A (Scathing) Review of Persuasion (2022)

I mean we all knew from the moment the trailer dropped that this was going to be Bad™, right? I went in expecting that but still, by the gods of adaptation, I just…

…you know what I need a drink for this.

Okay.

In 2014, I wrote an essay for my Romanticism module about Jane Austen’s Persuasion. I had not, at that time, read the book. I still got a First for it. I have read the book more than once since, and I know you all hate me now but listen. The point I’m making is that even 20-year-old, had-not-read-the-book me understood Persuasion a whole damn sight better than the people who adapted it for the latest film version recently released on Netflix. (I don’t know who precisely was responsible for adapting it and I don’t care to find out).

Anne “Fleabag” Elliot

Starring everyone’s favourite nepotism-baby and Ellen-slayer, Dakota Johnson, Persuasion (2022) brings once again to the screen the tale of Anne Elliot, years ago persuaded not to marry her great love, Frederick Wentworth (inexplicably played by Cosmo Jarvis), and wallowing in sadness over it ever since. 

And it does an awful f-ing job of it. I’m sorry. Barely anything about this adaptation feels true to the book. Where is the Melancholy? Where is the quiet despair? The Despondent Regret? The Feeling? Why is Anne smirking at the camera like Fleabag? Why is she so ‘spirited’ when that’s not how book-Anne is at all? Why does she randomly have a piss in the woods in one scene??

And what even is the dialogue in this? So little of the original text makes it in and even when it does, it’s butchered. Why must I, in this already accursed year of somebody’s lord, 2022, be forced to hear Anne Elliot say of her different suitors “Now we’re worse than strangers, we’re exes” and “He is a 10. I never trust a 10.”

“Modern”, but at what cost?!

There is just so much wrong with this adaptation and at the same time one major thing wrong with it, from which all its problems stem. The desire to be ‘modern’. The thinking that all works of a certain age need be changed so they are ‘relatable’ to a modern audience. 

Timeless books are timeless for a reason darling and if you don’t think you can trust something as enduring as an Austen novel to stand up when faithfully adapted then you shouldn’t be the one adapting it. 

You see this actually done well in shows and movies such as Dickinson, The Great, and The Favourite - period dramas done with modern (or semi-modern) dialogue and tones, where it feels natural, not off-putting, and enhances the story-telling. I’m not even saying that Persuasion couldn’t be done with a period/modern hybrid take, like these. It just needs to be done differently. This adaptation particularly seems to have taken a lot of cues from the 2020 version of Emma with Anya Taylor-Joy, which I did very much enjoy. That kind of irrelevant, winking to the camera style works for Emma. It does not work for Persuasion. To treat Persuasion with irreverence is simply to insult it. 

The only places it works is where there was originally comedy in the book. They get Anne’s family right. Especially Mary (Mia McKenna-Bruce). All 3 actors are a delight and nail their characters (although Richard E. Grant could have reigned it in a little more but a better director could have helped with that). In the book, her family are often a bit of light comic relief. All Austen novels have this sort of thing, to either a larger or smaller extent. In Persuasion, it truly is light and Anne is never part of that comedy. It does not overshadow the Melancholy that defines the novel. This adaptation allows it to engulf the whole story and turn the whole cast into characters from The Office. 

romantic vs Romantic™

I feel like I’ve been talking a lot already but if you’ll allow me to go on a brief literature-nerd spiel to explain a little more background on why I find this film to be such a particular travesty:

Persuasion is Austen’s most ‘grown-up’ novel, for want of a better phrase, and undoubtedly her most Romantic. I use the latter word with a capital R as in the Romantic movement, Romantic poets, and Romanticism. Austen was contemporaneous with this movement and the first and second generation romantic poets.  It doesn’t permeate into her other works quite as thoroughly as it does in Persuasion, but it’s present in a number of them.

Sense & Sensibility, for the most part, treats Romantic feeling with affectionate ridicule and utilises it as a counterpoint to the heroine’s Rationality. Mansfield Park is something of a Romantic Hero/Heroine gender subversion (but also a 160k word pro-cousin-marriage manifesto). Northanger Abbey is a satire of gothic literature, which is a related but still entirely different tub of butter which we don’t have time to dip our hands into today. And even I have no idea what Lady Susan’s about. 

Emma and Pride & Prejudice are probably the least Romantic in the literary movement sense, being more Comedies of Manners than anything else, I suppose. Pride & Prejudice is a glorious piece of literature; quite rightly Austen’s most famous and popular book today. But that is to the detriment of the other Austen novels. Not only in that they can get overlooked, but also in how people try to apply the same tone and sensibilities (pardon the pun) to all Austen works. This too often results in what I’d call the Lizzie Bennettification of the other Austen heroines, which is frankly an insult to Austen’s ability to craft character and the wonderful uniqueness of each of her works. 

Where 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 the 👏🏻 melancholy?! 👏🏻

Persuasion is the only Austen novel to fully embrace Romanticism, to unashamedly fall in love with the beauty in nature and celebrate feeling over rationality, and indeed warn against over-reliance on rationality. And it’s sad. Really, just, pure sadness is such a core of this book. I’ve said it before – Melancholy. Melancholy defines Persuasion, and Anne Elliot. And this film refuses to treat Melancholy with the respect it deserves. It has to portray it with a wink-to-camera and run away from exploring it by turning Anne Elliot into a feisty, wise-cracking, Phoebe Waller-Bridge knock-off that disrespects one of Austen’s most complex heroines. 

I only wish somebody had Persuaded them not to make it.

Good day.