Ten things I learned about Sense and Sensibility

Yesterday I went to a screening of Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson and Ang Lee's peerless adaptation of the Austen novel. It was part of the Tricycle Theatre's ongoing British Screen Classics programme, curated by Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton, and came with a post-film Q&A featuring Thompson and her co-stars Greg Wise and Alan Rickman. The highlight was probably Mrs Rick telling Alan Rickman that she had learned to raise one eyebrow after watching him as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (and getting a round of applause for her troubles), but I also learned 10 (exactly 10!) things about the production. Which is great, because that means it fits into my occasional 'Ten things I learned...' series. A review of the film will follow - the movie's a stone-cold masterpiece - but first, here are the revelations:

1. Emma Thompson spent five years working on the script. She was encouraged by producer Lindsay Doran, who had enjoyed a sketch that Thompson had written about a man whose genitals were a small creature, and suggested that the logical progression was to adapt Sense and Sensibility.

2. She began the process by scripting the entire book, then chucked out anything that didn’t work. She tried countless times to perfect the scene in which Willoughby justifies his past actions – after turning up unexpectedly at Barton Cottage – but felt that it just didn’t work, clashing unreconcilably with the final shot of the character. An American member of the Jane Austen Society told Thompson that she couldn’t wait to see how she brought Anne to the screen; when she found out that the character had been excised entirely, she immediately walked off.


That scene.

3. The near-legendary scene in which Marianne (Kate Winslet) walks to Willoughby’s house in the rain – which doesn’t appear in Austen’s novel – was added at an early stage. “That just seemed obvious to me. What would be more natural than going to the place where your lover is and just repeating his name? That’s what love is.” (This was from my question, as it's one of the movie's great moments and I wanted to know when she conceived it and whether the finished article matched what she had imagined when writing it.)

4. She knew that Ang Lee was the right director when she realised that the line: “What do you know of my heart?”, spoken by her Marianne, also appears in Eat Drink Man Woman, his 1994 Taiwanese film.

5. Thompson’s abiding memory of the shoot is “trying not to get found out”, as she was engaging in a passionate affair with Wise, now her husband. “Ang would say to me every morning: ‘You look tired, a heavy night?’ and I was thinking, ‘You have no idea’. Then he'd say: 'Let's pull the camera back.'"

6. Her favourite scene is the first meeting between Elinor, Edward, Lucy and Marianne, in which none of them can say what they really mean.

7. Ang Lee’s direction included (to Winslet, on the first day): “Don’t worry, you’ll improve”; (to Thompson): “Be less old” and (to Alan Rickman) “Be subtler. Do more”, which apparently meant: “Do more subtlety”. The director was troubled by the absence of his wife during shooting. On one day, Thompson found him sitting on a chair in the middle of a field, holding his head. “Tide go in, tide go out,” he lamented, “but still no sex.”


Superman.

8. Greg Wise gave the costume designers clear directions regarding his first appearance in the film. “It has to be like Superman appearing,” he said. They obligingly gave him a cape. “He does have to be a superhero, because he’s this mythic figure,” he says today. “And he is mythic, in that he doesn’t exist. He’s a creation of Marianne’s.” That’s the actor’s favourite scene; Alan Rickman is fondest of the sequence in which his Colonel Brandon gets to gallop away at speed. “It must be something about men and horses.” (Rickman said his biggest challenge was playing "a thoroughly good person", as he likes to alight upon a character's imperfections, but feigned outrage at the idea that this wasn't his usual type, exclaiming that Snape "was a hero".)

9. The reason Kate Winslet is screaming hysterically in the sequence where she gets a high-octane buggy ride, is because Wise had accidentally taken the previous corner on just two wheels.

10. Hugh Grant complained about the climactic sequence in which Thompson weeps constantly during his confession of love, asking her: “Are you going to do that all the way through my speech?” “Yes,” she replied. “It’s funny.”

***



Thanks for reading.

Poliakoff double-bill - Reviews #4

Some more reviews for you. Ratings are from one to four.

Glorious 39 (Stephen Poliakoff, 2009)



Summer 1939, and as much of Britain prepares for war, a shady cabal of aristocrats and Government officials plots to mollify Hitler and secure a quick, painless peace. When Anne Keyes (Romola Garai), the adopted daughter of a wealthy family, stumbles across the conspiracy, she finds her life under threat - as one by one her allies turn out to be traitors, or turn up dead. In his first feature for 10 years, writer-director Stephen Poliakoff deals with some weighty themes - fascism, adoption, familial loyalty - while alighting on fascinating aspects of the readying for war, such as pets being killed and heaped onto pyres. "It's like a vision of hell, isn't it?" asks Anne's father (Bill Nighy). "Animals going onto a fire in a quiet English summer." Despite its depth, though, Glorious 39 is really an old-fashioned thriller: engrossing and atmospheric, with a gnawing, ever-present sense of menace and some mightily effective set pieces.

The film does have its faults, floundering in the final 15 and closing with an atrocious scene that serves no purpose, beyond fulfilling a perceived desire for a happy ending and satiating Poliakoff's need to hammer the audience over the head with poorly-conceived pseudo-irony. In common with Close My Eyes (more of which below), it also has moments of stiltedness and artificiality that snap you out of the story. But for all that, I don't understand the hammering it's been given by most critics. Its Hitchcockian elements - the stomach-tightening tension piquing during a slew of well thought-out suspense scenes - are marvellously handled, and the film is also notable for Garai's expressive, layered turn, which catches the eye in a cast that includes Nighy, Julie Christie, Jeremy Northam, David Tennant and Jenny Agutter. And Christopher Lee, but I don't like him. (3)

***

I'd enjoyed Glorious 39 - my first Poliakoff film - so I decided to dig out the only other one of his movies I own.



"I wish I could wake up happy." - Natalie (Saskia Reeves)

Close My Eyes (Stephen Poliakoff, 1991) is a troubling, intriguing, but sometimes superficial state-of-the-nation drama that attempts to have the last word on the 1980s. Saskia Reeves plays an aimless, unhappy young woman who marries a millionaire (Alan Rickman), then embarks on a passionate affair with her fiery, arrogant younger brother (Clive Owen). Though she can apparently turn the attraction on and off - an element that's insufficiently developed until the close - he is besotted, taking the AIDS crisis as further proof that he is doing The Right Thing. While this is primarily a portrait of sibling love, Poliakoff does have loftier ambitions as his screenplay encompasses compromised dreams (seen in the careers of its protagonists, and the broken idealism of city architecture) and the hollowness of contemporary priorities.

There's a moment in Lynne Ramsey's Morvern Callar, where Samantha Morton seems to capture just how peculiar and uncomfortable someone sounds in their own head when they're expressing a sensitive sentiment - in this case: "Shut up, he's dead." It's so unlike conventional acting that I've never been able to work out if she's doing it on purpose or has just mangled the dialogue with an atypical display of woodenness. Owen has a similar moment here, with a line that straddles the divide between glibness and profundity. "My boss is ill - he's got AIDS," he says simply. It's a particularly odd moment in a film that's littered with peculiarities and has a lot to say - not all of it entirely coherently.

With its striking, grim cinematography and bleak subject matter - punctuated with moments of wry humour - Close My Eyes plays like an embryonic version of Mike Leigh's dizzyingly brilliant Naked, which it predates by two years. In common with Glorious 39, it's a story of well-spoken people falling apart, lit by ever-present music, stately tracking shots and a curious interest in construction work as metaphor. Indeed, Poliakoff's fine visual sense is much in evidence, particularly in a breathtaking surrealistic opening. Acting-wise, it's a mixed bag, with a weak supporting cast but three strong leads. Reeves is the standout - absolutely excellent in a tricky part - with Owen as good as I've seen him and Rickman doing his considerable best in a role that tends towards caricature. A high (3), though definitely one to revisit.