A Fancy or a Feeling: Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995)
When I was in high school, one of my best friends gave me the DVD of Sense and Sensibility for my birthday. I don’t quite remember what she said when I asked her why she thought of this particular film for me. She probably just knew I loved Jane Austen and movies. So, it seemed like the perfect gift. True enough, it was! The 1995 film has emerged as one of my most beloved movies of all time. Sense and Sensibility, along with the 2005 queer classic Brokeback Mountain, introduced me to Ang Lee and he became one of my favorite filmmakers. The film was a confluence of brilliant creative minds working together at the top of their game: producer Lindsay Doran, writer and star Emma Thompson, and director Ang Lee. For me, it’s a perfect film and arguably the defining Jane Austen film adaptation.
Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thompson) is the eldest of three sisters, and the most reasonable and level headed. Her younger sister Marianne (Kate Winslet) is emotionally sensitive and impulsive. Her youngest sister Margaret (Emilie Francois) is spirited and inquisitive. When the three sisters and their mother (Gemma Jones) don’t receive their father’s inheritance from their half-brother, they are left almost destitute. Soon, Elinor meets Edwards Ferrars (Hugh Grant), and strikes up a friendship before learning he’s engaged to another woman. Marianne falls for the dashing and charming Willoughby (Greg Wise), who cannot quite commit to her. She is also admired by the kind but very reserved Col. Brandon (the late Alan Rickman). The Dashwoods are faced with no money, and little prospects for advantageous marriages.
The genesis of Sense and Sensibility came from producer Lindsay Doran. She produced a number of successful movies, including This is Spinal Tap and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Her lifelong dream was to produce a film version of her favorite novel, Sense and Sensibility. She approached Emma Thompson to write the screenplay because of Thompson’s background as a sketch comedian. Thompson spent five years writing the screenplay, and the women shopped it around at different studios. They landed at Columbia Pictures, where Amy Pascal supported the project and agreed to distribute the film.
Doran and Thompson interviewed many directors, eventually hiring Ang Lee, fresh from his success with The Wedding Banquet (and eventually Eat Drink Man Woman). Both films were gentle but meaningful social comedies, focusing on free will against familial expectations. Lee was also the rare filmmaker who understood the social comedy in the story, an aspect that Emma Thompson’s adaptation fleshed out. Doran liked the idea of bringing an international filmmaker to tell this very English story, and Lee connected the societal oppression and emotional repression in Austen’s England with his own Taiwanese upbringing. I simply cannot get over how all these smart decisions were made one after the other to create this unique movie.
It’s important to bring up the production history of Sense and Sensibility, because without this very particular set of circumstances, the film would not exist as it does. Doran’s passion for the source material, Thompson’s sharp wit and precise structure, and Lee’s elegant directorial style all combined to bring this film to life. Through his cinematic language, Ang Lee highlights the themes that Thompson focuses on in her screenplay. Lee frames each of the Dashwood sisters differently, often keeping Elinor indoors and boxed in and Marianne outdoors or near flowers. The pastoral vistas offer a freedom and independence that the cramped or gaudy houses cannot provide. Lee has such a delicate touch with blocking and body language, and his own outsider perspective lends the movie some commentary on how ridiculous social norms can be. Emma Thompson zeroes in on issues of classism and sexism within this tender romantic comedy, which I feel like some Austen adaptations miss.
The mastery of Austen’s novel (and most of her writing) is that she comments on her characters even as she’s telling their stories with emotional authenticity. This is especially true with Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. Somehow, the filmmakers were able to capture that specific quality within Jane Austen’s writing. Ang Lee is empathetic to Elinor and Marianne, though often invites the audience to laugh with their tragedy. For example, a scene where Marianne, Margaret, and Mrs. Dashwood storm into their rooms crying, and slam the door, leaving Elinor bemused with a useless cup of tea. It’s played for laughs in a sweet way, without mocking their predicament. That’s one of the key reasons why I love this movie so much: it can be bitingly funny even in the face of tragedy.
Sense and Sensibility is just a perfectly calibrated film, with sparkling dialogue and bright performances. The camerawork by Michael Coulter is intimate, and often superbly used for comic or dramatic effect. The score is sweeping and lush. The more cinematic approach to the film by Ang Lee allows the film to breathe, a contrast to stuffy literary adaptations. The film was quite influential, reigniting interest in Jane Austen along with the Pride and Prejudice miniseries and the teen rom-com Clueless (both also from 1995). Even artistically, Sense and Sensibility influenced excellent adaptations like Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice and Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre. Putting into words exactly what Sense and Sensibility means to me is rather difficult. When I watch the Dashwood sisters become a little more like each other and navigate their romances, it’s always rewarding thanks to Ang Lee’s sophisticated filmmaking and the women who brought Jane Austen to him.
