Matthew Macfadyen

[A Cousin]

(09-07-2010 08:52 AM)Tea Lady Wrote:  Wow, thank you A Cousin for that explanation. It all makes a little more sense now in that the book was written from Liz's POV. I would agree that acting opposite KN may have been difficult. I think the film was made in 2005 and must have been just after MM left Spooks. One of his first post Spooks projects perhaps?

Yup, it was the very next thing he did after Spooks. As well as the first thing he did on an international level. And, incidentally, one of the things that led me to Spooks.

When the discussion of casting this adaptation of P&P was going on in the JA forum I am part of, the Brits knew who he was b/c of Spooks and the Yanks didn't. The Brits were all behind his casting as Darcy. He was a good casting choice. Handsome, but not too handsome. A stoic actor but with a very active emotional under-current. Overall, a successful Darcy. I just didn't like that they chose to make Darcy shy. And his walking out of the mist in that last scene is just, well, squee worthy but not at all in the book.

I liked the overall look and feel of the movie, but it moved too fast for me. JA in two hours is always difficult. The book is very pastoral and there is a lot of description and exposition. There isn't a whole lot of action involved and movies/TV are an active medium. I think MM's Darcy, through no fault of his own, suffered a bit b/c of that.