To write about the Persuasion movie review, I personally have mixed kinds of a feeling. In some scenes, I feel so relatable and to some point, I feel totally disgusted. So let’s get ready for the ultimate Persuasion Movie Review; Disaster or Delightful? Let’s Find out.
Persuasion movie review:
Dakota Johnson is stunning as always in Netflix’s bold conversion of Jane Austen in the movie “Persuasion” 2022!!
Dakota Johnson has her most impressive period of success going on but does “Persuasion” fall under that period? Let’s find out.
Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson) was so close to happiness. Love. Marriage. A good man. What more does an upper-class woman of the early 19th century need? But she let years of upbringing in a shitty, shitty family spoil her.
He was just a sailor without “rank or wealth”. He wasn’t up to Elliot’s exacting standards, so she rejected his proposal, and he sailed away. That was eight years ago.
She lives with her smug father and eldest sister, but when her family’s extravagant spending forces them to rent out their large estate, a naval officer and his wife move in.
The woman’s brother happens to be Captain Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis) — a man Anne rejected in her youth and found great success in the navy.
Anne’s best friend is at the bottom of wine bottles, drinking right out of them. Or maybe we—and I use the royal we, singular—is Anna’s best friend because she’s always turning around and talking to us and sharing the contents of her heart and mind with wit and honesty, sometimes even while she’s cuddling her bunny.
Persuasion may be the hardest to adapt for a modern audience. While it contains some of Austen’s ironic jokes, it is also the most thoughtful of her novels and is built around social norms.
But instead of struggling to make them resonate, or taking the time to acknowledge the book, Carrie Cracknell, director of Persuasion, makes the main character a mess.
What could have been a perfect period adaptation turns into a torturous mishmash of a movie with a modern feel to the heroine at odds with the tranquil Regency-era romantic drama.
The star-studded supporting cast is all swamped with odd dialogue choices as the filmmakers try to make the film both an uneasy anachronistic take and a more traditional adaptation and fail at both.
The film’s glaring and most egregious shortcoming is that, for some inexplicable reason, screenwriters Ronald Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow decided to have Anne narrate the movie.
And not just telling it, but talking directly into the camera, giving her pointed looks. She is a Regency-era Fleabag, although this characterization is entirely at cross purpose compared to the original character.
In an endeavour To make Anne’s struggles with class and societal norms more relatable, writers decided to make her an eccentric free spirit.
She gets drunk on wine and shouts Frederick’s name, knowing that he is at a party across the lawn, which she cannot attend because she is caring for her sick nephew.
She responds to his sister’s self-centred ramblings in Italian. She puts on a breadbox as a hat and puts a jelly moustache over her lip to entertain her nephews.
All of which might be fine, except that in the original book, Anne is all about being reserved, gentle, and reasonable—and that the people in her life can easily convince her to adapt to what was expected of her.
Much of Anna’s original journey is about realizing that she doesn’t have to conform to expectations. But the fact that she’s already neat and eccentric completely defeats this entire arc. It’s hard to believe that Anne insults her family under her breath but simultaneously conforms to societal norms.
Netflix’s Persuasion depicts 2 movies together. One is quirky and full of modernity, and one is a more straightforward adaptation that stays true to its roots. The former may have felt too much risk in adapting the classic. Maybe the second one was too boring for the filmmakers.
Be that as it may, Persuasion is a film caught between harsh tones, never committing to either. To turn it into an anachronistic girl story would require more effort than this film depicts, but it can be better. Instead, Persuasion is caught in a strange limbo, and even its best parts can’t break free from the worst ones.