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The location shooting at Kirby Hall is symptomatic of the film - an impressive looking shell, with nothing inside it.Mansfield Park is Austen's sharpest and subtlest satire, leavened with some splendid comedy characters. This however seems to have passed completely over the makers, who have provided us instead with an admittedly prettily photographed film that conveys nothing of the book. It's difficult of course to compress it into the space of two hours, but at least they might have tried. As it is the plot is sadly garbled; I doubt that anyone who had not read the book (or at least a synopsis of it) would make head or tail of what was going on, and anyone who has read the book would be completely baffled by the cavalier discarding of key elements of the book. What is unmistakably a 20th century cast with 20th century manners dresses up and romps through it as a bodice ripper, completely missing the point that it's meant to be a study of social power structures breaking down in 18th century England. I found myself with a finger on the fast forward butting, wanting the cast to get out of the way of the scenery.
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