful dialogue, but itâs not prescriptive. It doesnât fill in the gaps for you. Thereâs space for you to imagine and feel⊠free, you know. But that may be the problem as well, because it means that people have created their own visualization of the characters and the houses.
Readers, you mean.
Yeah, readers, exactly. Theyâre holding you to a standard that only they imagine. And thatâs something that Keira was concerned about, before she accepted the role of Elizabeth. She really, really wanted to do it, but she was terrified of having young women coming up to her, saying âYouâre not Elizabeth Bennet, I am.â Because she felt that when women read the book, they feel as if they were Elizabeth Bennet. So that was a hurdle for her to overcome. Although she also had the same experience when she read the book. Itâs very rare that you getâas you know, itâs very rare that you get leading roles for women, especially ones that are that strong and that powerful. Keira has amazing strength. I think if you were to describe one quality of Keiraâs, Iâd say itâs strength. And Elizabeth is a very strong woman.
Headstrong, even.
Heart-strong too, though. Iâm just thinking about that. How everyone says headstrong and not heart-strong. Strong is good, headstrong is slightly detrimental, and heart-strong just isnât used.
So, you talk a little bit in the press notes about the period clichĂ©sâthe carriage riding off and how that wasnât interesting. Are there other period clichĂ©s that youâd point to?
Yeah, I mean the fact that period films are usually shot in widescreen because the filmmakers are interested in showing off what lovely houses theyâre in or what lovely environments theyâre in because they think the audience is going to be interested in that. But I think, personally, audiences are interested in emotions and characters and thatâs what grabs their attention. Also, I was trying to find cinematic equivalence, if you like, to Jane Austenâs prose. When youâre adapting a novel, especially one as beloved as Pride and Prejudice, youâre trying to stay faithful to the narrative events of the story, but youâre also trying to stay faithful to the tone and the atmosphere in the book, which comes obviously from the prose. I looked at the prose and felt that the way Jane Austen studies people very, very carefully and the minutiae of developing social emotions, and so I felt that one way to express that cinematically was to shoot a lot of the film in close-up. So thatâs not often done in period films.
You use zooms, too.
Yeah, I like zooms because I donât like telling actors necessarily when theyâre in close-up. Because I think sometimes if you say, okay, weâre going to go for a wide-shot now then you get a wide-shot performance. Then you say okay, Iâm going for a close-up now and then they give an often quite mannered performance in close-up. I quite like just if someone is doing something interesting that thatâs what I zoom in for a close-up. You can catch moments, you know? And also I think itâs the grammar of documentary filmmaking, and itâs the grammar of social observation. I felt that that was particularly Jane Austenâs kind of realism, social realism.
Your background, you say, is in social realism?
Iâve got a kind of funny background. My parents were puppeteers. Theyâve got a puppet theater in Islington in London. So I grew up with fairy tales, and then I went to a sort of rough comprehensive school, I think theyâre called public schools here. It was quite rough, and I went to a drama club after school where we did improvisation, drama workshops, which is all very steeped in that kind of British tradition of social realism. So I had those two influences of fairy tales and social realism. One of the things I was interested in doing with this film was bringing those two influences together. A lot of the imagery is quite fairy tale-like. For instance, the Bennet house has a moat around it and I loved the ideaâit seemed quite fairy tale-like. Youâve got five virgins sitting on an island and they have to get off that islandâor these men have to get on that island or something. So thatâs kind of a fairy tale image to me, but then to shoot it in a realist style.
So, the mud and the pigsâ
Thatâs also partly from research. It was that muddy and if you werenât quite rich youâd only have a bath once a week.
You didnât require the actors to do that. [Laughs.]
No, I didnât. But I made sure that none of them wear any makeup because they wouldnât have worn makeup. No, none of them wore any makeup and their dresses were lifted and they didnât wear the most up-to-date fashions of 1797, they wore clothes that they had for a while. The girls had hand-me-downs, so there is a sense of history there, as well.
I love when period films get dirty.
Absolutely. Although the whole makeup issue is really annoying because we tested the makeup issue and everyone looked perfectly great without makeup on. Except the problem was Keira is that Keira has a natural eyeliner. Itâs really weird. Sheâs got these dark lines around her eyes. So the only makeup that was worn was by Keira, which was to paint out her natural eyeliner so that sheâd look like she wasnât wearing makeup, because otherwise itâd look like Keira was wearing makeup and no one else was. Thatâd be really crap.
The humor in your film, especially in the portrayal of Mr. Bingley, Iâd say, is definitely different from other adaptations.
Yeah, thatâs just Simon [Woods]. Heâs got such a sweet humor, Simon, and itâs kind of like that. Simon is just silly.
Was that something that you wanted for the character?
It just kind of happened, really. You certainly going to a film thinking I kind of want this, I want that, but also a large part of my job is about creating an atmosphere in which people can express themselves and hopefully realize the potential in people and realize the potential in a given moment. So once youâve cast an actor you canât force them to do something that isnât natural to them. You have to see what they bring to you and work with what they give you. Mr. Bingley, in that sense, that was what Simon was bringing in and I hopefully realized his potential. And bits I didnât like I threw out. Strangely, he and Rosamund Pike, who plays Jane, were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Really? Before they were cast?
Before they were cast, and then they split up like a year before we started shooting. So the first time theyâd seen each other since they split up was on the first day. It added to their story, really.
In your film Mr. Collins is a lot shorter than Darcy, and thereâs a lot of humor that comes out of that.
I didnât specifically set out to cast a shorter actor.
Although that one long shot of the two of them in the ballroomâ
That was, again, realizing the potential of the situation. [Laughs.] A lot of actors came in and read for Mr. Collins. They generally played him exactly as I had imagined him, except for one that came in and did a brilliant impression and played him as Tony Blair, which was genius, which was a really good, but I felt that was making a bit too much of a statement. But then Tom came in and played him as this weird fucked up little freak of a pervert and I thought that was incredible. It surprised me, like I literally, as he was reading, was going âWhat are you doing? This is so strange, what you are doing,â and loved it. I think what Iâm often looking for is originality or imagination in actors and thatâs certainly what Tom brought to it.