{"id":2521,"date":"2026-08-02T02:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T02:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp_stories\/?p=2521"},"modified":"2026-09-16T05:54:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T05:54:32","slug":"mansfield-park-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/?p=2521","title":{"rendered":"Mansfield Park (1999)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Love me some <strong>Jane Austen<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is just a movie review.  I am not reading and reviewing the Jane Austen Mansfield Park the book simultaenously!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The internet says that the gorgeous building in the Featured Image was known to Jane Austen and was the inspiration for the book!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I saw this movie at the <strong>Sequoia<\/strong> Theater in downtown Mill Valley in 1999 or 2000 when it came out. I&#8217;m seeing it quite a differently now than I did then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Seeing a movie about the manners of well-to-do white folks in the early 1800&#8217;s was very fitting when I was living in the 21st century version of that life in downtown Mill Valley. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Cast<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frances_O'Connor\">Frances O&#8217;Connor<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fanny_Price\">Fanny Price<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonny_Lee_Miller\">Jonny Lee Miller<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edmund_Bertram\">Edmund Bertram<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Purefoy\">James Purefoy<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Bertram\">Thomas Bertram<\/a>&nbsp;Jr.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Embeth_Davidtz\">Embeth Davidtz<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Crawford_(Mansfield_Park)\">Mary Crawford<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alessandro_Nivola\">Alessandro Nivola<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henry_Crawford\">Henry Crawford<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harold_Pinter\">Harold Pinter<\/a>&nbsp;as Sir Thomas Bertram<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lindsay_Duncan\">Lindsay Duncan<\/a>&nbsp;as Lady Bertram and Mrs Price<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Victoria_Hamilton\">Victoria Hamilton<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maria_Bertram\">Maria Bertram<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Justine_Waddell\">Justine Waddell<\/a>&nbsp;as Julia Bertram<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hugh_Bonneville\">Hugh Bonneville<\/a>&nbsp;as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mr_Rushworth\">Mr Rushworth<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sheila_Gish\">Sheila Gish<\/a>&nbsp;as Mrs Norris<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The movie<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fanny Price is just a delightful character! <br><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frances_O'Connor\">Frances O&#8217;Connor<\/a>&nbsp;plays her perfectly, seems to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I really liked the way the movie starts, with little 10 year-old Fanny being sent off to live with her rich relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It wasn&#8217;t clear to me what the family connection was that enabled this, so I looked up the <a href=\"https:\/\/robertspage.com\/mansfld.html\">family tree here<\/a>. It says that these three women are sisters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Fanny&#8217;s mom <strong>Mrs Price<\/strong> &#8211; she&#8217;s the sister that married for love (therefore the poor one).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Lady Bertram<\/strong> &#8211; she&#8217;s the sister that married for (big!) money. <br>She takes care of the others.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Mrs Norris<\/strong> &#8211; the sister that married for security I guess. \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>She is <strong>Lady Bertram<\/strong>&#8216;s housekeeper. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>She married a clergyman who dies off-sreen early in the book. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>She is a perpetually unhappy, bitter person. \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>She is particularly vile towards Fanny, the only person in the house she can be mean to without penalty.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living at the beck an call of your rich sister might to that to you!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I guess that&#8217;s how they did it back in the day.  The Bertram&#8217;s had all the money, so one sister became their live-in housekeeper. The other got married to just a regular guy and lived with him. When her child was of a certain age, her family bundled her off to to learn manners and grow up with a better class of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">None of the characters is actually evil, but they all (except for Edmund \ud83d\ude42 are &#8220;flawed&#8221;. That is they are nice when it suits them, but peevish and selfish much of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mrs Norris was a bitch from the first time we were introduced to her. To be fair, there are occasional moments later in the movie where she does NOT treat her niece like shit. But they are rare and short-lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Sir Thomas<\/strong> is lovely when we first meet him, coming downstairs to greet 10-year old Fanny. He was very thoughtful and kind then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But he&#8217;s never quite that nice again in the whole rest of the movie! <br>What with the slaves getting restless in Antigua he&#8217;s got a lot on his mind!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lady Bertram spends the whole movie in her chair drinking some clear British liquor. She doesn&#8217;t contribute much to the plot except comic relief for being half in the bag all the time. There&#8217;s never a hint in their daily interactions that she and Mrs Norris are sisters.  She just treats her like a housekeeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a very rough introduction for Fanny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sir Thomas thought Fanny would be living with Mrs Norris, but Mrs Norris ain&#8217;t having that! They argue about it right in front of her, which was not cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fanny is eventually allowed to clean out the attic in the main house and live there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While she&#8217;s sobbing to herself in her new room (the attic), Edmund comes upstairs to meet her.  Edmund Bertram (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jonny_Lee_Miller\">Jonny Lee Miller<\/a>), is the best person in the book (except for Fanny of course)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somehow, we know that <strong>he&#8217;s the one<\/strong>, even though she&#8217;s 10 and he&#8217;s 15-ish.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And sure enough, after we go through an hour and a half of flirtations and romances and 15-20 years of aging on the part of both of them, by the time we get to the closing credits they are married! <br>I for one couldn&#8217;t be happier about it! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They start with the usual movie trick of showing her growing up every few years until she is the lovely and accomplished 18 year-old that the story revolves around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not going to o a play-by-play on this one.  I wore myself out doing Smiley&#8217;s People.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Crawfords come to town<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Things start happening. The Crawfords: .<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Crawford_(Mansfield_Park)\">Mary Crawford<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Henry_Crawford\">Henry Crawford<\/a> come to live with the clergyman and are &#8220;introduced to society&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mary does some heavy flirting with Edmund, which upsets Fanny, but in the end it all works out. Mary was not impressed that Edmund is entering the clergy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Edmund has two sisters: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Maria_Bertram\">Maria<\/a> and Julia. Maria is the older and is thought to be quite the catch even though I think Julia is prettier. As the oldest sister though, Maria is closer to the money.  She has a great body we find out much later. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I did not pick up on this when I saw the movie 20 years ago, but Mary Crawford seems to have the hots for Fanny Price at a couple of different junctures. It&#8217;s probably the bad influence of too much internet, but I got a low key lesbian vibe from her those two times!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They are practicing for a play and she&#8217;s pawing all over Fanny. <br>Arguably this was just to get Edmond worked up, but then this happened&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fanny is picking apples and gets caught in a rainstorm and ends up inside with Mary Crawford, who seems a little too excited to help her get her wet clothes off. This was pretty exciting for me \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Slavery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a thing that is highlighted in this movie more that Austen did in the book, and it is that this whole <em>English upper-class world is build on slave labor<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Director <strong>Patricia Rozema<\/strong> makes sure we know that firehose of money that maintains <strong>Mansfield Park<\/strong> and that all the book&#8217;s characters live off of comes from <em>slave labor on a sugar plantation<\/em> in <strong>Antigua<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This choice gets a lot criticism on the Wiki page, but I think it&#8217;s interesting!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In general &#8230; where does all the money for the big estates all over England come from? It sure the heck didn&#8217;t come from farming the local crops. It the &#8220;fruits of empire&#8221;.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">England ran most of the developing world at that time. Heck, they were running the American colonies 15 years before the time of this book!  So all that wealth from all over the world was flowing back to England to keep a bunch of upper class twits like the Bertrans and the Crawfords in fine clothes and snuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sir Thomas Returns!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Thomas Jr<\/strong> doesn&#8217;t play a big part in the first part of the movie except to upset his dad and get blind drunk, but he&#8217;s Edmund&#8217;s older brother. He will inherit EVERYTHING and Edmund will get crumbs. That&#8217;s the way they did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sir Thomas heads off to tend to his affairs on Antigua, and takes Thomas Jr to try to straight him out and learn the family business. Surprise, he comes home early, roaing drunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of the romance and craziness happened while Sir Thomas was gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He&#8217;s a little strange when he returns, I think having slave women at will was bad for his personality. He&#8217;s clearly thinking sexy thoughts about Fanny, and not shy about thinking it out loud!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I learned a little something about English law at the time.  Maybe I knew, but I&#8217;d forgotten.  He was thinking out loud about bringing a slave woman back to work around the house, and Fanny points out that <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">if he brings a slave back to England he&#8217;ll have to emancipate her and she&#8217;ll be a free Briton!   <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He&#8217;s much more cool to Fanny after she says that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mr Crawford asks for the hand of Miss Price<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maria Bertram consents to marry the really boorish rich guy, <strong>Mr Rushworth<\/strong>. She wanted to do it in the next two weeks for some reason that eluded me. This is the occasion for this <em>hall of fame quote<\/em> from Fanny:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maria was &#8230; &#8220;prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, with Maria out of the picture Henry Crawford&#8217;s restless eye lights on Fanny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starting about 50 minutes in Henry suddenly discovers tnat Fanny is the most fascininating woman in sight (which of course she is!).  And he asks Sir Thomas for her hand in marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Boy did this shake things up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m actually having a hard time making myself watch the movie at this point, because everybody is so uncomfortable! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Henry is making Fanny uncomfortable. He is being very sympathetic and appealing and getting totally crushed by Fanny anyway.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sir Thomas kicks her out for not accepting this great proposal, so Fanny has to return to her very poor family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Henry follows to woo her some more, which makes everything worse &#8230; it&#8217;s a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">It all gets sorted in the last 20 mnutes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I said above, I almost bailed out on the movie, but I&#8217;m glad I didn&#8217;t.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Crawford proposes to Fanny at her dirt-poor family&#8217;s house, and she said she&#8217;s rather stay with her dirt-poor family.  It was really intense and made me uncomfortable (I would talk to my therapist about if I had one.:)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Once we made it through that, everything calmed down and things slowly resolved themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Older brother Tom made himself useful to the plot by partying way too long and hard and being brought home in the back of a wagon near death.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Good old Edmund shows up at the Price family hovel to ask Fanny to come bacck to tend to Tom.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This works great.  All the Bertrams are glad to have her back.  \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Mary Crawford, not so much, she knows how Edmund feels&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Henry Crawford returns to form as the shameless rake he is.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Fanny accidentally busts in on him and <strong>Maria Rushworth (Bertram)<\/strong> fucking like bunnies in the pantry!!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I don&#8217;t remember THAT scene from the theater back in the day!!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The dress style of that time seemed to be scoop tops that show a lot of cleavage. (a positive feature of the movie IMO. \ud83d\ude42\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Maria had always looked pretty great in her dresses, and she looks really great in no top at all!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The upshot however is that she is disgraced. She has to leave her husband and go live in a little cottage because Henry declines to marry her. &#8230; harsh!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tom starts to improve.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There is a family gathering one day where it all comes to a head.  \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Mary Crawford makes a crack about Edmond inheriting the estate of Tom dies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Edmond is appalled, the conversation goes down hill from there.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After Edmund officially breaks with Mary, he feels free to declare his feelings for Fanny.   <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"border-top-width:2px;border-bottom-width:2px\">About effing time thinks everybody who ever watched or read this story!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8230; and they live happily ever after!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Love me some Jane Austen! This is just a movie review. I am not reading and reviewing the Jane Austen Mansfield Park the book simultaenously! The internet says that the gorgeous building in the Featured Image was known to Jane Austen and was the inspiration for the book! I saw this movie at the Sequoia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[54,123],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-england","tag-jane-austen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2728,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions\/2728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpgreen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}