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Netflix’s Persuasion is a Tonal, Structural Obscenity


I quite liked Persuasion, reading it in my college English class years ago -the last of Jane Austen’s novels, arguably the most refined, and ultimately I feel one of the sweetest. But Persuasion (much like its immediate predecessor Northanger Abbey) has never been adapted properly to film -it’s been done in theatre and of course for BBC television, but never as a feature film the way more popular Austen novels have. It’s been long overdue -so it was cool to hear this movie from Netflix was coming. Coupled with Fire Island only a month ago it seemed to be we were in for a Summer of Austen.
And then the details started dropping: out-of-context screenshots and quotes, a trailer that really boded ill for the movie. This was to be a modernized adaptation with a liberal attitude to Austen’s voice, and a colour-blind cast a la The Personal History of David Copperfield. The latter is entirely a non-issue, though it did lead to push-back from those eager to claim they're not racists. The former though is a much more severe choice -especially for a film that seems otherwise intent on maintaining the books’ period and setting. Austen’s language is one of the most endearing traits of her work, to water it down is a missed opportunity at best, a misunderstanding at worst. Could Persuasion succeed in spite of that change?
No, but the language is not in fact the only thing that dampens this movie or even is the sole point of major dissonance with the text. The worst offending lines are the handful that have already made the rounds on social media (not to take away though from how atrocious they indeed are, especially as replacements for exquisitely rich dialogue). The movie is sub-par perhaps more so for its’ structural choices than its’ script ones, and its’ innate failure to really grasp the story of Persuasion -which concerns a woman who had been persuaded against marriage to a naval man several years back, now regretting the choice as she gets older and has fewer prospects, meeting him again through connections brought about by her familys’ diminishing fortunes. In this of course there are other matches and scandals and the typical social manners drama, but with a fixed interest on Anne Elliot and the potential of a second chance for her with Captain Wentworth.
Directed by Carrie Cracknell, the movie certainly has its’ share of lush Austen imagery, from the period costumes and decor to some lovely shots at Lyme -this being one of the only Austen stories to feature significantly the coast. This isn’t bad for a first-time film director (Cracknell comes from theatre), many of the compositions are colourful and alluring. But then these are contrasted against heavy amounts of modernism, not just in the language, but in how characters express themselves and move about in their world. It seems to be trying to replicate something of that quaint modern touch of 2020’s Emma, but the tone for this story isn’t quite as applicable and the choices there weren’t necessarily so strictly millennial, as plenty of the visual and verbal jokes of this movie are. And the effect is that it all reeks of disingenuousness, this persistent veneer of play-acting, this winking sensibility that often undercuts character.
There’s no sense delaying the point in that regard, Dakota Johnson is badly miscast as Anne Elliot. It’s not that she can’t do Jane Austen, she can put on a decent Regency English accent and I could see her working as Fanny Price or Emma Woodhouse or even possibly Elizabeth Bennet -but she cannot do Anne, who is one of Austens’ more humble protagonists -a sad woman dwelling at a missed chance at love and marriage. She is not some sharp wit or sardonic charmer, she’s a character more defined through pathos. Add to that that Johnson, at a few years older than the character as written, still seems too young for the part, with her playful energy and youthful sophistication bearing more semblance to one of Austens’ younger protagonists, rather than the one who, for the time of the text, was approaching middle age, bearing with that a resigned consequent maturity.
What surely doesn’t help Johnson’s performance amid all this is the choice to employ a fourth-wall breaking commentary in lieu of narration. I criticized Fire Island for its’ unnecessary use of narration, but I would have much rather had that technique than this movie’s baffling attempt to be Fleabag. And yes, Fleabag was great and inventive, and a number of movies and shows have since tried to replicate its’ signature metatextual relationship with the audience -but the thing they’re all missing is Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s unique sharpness that can’t simply be repurposed to another context or actor. Johnson seems especially blunt in her impression of Waller-Bridge, down to the snide side-glances at the camera. But it’s so fundamentally wrong for this material and this character, and in its’ pursuit of that kind of knowing humour, permits those lines that are so egregious -Anne referring to Wentworth offhandedly as her “ex” and whatnot.
Wentworth is played by Cosmo Jarvis, who made for a perfectly adequate boy-toy for Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth. But he doesn’t have much charisma, and may in fact be the dreariest leading man in an Austen adaptation that I’ve ever seen. He too seems to be going for a demeanor akin to the more famous Mr. Darcy than this character. The cast also features Richard E. Grant and Nikki Amuka-Bird -Henry Golding appears as William Elliot, Anne’s other love interest, in a pretty vacant role for his star status. And Mia McKenna-Bruce plays Anne’s younger sister Mary, perhaps the most blisteringly modern a girl in the entire piece, whom I don’t remember being quite this annoying in the book.
At the end of the day, it feels like this film didn’t particularly care much about what it was adapting. In many scenes it’s much more interested in being Bridgerton than Persuasion -which seemingly was chosen on a whim as simply an Austen novel that hasn’t already had a high-profile adaptation. The story, in lieu of the misapplied structural, dialogue, and casting choices, is diluted -difficult to engage with or invest in, which is really a shame. One can look at simply the BBC television film from 2007 starring Sally Hawkins to see how it can be done well and satisfyingly. A novice or non-fan of Jane Austen certainly wouldn’t get that from this film, which especially peters out by its’ last act as it begins to run short on it’s tonal snark. It’s a brazenly cynical film, the second effort this year at updating Jane Austen, but in that enterprise, it drives out the essential spirit and charm for vogue devices. And that’s really the worst thing you can do to a legacy of this stature. 

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