Judging a Darcy is like judging a fruit cake. He has to be easy on the eye, crusty on the outside, soft in the middle, extraordinarily rich, and not particularly fond of dancing. OK, the simile doesn’t quite stretch but you get the idea.

Here are the nominations:

William Darcy from Bride and Prejudice (2003) – Martin Henderson

William Darcy played by Martin Henderson

Bio: An American hotelier who arrives in India harboring stereotypes of the local culture, akin to Jane Austen’s Darcy’s preconceptions about life outside elite society.
Positives: Classic Hollywood good looks.
Negatives: Perhaps a little too “new-money” for Darcy. The real Darcy wasn’t merely wealthy, of course, and as a gentleman wasn’t one for holding down a job either, whereas this chap is never off his laptop.

Will Darcy from Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Comedy (2003) – Orlando Seal

Will Darcy played by Orlando Seal

Bio: A British publisher who receives a manuscript from a certain Elizabeth Bennet, he is initially contemptuous of Miss Bennet’s social circle, before inevitably love begins to blossom.
Positives: His Englishness definitely helps him to appear arrogant and superior at the beginning (I can say this, I’m English. Americans, please don’t leave comments agreeing with me!”)
Negatives: He featured in an episode of the comedy series ‘The IT Crowd,’ in which his name was Peter File. See the YouTube clip below. It’s just impossible to take him seriously after this. In Pride and Prejudice; A Latter Day Comedy, he also has the misfortune to be in a pretty bad film, which doesn’t help matters.

Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones Diary (2001) – Colin Firth

Mark Darcy played by Colin Firth

Bio: Mark Darcy is a stuffy, yet bizarrely well-connected human rights lawyer, who bumps into Bridget at a new year party and eventually becomes a rival of Daniel Cleaver, Bridget’s boss, for her affections.
Positives: He has a natural advantage of course, being for many people the “real” Darcy due to his fabulous performance in the BBC’s 1995 series. His turn in Bridget Jones, in which his head appears to be a perfectly good shape (regardless of Miss Amanda Price’s allegations) is very different of course, but still very Darcy.
Negatives: He is, of course, as socially awkward as Jane Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy but lacks the sheltered, aristocratic upbringing in comparison with Bridget. In fact, everyone in the movie is more or less equally posh.

Fitzwilliam Darcy in Lost in Austen (2008) – Elliot Cowan

Elliot Cowan as Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy

Bio: Cowan plays the ‘real’ Darcy from the book, of course, but his life is knocked off course by the arrival of Miss Amanda Price from modern-day London. Amanda seeks to bring Elizabeth and Darcy together, yet slowly the two become drawn to one another instead.
Positives: Cowan is suitably tall, handsome and yet superficially ‘toxic,’ then turns on the charm rather delightfully as the series progresses.
Negatives: Perhaps a little angrier and pricklier than Darcy as portrayed in the book and the major adaptations. Not just cold or insensitive at the beginning, this Darcy is baldly unpleasant.

My Two Cents

My winner has to be Elliot Cowan from Lost in Austen. He takes Darcy to the extremes of insufferability and affability, and somehow binds it all together into one consistent character. He is handsome, of course, but not in a pretty-boy way, and has great chemistry with Miss Amanda Price.

What do you think? Aside from the Darcys of the major, straight adaptations, who is the best of the rest?

Gurinder Chadha’s 2004 Bride and Prejudice was a Hollywood-meets-Bollywood take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with a little bit of modern social satire thrown in. It was, perhaps unexpectedly, a little incoherent and reviews were very mixed. The reviews aggregation site metacritic.com gave it an average score of 55%. You can read our review of the movie here. While I was ambivalent about the movie itself, despite its obvious color and charm, there are some fantastic songs and dances. These led me to check out the soundtrack CD.

For the mostly English songs in Bride and Prejudice, Gurinder Chadha decided to use acclaimed Bollywood musical director, Anu Malik, to write the tracks, asking him to compose numbers likely to appeal to western tastes. Ironically, its the less western-influenced songs that really appeal to my (western) ears.

The soundtrack begins with the ‘Punjabi Wedding Song’ which is a vibrant foot-tapping number, used in the movie for the equivalent of the Meryton Ball scene. It was also, you may remember, a useful showcase for the awesome dancing skills of Lost’s Naveen Andrews. Next is ‘A Marriage has Come to Town,’ which keeps the tempo and fun levels up.

Naveen Andrews grooving to Punjabi Wedding Song

After this there is ‘No Life Without Wife,’ a Grease-inspired all-girl Rock ‘n’ Roll track. This is sung in the movie when Lalita’s sisters tease her about Kholi Saab (Mr. Collins.) ‘No Life without Wide’ was written by Craig Pruess rather than Anu Malik, and it does clash a little with the rest of the songs on the album. Anyone who enjoys a good twist should enjoy it all the same.

American R n B star Ashanti performs two of the songs on the soundtrack (did you spot her in the movie?) They are ‘My Lips are Waiting’ and ‘Touch my Body.’ Whereas most of the songs seem to jump from style to style, the Ashanti tunes are to me the most successful attempts on the album to fuse western and Bollywood influences.

‘Take Me to Love’ parts one and two are also worth a mention. These are romantic ballads performed by the beautiful Aishwarya Rai, with a haunting motif that somehow loses its cheese when separated from its place in the movie. The movie itself is certainly worth a watch for its visual splendor and the glorious songs and dances, as well as the interest it holds for lovers of Pride and Prejudice. The soundtrack, however, is simply a class above. It makes great summer listening and and will give you at least a few more songs to sing in the shower.

Track listing:

1. Punjabi Wedding Song
2. A Marriage Has Come to Town
3. No Life Without Wife
4. Take Me to Love (Part One)
5. Arrogance, Pride and Vanity
6. Dola Dola
7. My Lips are Waiting (AKA Goa Groove)
8. Take me to love (Part Two)
9. Lalita Walks Away
10. Touch My Body
11. Marriage End

Your shape-throwing friend,

Lizzy

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’

As every high school student of the book – be they bewitched, bewildered or even bored by Jane Austen’s masterpiece – can tell you, the sentence is dripping in warm, aromatic irony.  Here is a sample of the homages and parodies that have been produced in its honor. We’re hoping to  build a nice collection so please add more via your comments below. Movies, TV shows and published sources only, please! We will have a reader competition with our own variations later.

This little gem comes from Bridget Jones Diary (2001):

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.

The TV series Lost in Austen (2008) started with the slightly hammy but nevertheless accurate:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that we are all longing to escape.

Bride and Prejudice (2004), reviewed in this post, did without the graceful language and gave it to us straight with:

All mothers think that any single guy with big bucks must be shopping for a wife.

Pride and Prejudice; A Latter-Comedy (2003) goes for a parody which is both more long-winded and more vague (preferring to transfer the irony to its use of the word ‘comedy’ in the movie’s title.) It opted for:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl of a certain age, and in a certain situation in life, must be in want of a husband.

The 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is reviewed here, starts with a little more bite, offering us the following pearl of wisdom:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

Finally, Belinda Roberts begins her 2009 novel Prawn and Prejudice with the enticing:

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a yacht must be in want of a female crew.

Which, dear Reader, is the most deserving of your good opinion? Which is the most insufferable? Please also let us know about any others you come across. Of course, you can never beat the original – unless of course the original is Star Trek – but there are sure to be a few more worthy of a mention.

Yours in anticipation

Lizzy

Darcy’s initial arrogance is reflected in his ‘imperialist’ attitude when he arrives in India to accompany Balraj to a wedding and also visit a luxury hotel he is thinking of buying. Lalita, politically sensitive and patriotic, is offended by Darcy’s comments about his host country, and from their spiky conversations love begins to bloom. We still have George Wickham’s character, although here he is Johnny Wickham. Just as an aside, it seems a little odd for a contemporary adaptation to give him a first name that was last seen in movies like the Karate Kid and Dirty Dancing, but never mind – George would apparently have been old-fashioned or something. In any case, Wickham’s character arc is pretty much the same. It does come across quite unlikely when Darcy and Wickham bump into each other on a beach, however. In 19th Century England it’s enough of a coincidence, but an Englishman and an American chancing upon each other in a country of one billion people?

The movie’s energy and color would recommend it, even without the majesty of the source material. It is, without doubt, one of the handsomest movies of my acquaintance. The songs from the excellent soundtrack (reviewed here) are, depending on your point of view, either wonderfully or horribly catchy. The dances too, combined with the gorgeous costumes, also stand out – particularly the first, which occurs at the modern Indian equivalent of the Meryton town ball. Given the crucial role that dances play in Pride and Prejudice, this is where Jane Austen and Bollywood meet most advantageously. The songs vary in memorability and the dances in scale and splendor, but the best are truly loveable and the worst are all agreeable.

Ghada believed that the themes driving Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice remain central to the lives of many Indian women, and her movie does translate these – particularly the need for advantageous marriages – quite effectively. On a few occasions lines of dialog have been lifted directly, for example when Mr. and Mrs. Bakshi argue about whether Lalita should accept Kholi Saab’s proposal. Kholi is the movie’s Mr. Collins. He is an Indian-American expatriate and Los Angeles is his Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He only sees the good in the country that has made him rich, complains about India and Indians during his stay, and will hear nothing against his adopted country. The re-imagining of his character is one of the most interesting aspects of Bride and Prejudice.

It’s not difficult to see the relevance of Jane Austen’s work to contemporary India and it’s links to the US and Britain. The movie is certainly successful in this regard. The fusion of styles, however, is often a little jarring. The mixing of Bollywood and Hollywood would be tough enough, but to do so via classical literature and toe-curling British cringe comedy is probably impossible. Rather than creating a genuine fusion, the movie veers instead from style to style and often leaves you feeling a little confused. Some scenes contain naturalistic satire, some possess lashings of Hollywood cheese and others are pure Bollywood sparkle. It’s hard to be presented with such cynicism and naivety in the same film and know what to make of each. Maya’s snake dance is supposed to be exaggerated and embarrassing, yet when approached with these eyes so was the sisters’ “No Life Without Wife” number. The film engages our cynicism and then demands we suspend it, when a more consistent tone would have perhaps made it an easier watch. Nevertheless, this is a recommended movie for Austen fans and anyone thinking of dipping their toes into Bollywood cinema.

Your toe-tapping friend,

Lizzy