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Tonight on the BBC: Jane Austen vs. handheld cameras. Who will win the clash of cultures? And will we be awake long enough to care?

I am not entirely predisposed to the works of Jane Austen. It’s not that they are badly written; in fact, every time I have ever attempted to read one of her novels, I have been struck by her remarkable density of language, dialogue of wit, and ability to bring even the most stodgy of social situations to life. No, I regret the inadequacy is all my own. Although I have always been a fan of period drama and period settings, I find literature from before about 1880 immensely to hard to read - and harder still to keep reading. My limited success from before that period has been strictly with children’s books and short stories, and as a newly minted graduate student of literature, it’s one of my goals to acquaint myself better with the likes of Mr. Dickens, the Brontës, and yes, even Miss Austen.

Despite my failings as a reader of classics (I once managed nearly half of Pride and Prejudice), I have seen multiple adaptations of Austen’s novels, most of them many times over. And to my immense shame, they all tend to blend together in my head, to the point where I received this DVD and immediately began running a filter to identify the story. It went something like this: “Well, it’s not one they made into a blockbuster (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice or Emma); it’s not the crazy one (Northanger Abbey); it’s not the one that sounds like that terrible Richard Harris song (Mansfield Park), so...oh, yes, must be the other one.”

And so it is.

Jane Austen’s Persuasion is based upon the last of the author’s completed novels, and begins much as anyone might expect, with a single, unmarried Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) preparing to leave the estate of her father, Sir Walter (Anthony Head), a vain man who spends more money than he should. After they relocate to Bath, Anne begins to spend time with her friends and neighbors, the Musgroves, when who should arrive but Captain Wentworth (Rupert Penry-Jones), to whom she was engaged eight years previous (when she was persuaded to break the match). The good captain begins courting one of the young Musgrove ladies, Anne grows jealous, and I’m sure any good audience member can see where it’s all going from there.

There are two elements to this version of Persuasion which immediately separate it from the others: first, the cast, chiefly made up of young, fresh-faced actors I don’t recognize, and second, the filming style. The cast should, of course, be addressed first. I have never seen the two leads in anything else, and I’m afraid to say I’ve hardly been, well, persuaded to improve upon that any time soon. As Anne Elliot, Sally Hawkins is a pale, slight presence, whose main acting ability seems to run to varying degrees of desperate facial expressions, delivered silently in well-timed turns to camera and a sudden upswell of music. The director seems to be making some point when, at the end of the program, she suddenly looks up into camera with a delighted smile on her face. “Ah!” we say, having woken from our nap. “Things must be looking up! Wait, is it over?”

In contrast, Rupert Penry-Jones is certainly fine with what material he has, but he doesn’t make much of a real impression - something that’s actually rather important with these large casts and the formal dialogue of an Austen story. The best efforts all come from the secondary cast, chiefly the older actors; Anthony Head seems to be having a whale of a time as a pompous ass, and it’s always good to see contributions from the likes of Nicholas Farrell, Alice Krige and Peter Wight.

If the actors seem a little inhibited, it might be down to the style of the piece; I’m not entirely sure what director Adrian Shergold was trying to do, but I think if asked he would probably claim it had something to do with “realism,” that great catchphrase of modern cinema. Although most of the interiors are shot as you would expect with a BBC drama, most of the exterior sequences (and a scant handful inside, too) are shot with...of all things...handheld cameras. I’m sure the effect was intended to be one of immediacy, but instead, it looks like the cameramen are trying to follow a rugby scrummage, or possibly filming a reality show ("Coming soon: Jane Austen House!"). It is terribly, terribly distracting, and for something intended to look “realistic,” does an excellent job of intruding upon the fictional reality of the scene. It’s too modern. It looks wrong. Make it stop.

(On a related note, realism is even taken to the extreme of running the closing credits over birdsong. Not that that stops most of the production from being scored with tinkly piano music. Oh, no.)

The subdued performances and overzealous camera somehow combine to create a drama that is neither particularly exciting nor entertaining, yet not actually bad, either. Everyone’s doing their best and the story certainly clips along at a brisk pace. Yet I found it hard to be in any way emotionally engaged by this version of the tale. Mostly what I felt was a sort of vague tiredness, slipping eventually into a brown study by the very end. For all the attempt to bring Jane Austen’s world to life, up close and personal like never before, there is a strange lack of life to this production. It’s almost as if the energy, and the color, had been sapped away sometime during pre-production,

Jane Austen’s Persuasion is presented on DVD by BBC Video, and my goodness, they rushed this into production. The Region 1 DVD release was timed to coincide with Masterpiece Theatre‘s “Jane Austen season” on PBS, which saw they debut of this new adaptation, along with one of Sense and Sensibility. Since WGBH (PBS’ Boston affiliate) co-produced both adaptations, that makes perfect sense, but even for a budget DVD of $19.99 the result is a bit lackluster.

The 93-minute drama is presented in an anamorphic 16:9 transfer, which mostly looks...fine. The colors are pretty de-saturated (as, I’m sure, was intended), but detail is clear and black levels are typically good. However, light levels seem oddly blown out in certain darker scenes; the photography will suddenly go all grainy, as if someone forgot to adjust the gain control on the camera. It’s evident in all the colors, but especially large swathes of black (such as the men’s coats), and it has the undesirable effect of looking like you’re suddenly watching an old VHS tape. Not pretty.

The original stereo audio track is provided for the piece, along with English subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

No extras have been included; it’s a bit unfortunate, really, as you’d think there’d be a nice little making-of special, but I imagine the idea was to get these new Austen specials out on DVD as quickly as possible. However, the disc does open with the new 2-minute BBC Drama trailer, which makes other, better titles like The Way We Live Now and Daniel Deronda look like the televisual equivalent of a Harlequin romance paperback. Hilarious beyond words, but strangely in keeping with this disc as a whole.

I find it hard to recommend Jane Austen’s Persuasion, not because it is a production without lineage or breeding, but because it bears the fatal flaw of being tedious. Ladies and gentlemen much enamoured of Miss Austen’s work may deem it a worthwhile rental, or even a sale purchase, but the less informed viewer is recommended to seek other, finer adaptations, or even the original novel. The BBC is to be commended for attempting to present the classics in a modern style, but “realism” (in the cinematic sense) does not naturally become these tales; they are, at their best, melodramatic romances with a strain of biting wit, not brooding tragedies, and it should not be a prerequisite of the viewer that they enter the production in a state of depression, or be rendered into one by the duration of the piece.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to stop talking like that.

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