Posted by Peggy Haley on September 01, 1997 at 18:37:44:
In reply to Okay... posted by Kali on August 31, 1997 at 22:02:29
Kali wrote:
](Side note to Peggy - your post was perfectly within proper limits. Even so, we reserve the right to disagree with you! ;-) )
If we all agreed, it would make for a pretty boring board. :-) Thanks for taking my comments in the spirit in which they were intended.
bj wrote:
] I think that many of the anti-Emma adaptations individuals on this board have set such high expectations and "standards" that there's no way they're going to be able to see an adaptation and be satisfied with it.
As I stated in my post, I was very satisfied with the adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Emma is a different book. A better and more complex book, IMO. It has its humor, but it is not, to me, primarily comic. I think it's actually fairly serious, and I think the author takes Emma's behavior seriously. It's always been my feeling that she agreed with Knightley more than any other character in the book.
When a film adaptation comes along that skates lightly along the top of the novel's themes, as I feel Emma 2 did, it can do a disservice to the original and to the author. I would prefer to see an adaptation that took liberties with the plot in order to make things more visual, than one which took liberties with the tone.
Emma 2 certainly can stand alone as a frothy and moderately charming romantic comedy, but it's inconsequential and not in the least thought-provoking. If viewers come away from it with the idea that Jane Austen was just a writer of high-toned romance, that's bad in my book.
] No matter how many movies come out, you've still got your novel, kids. Just don't waste your money on the ticket if you're so hell bent to nitpick it to death and look for ways in which it offends your sensibilities.
In the case of Emma 2, I didn't have to look very far. If that makes me a book-hugging snob, so be it, but I feel very strongly about Austen. I am open to the possibility of a good adaptation of Emma, though - if they can do it with S and S, anything's possible. :-)
Peggy
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