Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair" is a satire telling of the rise, fall and rise again of the social-climbing adventuress Becky Sharp. Like a number of other literary heroines from this period, most notably Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Becky starts life as a governess, although she and Jane Eyre are completely different in character. Whereas Jane is morally upright and deeply religious, Becky is scheming and unscrupulous. (Her surname has an obvious symbolic meaning). She marries Rawdon Crawley, an Army officer and the younger son of her employer, becomes the mistress of the wealthy Lord Steyne and, after various reverses of fortune, ends up as the wife of a senior official with the East India Company.

Thackeray's title is taken from Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and refers to a fair which was intended to symbolise man's sinful attachment to the things of this world. His intention was to satirise the snobbishness, hypocrisy and worldliness of British society. Although the events described in the novel take place in the 1810s and 1820s, two or three decades before it was published in 1848, he clearly intended it to have a contemporary relevance, and his readers would have had no difficulty identifying the Becky Sharps and Lord Steynes of their own day.

The author described it as a "novel without a hero", and few, if any, of its characters are intended to come across as sympathetic. We may admire Becky's cunning and determination, but her ruthlessness and amorality mark her out as the novel's anti-heroine rather than its heroine. Her husband Rawdon is as amoral as her, and considerably more stupid. Steyne (pronounced "stain"- another symbolic name) is a libertine and a bully. Rawdon's father Sir Pitt Crawley is an oafish vulgarian and his brother Pitt junior a pompous prig. Becky's friend Amelia Sedley is, unlike Becky herself, morally upright, but is also rather dull, lacking in intelligence and a poor judge of character. She persists, for example, in believing, in the teeth of all the evidence, that her rakish fiancé George Osborne, who later becomes her husband, is a paragon of virtue.

The novel has been the subject of numerous television and film adaptations, although this is the only one I have seen apart from the British television version from the late eighties. That adaptation kept to Thackeray's plot reasonably faithfully, but scriptwriter Julian Fellowes and director Mira Nair evidently thought that that plot would not work on the big screen because they made a number of changes, most notably to the character of Becky, who becomes far more sympathetic than she was in the original. (There was, apparently, an earlier discarded screenplay in which Becky's character was closer to the way she is depicted in the novel). The character of her husband Rawdon is also somewhat sanitised, and even Steyne at first seems more like a kindly benefactor than a sexual predator. It is only at the end that he reveals himself in his true colours.

No film based upon a novel, especially a novel as complex as "Vanity Fair", can ever be 100% faithful to the original, and a number of literary adaptations have been highly successful films in their own right despite departing considerably from their source material. This, however, is not really one of them. If you want to make a film about a feisty young proto-feminist in the Regency era- which is how Fellowes paints Becky- I would not really recommend using Thackeray's novel as a starting-point. Deprived of much of its satirical content, "Vanity Fair" becomes emasculated, just another "heritage cinema" British costume drama.

Yet this is not entirely a bad film. Reese Witherspoon makes Becky into an appealing heroine, and cannot be held personally to blame for the fact that the character she is playing is far from being the one that Thackeray created. Her British accent is perhaps not 100% reliable, but this is not so important in period drama, as we do not know exactly how people spoke in the early nineteenth-century, and the difference between British and American accents may have been less marked than it is today. There are also some good performances in cameo roles from the likes of Bob Hoskins as the uncouth Sir Pitt and Eileen Atkins as his wealthy and autocratic sister Miss Matilda.

Another attractive feature is the visual look of the film. Nair was clearly aiming to reproduce the look of an Old Master painting, and does this by the use of strong, vivid colours, especially reds and greens, shot through a filter which gives a slightly yellow tint, like a picture seem through a protective layer of varnish. I felt, however, that this is a film which could have been improved had it followed the original novel more closely. 6/10

"Vanity Fair" (2004) is an acceptable but abbreviated version of the classic Thackery Victorian period novel which tells of Becky Sharp (Witherspoon), who uses artifice and charm to climb from lowly governess to aristocrat, always able to find a suitable family of peerage or property to use as a rung in her ladder to the top in spite of the tribulations of the time. At just over two hours, this film cannot deal in depth with the many characters in the story and has to content itself with hitting the high points which make for a very condensed telling suited to those who only wish the flavor of the story. Those with a particular interest in Victorian pulp fiction or more expansive dramas should turn to the BBC's 1998 six hour miniseries which offers greater character depth, a presentation much more true to the period, and a very much better cast. (B-)

Elegant costumes, beautiful scenery, and piano playing in excess all add to the sights and sounds of Mira Nair's film 'Vanity Fair.' Her 2004 version is one of over ten tries to put William Makepeace Thackeray's novel onto the big screen. Most attempts failed miserably, lacking the magic of today's movies and failing to grasp the themes of the novel. Nair's version, with its visual and audible pleasures, has the potential to become one of the few successful attempts. With humble beginnings as a poor child with a starving artist as her father, Becky (Reese Witherspoon) was determined to overcome her circumstance. She managed to work her way into a governess position in a down-on-his-luck aristocrat. New opportunities arise, and she hastily abandons her post to become the companion to a wealthy woman known only as Miss Crawley (Eileen Atkins). Much to Miss Crawley's displeasure, Becky wastes no time in her quest to climb the social ladder and marries into the family. Becky's new husband, Crawley's nephew, is soon sent off to war. Returning after the battle of Waterloo, their marriage is rocky due to his gambling debts and her never-ending quest to raise her social status. Meeting a man who collected her late father's art, she uses his money and his influence to continue her rise in the social hierarchy, causing more distress to their marriage. Nair attempted to bring something new to the film, using her fantastic creative talents in the costuming and scenery. Her musical choices weren't overwhelming and accented the film rather than hiding behind its beautiful visual aspects. She tried to cover the expanse of the novel, but ending up making a summary of the story and leaving the characters bland and undeveloped. Nair intentionally portrays Becky as a victim of the social system, showing her as merely taking advantage of circumstantial events. This contradicts harshly with Thackeray's Becky, who is manipulative and cunning, turning circumstantial events into anything that will benefit her rise up the social ladder. This movie is beautifully made and had the potential to become something great, but Nair's overly eager attempt leaves it as nothing more than another mediocre film. Had she paid as much attention to the plot and the characters as she did to the audio and visual aspects, this would definitely be the best film of the year. But she didn't, so don't waste your seven dollars to see it in the theater. Wait for the video, or better yet, wait for that one Friday night when you are home alone and it comes on cable.

William Thackerey's "Vanity Fair" has been adapted for the screen and television in numerous occasions. It is almost an impossible task to get a coherent take on a narrative that spans a lot of years and in which a lot happens.

This adaptation of the book by Mira Nair with the adaptation by Julian Fellowes, is sumptuously photographed by Declan Quinn, who captures the Regency period in the England at the beginning of the XIX century. Ms. Nair's touch is evident in the way the costumes have an Indian flair as they were brilliantly executed by designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor. Maria Djurkovic's wonderful production design is also an asset.

If anything, this reincarnation of the Thackerey's novel is a joy for the eyes. The rich period in which the action takes place comes alive in the screen as a feast of colors, which in a way, compensate for the failings on the story and in the way Ms. Nair conceived the way she wanted to tell this tale about an ambitious young woman who is the epitome of social climbing. As a character puts in the film, Becky Sharp would be a perfect mountaineer.

Part of what is wrong with the film is Reese Witherspoon in the central role. Not that her interpretation is wrong, it's that she doesn't project the character of Becky Sharp with an intensity that another actress might have brought to the role. In part, this might not have been Ms. Witherspoon's fault, but the director's, in the way she guided the key performance.

The other failure of the film lies in the last scenes in which one finds Becky in Baden-Baden. Becky, Amelia, and Dobbins, haven't aged one iota. For the sake of realism, a bit of old age makeup should have been applied to these actors, or else, one might believe in the curative waters of that German spa. If it was true, we should be taking the next flight to Germany. After all, if that were the case, it would be the end of plastic surgery as we know it!

Some of the best actors of the English stage and screen are seen in various roles. Bob Hoskins, Eileen Atkins, Jim Broadbent, Gabriel Byrne, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Rhys Ifan, Romola Garai, Jonathan Rhys-Meyer, James Purefoy, just to name a few, do an excellent job in the portrayal of their characters.

This "Vanity Fair", although flawed, is not a total failure. Mira Nair shows an amazing talent for being in command of such a large project.

This is an entertaining movie that goes over two hours, but I really don't understand why it was made. Sprawling stories spanning several decades with several subplots involving dozens of characters are totally defensible on the printed page, where we can always go back and remind ourselves which character is which and how this character is related to that one. But this type of thing makes no sense whatsoever in a film. Unless a viewer has a phenomenal memory, such a story on film invariably leads to confusion and to my asking myself, "now wait a minute, whose brother is this, and whose son?"

So that is one of the principal problems with this film.

There are several other problems as well. Reese Witherspoon is badly miscast. She simply lacks Becky Sharp's bite. In fact, the whole film lacks Thackeray's bite. Reese does a good job with the British accent, but it just doesn't work. She is just too American for the role. Weren't there any British actresses available, or were the producers just relying on Reese's star power? Reese is just too nice to play Becky.

It has often been said that Becky Sharp was the model for Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," although Margaret Mitchell denied this. Even so, I kept visualizing Vivien Leigh in this role and imagining how perfect she would have been. I think Mira Nair was thinking of GWTW as well, because there are several scenes in the film that are obvious homages to it. First there are the battle scenes during the Battle of Waterloo, followed by a panoramic view of the carnage following the battle, complete with corpses strewn all over the battlefield. This was an obvious homage to the crane shot over Atlanta in GWTW. The final fight between Becky and her husband reminded me of the final fight between Scarlett and Rhett in GWTW. I half expected the husband to say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Another flaw involves the Indian director Nair's inability to resist bringing in some Bollywood type scenes, particularly one involving Becky leading an Indian type dance, with Indian music, before the king, no less, and to thunderous applause.

And yet another thing: this film spans at least twenty, maybe twenty-five or thirty, years in Becky's life after she graduates from finishing school--I am not counting the one scene of her as a child--yet the character never ages. Neither do any of the other characters. Maybe the makeup staff went on strike?

But most of these problems won't even be noted by someone who hasn't read the book, so if you haven't, go ahead and see it; you'll probably be entertained. And if you are someone like me who loves the book, you may not be able to resist seeing it anyway. But Thackeray was never so soft.