Vanity Fair

anhedonia wrote on IMDB:

If Becky Sharp, Georgian England's conniving, calculating social climber, had a contemporary equivalent, it surely would be Tracy Flick, the deliciously ambitious high school student played delightfully by Reese Witherspoon in the acerbic comedy, "Election" (1999).

Director Mira Nair has said what made Witherspoon the ideal Becky Sharp was the actress' "American energy and sassiness." Fair enough. But why did Nair then tame that energy and sass? We see none of it in Witherspoon's Becky. This isn't the feisty actress who proved she could play edgy and biting in "Election" and "Freeway" (1996). This is Elle Woods as Becky, thanks to Nair's misguided decision to turn Becky into an appealing feminist.   [ show more ]

I'm not averse to directors stamping their distinct styles on literary works, mixing film styles or modernizing old works. But you don't change the work's crucial essence. You don't transform Goneril and Regan into caring daughters, for instance.

That's where Nair's take on William Makepeace Thackeray fails miserably.

She and Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes - the two other credited writers, Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet, reportedly disowned the film alleging the shooting script bore no resemblance to their work - have stripped Becky of all her viciousness and cunning. They've declawed her in a ridiculous attempt to make her likable.

In interviews, Nair and Witherspoon insist they didn't want to make a typical "bonnet" film. Fine. But you also shouldn't make a film that doesn't know what it wants to be and lacks emotional resonance. And that's what Nair's film is.

It sparkles for about a half-hour or so as we see a young Becky, played pluckily by Angelica Mandy; then, the older Becky (Witherspoon) leaving school with her friend, Amelia (Romola Garai), and meeting, among others, Dobbin (Rhys Ifans) and George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Later, Becky becomes Sir Pitt Crawley's (Bob Hoskins) governess and meets her future husband Rawdon (James Purefoy) and Matilda (Eileen Atkins).

But once Becky heads to London, the film screeches to a halt. With no one seemingly knowing what the emotional tone should be and the story's harshness and satiric edge excised, the film grinds at a snail's pace, the actors slowly sapping all the energy out of it. A scene between Becky and George at the piano should be tart, their words should sting. Instead, the two actors labor with the dialogue and make the moment as sharp as a dull razor.

Adapting Thackeray's massive novel into a feature film was never going to be easy. But Nair gets more wrong than right. With the exception of the children, none of the characters age. Gabriel Byrne looks the same at the end of the film as he did in the beginning, which takes place 40 years earlier. Witherspoon, Garai, Hoskins, Ifans, Purefoy and Rhys-Meyers also show no hint of aging. And in an attempt to condense the story, important characters - Amelia and Dobbin, for instance - disappear for long periods and show up solely to wrap up subplots.

The highlights are Declan Quinn's striking cinematography, performances by Hoskins and Atkins, the only two who seem to be having any fun, and a superbly restrained Ifans, playing convincingly against type.

Much has been made about the Indian influence in Nair's story. There's nothing wrong with them being in the film. Thackeray was born in Calcutta and the colony's impact was evinced in Georgian English society. Not only do Nair's Indian touches make the film seem more vibrant, but the peacocks, parrots and Indian musicians, costumes and servants also make provocative statements about the exploitation of India and how the British Empire amassed its wealth. However, no matter how exotic it seems, Becky's dance just doesn't work and seems like nothing more than an imprudent attempt to add a foreign film style into this period piece.

Witherspoon, whose English accent falters occasionally, works commendably, but ultimately remains unconvincing through no fault of her own, really. You don't take someone who quips, "Revenge may be wicked, but it's perfectly natural," and turn her into a sweet, amiable victim. Witherspoon isn't even remotely as devious as Nair would want us to believe.

It's unlikely another actress, say Kate Winslet or Kate Beckinsale, would have fared any better for she'd have worked with the same script and Nair's foolhardy direction, which includes inexplicably asking Geraldine McEwan to not so much speak her lines as to squeal them high-pitched, making the veteran actress' Lady Southdown needlessly irritating.

This film remains so emotionally lackadaisical that when Becky finally breaks down before Rawdon, it seems more like a "For Your Oscar-Consideration" moment for Witherspoon than anything else. By softening Becky, making her more alluring than calculating, Nair destroyed the story's spirit. She and Fellowes also tacked on a ludicrous ending.

As botched film adaptations of literary works go, "Vanity Fair" isn't nearly as execrable as Roland Joffé's "The Scarlet Letter" (1995). But I'm confounded as to how the skilled storyteller of "Salaam Bombay!" (1988) and "Monsoon Wedding" (2001) could have gone so horridly wrong. [ show less ]

wassailwo wrote on IMDB:

I was very disappointed with this adaptation of Thackeray's masterpiece. When this movie first came out I was very excited to see it and read the book in preparation. Now I wish I had just left it at the novel. Mira Nair's vision of Becky Sharp and the hypocrisy of Regency Britain is so far off the mark, she should be ashamed of herself for even using the title 'Vanity Fair.' All of Becky's backstabbing guiles have been down-graded to a form of pluckiness that completely fails to hit any mark of truth or irony... the two pillars of the original work. It saddens me to know that a generation of young people will watch this film and assume that Nair's vision of the story is a correct one. It also upsets me that several of the most entertaining scenes in the novel were altered or completely left out for the sake of forcing us to endure Reese Witherspoon's mediocre lip syncing in at least three separate musical numbers. Sure, in the novel, Becky could sing... but she was also a heartless sociopath who would do anything to get ahead. Out of the two personality traits, I believe Thackeray would rather us know the latter instead of the former. 'Vanity Fair,' the novel, is a sharp and often hilarious social commentary. 'Vanity Fair,' the 2004 movie, is a dull and often intellectually insulting piece of weepie dreck. Trust me, folks, spend your money on the book, or at least check out the far superior BBC version, which is twice as long but never quite as plodding as this mock-up of an adaptation.

William J. Fickling (wjfickling@earthlink.net) wrote on IMDB:

This is an entertaining movie that goes over two hours, but I really don't understand why it was made. Sprawling stories spanning several decades with several subplots involving dozens of characters are totally defensible on the printed page, where we can always go back and remind ourselves which character is which and how this character is related to that one. But this type of thing makes no sense whatsoever in a film. Unless a viewer has a phenomenal memory, such a story on film invariably leads to confusion and to my asking myself, "now wait a minute, whose brother is this, and whose son?"

So that is one of the principal problems with this film.

There are several other problems as well. Reese Witherspoon is badly miscast. She simply lacks Becky Sharp's bite. In fact, the whole film lacks Thackeray's bite. Reese does a good job with the British accent, but it just doesn't work. She is just too American for the role. Weren't there any British actresses available, or were the producers just relying on Reese's star power? Reese is just too nice to play Becky.   [ show more ]

It has often been said that Becky Sharp was the model for Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," although Margaret Mitchell denied this. Even so, I kept visualizing Vivien Leigh in this role and imagining how perfect she would have been. I think Mira Nair was thinking of GWTW as well, because there are several scenes in the film that are obvious homages to it. First there are the battle scenes during the Battle of Waterloo, followed by a panoramic view of the carnage following the battle, complete with corpses strewn all over the battlefield. This was an obvious homage to the crane shot over Atlanta in GWTW. The final fight between Becky and her husband reminded me of the final fight between Scarlett and Rhett in GWTW. I half expected the husband to say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Another flaw involves the Indian director Nair's inability to resist bringing in some Bollywood type scenes, particularly one involving Becky leading an Indian type dance, with Indian music, before the king, no less, and to thunderous applause.

And yet another thing: this film spans at least twenty, maybe twenty-five or thirty, years in Becky's life after she graduates from finishing school--I am not counting the one scene of her as a child--yet the character never ages. Neither do any of the other characters. Maybe the makeup staff went on strike?

But most of these problems won't even be noted by someone who hasn't read the book, so if you haven't, go ahead and see it; you'll probably be entertained. And if you are someone like me who loves the book, you may not be able to resist seeing it anyway. But Thackeray was never so soft. [ show less ]