Arranging an Autumn in August Brit Lit bouquet

As some of you may know, I usually devote the month of August to a full on themed film focus and while Bad Movie Month was fun while it lasted, it’s time to embrace the new.

With that in mind, I am happy to announce the lineup for the second outing of Autumn in August , which brings a touch of fall into the latter half of the summer season.

I didn’t intend to add another theme here but British books seem to be the main connection for me here. First up is  2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a title that is quite the mouthful due to being based on two books in the late Patrick O’Brian’s historical fiction series known as the Aubrey-Maturin novels.

Russell Crowe plays Captain Jack Aubrey, a renowned seaman in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars whose talents at the helm of a ship don’t match up with his dislike for authority.

Paul Bethany is Stephen Maturin, a surgeon taking a navel commission for the first time, hoping to collect some interesting samples from nature during the voyage. These rather unlikely companions become good friends as they and their crew face off against fearsome forces both from and sailing on the sea.

I remember watching this movie when it was first released and how quiet the audience was, since this is the type of story that demands your full undivided attention, something we don’t always get these days. It was well worth it and should be so yet again:

Since M&C:TFSOW is set during the Regency period and Jane Austen fans do like those books as well, it only made sense to select Sense and Sensibility from 1995 as a follow up.

While I have liked other versions of this first of Austen’s works(the recent BBC miniseries was nicely done), this one is an absolute favorite of mine. 

 Emma Thompson, who also won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, as the sensible Elinor restraining her passion for Edward Ferrars(a rather bashful Hugh Grant!) with Kate Winslet playing her openly emotional sister Marianne are sheer delights on screen.

There is so much to savor in this elegantly made film directed by Ang Lee, with the late great Alan Rickman as the lovelorn Col.Brandon, Harriet Walter as the artfully awful sister in law Fanny and Hugh Laurie as the drolly beleaguered Mr. Palmer. A true treasure of a movie as welcome as a fresh cup of tea:

Speaking of Emma Thompson and sister stories, she does have a knack for them as her role in the 1992 adaptation of E.M. Forester’s Howard’s End proves in abundance.

The title refers to a country house owned by the Wilcox family , a prim and proper set who find themselves interacting with the bohemian Schlegal sisters Helen(Helena Bonham Carter) and Margaret (Thompson).

Margaret is the more mainstream of the two, which is why the late matriarch of the Wilcox family connected with her so much that she wanted Margaret to have the house after her death. 

While that wish was kept hidden from Margaret (who had no clue about that idea anyway), widower Henry played by Anthony Hopkins, winds up falling in love with her and proposing marriage.

Margaret accepts but this is no fairy tale romance as Helen’s involvement with a troubled young man sets off a chain of events that alters the course of many lives in their wake.

This is a somberly elegant film that offers subtle food for thought, making it very autumnal indeed:

To round this all out, we follow Anthony Hopkins to 84, Charing Cross Road, a delightful real life tale told through letters.

Anne Bancroft stars as Helene Hanff, a NYC freelance writer during post WWII, whose “antiquarian “ literary preferences causes her to order from London bookshop Marks and Company as well begin a lively correspondence with shop manger Frank Noel(Hopkins).

Hanff had their letters published as a memoir and adapted into a stage play which caught the eye of Bancroft and the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve read several of Hanff’s books and she was a witty and warm hearted person who is well remembered for this long term literary friendship by fans the world over:

I do hope you all tune in for this frightfully British film festival of mine later this summer. Meanwhile I’m taking a brief blog break for the next couple of weeks just to get my bearings with everything going on in the world at the moment.

I do plan to return to LRG after July 4th, with a wrap up of my Sci Fi Summer reading, my Series-ous Reading review and possibly a write up on the new version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion , set to arrive on Netflix by July 15.

Now, I must confess that this particular book is the one that got me into Jane Austen in the first place, partly due to the 1995 film adaptation that I talked about for the first Autumn in August. Granted, I may be partial to that movie as it imprinted Austen onto me but I am willing to give a new take a fair chance.

The trailer that dropped this week for it is giving me and many others pause due to Anne Eliot being show as in a very goofy romcom fashion.

 Having Anne address the audience with sly witticisms about her obnoxious family is fine but smearing jam on her face to imitate her former beau Wentworth is a bit too wacky for me.

 Also, waving to him from the window and then diving down from view to dump a glass of wine on her head makes Anne look more like a Regency Bridget Jones than an Austen heroine( and I do like Bridget Jones!).

 Sure, there is plenty of humor to be found in Persuasion (casting Richard E. Grant as the incredibly vain Sir Walter is brilliant) but the theme of the story is reliving regrets and seeing if you can reasonably get a second chance is not meant to be your average Hollywood meet cute there. 

There are other positive points such as Henry Golding playing the smooth talking Mr. Eliot is fun and the visuals look lovely. I just wish that film makers would stop thinking that all Austen heroines must be Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse.

Austen created quieter leading ladies such as Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price and Anne Eliot as contrasts to the likes of Lizzie, Emma and Catherine Morland because not all characters have to be stamped out of the same cookie cutter cliche  mold in order to engage the audience on screen! With a good script and well cast actors, a low key lead can be just as compelling as a lively one in my opinion.

However, this is only a trailer intended to attract attention towards the finished project so I do plan to watch it and hopefully these silly moments are few and far between in the entire film. Let’s give this version of Persuasion a fair chance, folks and hopefully we’ll all be pleasantly surprised: