Free Essay On “Sense And Sensibility” Analysis

The film called “Sense and Sensibility”, which was made in 1995, was immediately loved by a lot of people. The book, written by Jane Austen long before, remains one of the very favorite books for many people till today. Nowadays, many people argue about what was better – the book or the film? This is a very long-lasting argument, and the answer is different depending on the case. We can surely say that some of the films are much better than books, because what film does is it creates a visual picture and embodies the characters, which makes it much easier for the viewers to relate to them. Some of the books cannot be transferred into the films because of the way the writers create them. And so, many films fail due to the lack of ability to express the writers’ feelings. In the end, some of the books are just meant to stay books. However, “Sense and Sensibility” is not one of them. In this paper, I am going to discuss how the book is different from the film and what are the ways in which the film makes the story more effective. My main argument is that the film is just as good as the book, and when it was made, the director did not lose any single detail and managed to express the mood and the atmosphere of the entire book in a little more than two hours.
The film was directed by Ang Lee, who is very famous nowadays, but back then, he used to be an unknown director from Taiwan. It becomes clear, that Ang Lee had to overcome many obstacles when he shot the film. First, he had major cultural obstacles. He came from a very different culture, and it was the first time when he had to work with big cinema production and famous cast. However, all the hardship was perfectly overcome by Ang Lee who showed himself as a persistent and a talented young director. Nowadays, we know that Ang Lee has more than one Oscar awards, and lately he proved his cinematic skills by making his last brilliant film called “Life of Pi.”
Before making “Sense and Sensibility”, Ang Lee had to study the English culture and history. He had to read the book several times to understand how the world worked back then. As a result, he got a very realistic portrayal of lives of English women. The target audience for this film was, of course, women. This was due to the main theme of the film, which was love and relationships between genders and ages. As the book turned out to be very relatable and, thus, successful, the film immediately became women’s favorite as well. It did a great job showing all the ethics and values of the past. By showing the relationships between women and men, sisters, mothers and daughters, the film demonstrated the things that were especially valued during that time in Great Britain.
In the book, a lot of attention is paid to the relationship between Marianne and Eleanor, the two sisters. In the film, not a single detail of that relationship is omitted. Marianne and Eleanor disagree upon a lot of things, and in a lot of situations, they behave differently. The difference in their world outlook and characters sometimes makes the audience think that they are not really close to each other. Marianne falls in love very fast, and moreover, she prefers to express her feelings openly. Eleanor, on the other hand, tries to hide her feelings because she’s more mature and she acts like an adult. This is actually a very surprising moment. Back then, women matured very fast. If we compare the past with the present, we can see that nowadays women are still very young when they are nineteen. Eleanor strikes with her maturity and her ability to keep her head cool whatever happens. She doesn’t desperately throw herself in a relationship and analyzes her every action before making a decision.
Marianne, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be as mature as her sister. She falls in love with John just because he is very much like her. He’s able to love passionately, and he doesn’t have any frames whatsoever. This attracts Marianne very much. In the film, this is shown in the scene when Marianne meets John for the first time. The dreamy look in her eyes gives all her feelings away right away, and due to being open and immature, she doesn’t even try to hide them. This is the fact that proves that the film is not less effective than the book. In the scene when Marianne meets John, we can see just the same amount of feelings that the writer expressed on several pages of her book.
Of course, the impacts made by the book and by the film are different. Let us look for an example at a relationship between Connell Brandon and Marianne. When I was reading the book, Connell Brandon seemed very different from what he was shown like in the film. He seemed very coldhearted and indifferent person. John seemed more open when it came to expressing the feelings, and it seems like he loved Marianne truly. But when I actually got to see both men in the film, my perception changed. Alan Rickman, who played Connell Brandon in the film, became a very good example of a decent and noble man with high ethics. He’s much older than Marianne, and he truly understands how to treat women. The fact that Ang Lee chose Alan Rickman for this role makes a lot of sense. With his honest and delicate face expression he made the audience relate to him and thus, acknowledge that he was a far better option for young Marianne.
Let us look at another relationship, which to me worked better in the film versus the book, and which proved that the film was very effective. As I already said, the two sisters are contrasted. Both of them, however, were made older. In the book the girls are under twenty, and in the film, we can see two mature women who are the least twenty-five. This was made on purpose – in order for the audience to understand how mature people were back then. Often the two sisters don’t understand each other. In the book they are shown very different. But when Marianne falls sick and we see how her sister cares and worries about her, we change our mind. In the scene when Marianne is in bed, the look in Eleanor’s eyes shows her true care. It’s much more difficult to show this when you’re writing a book. It takes a lot of space, and the writer has to put a lot of effort into the description of the feelings. In the film, it was shown pretty easily. Just like in the scenes with Colonel Brandon, we understood everything from the looks of the characters.
Another reason, which proves that the film just as effective as the book, is the nature shots. The nature plays every important role in this film. This film is very far in time from the French new wave movement, but the role of the nature is similar. It is known that in the French new wave movement, the role of the city was very essential. The city was not just the background, but it was a character. With the help of the city, the French new wave directors showed the mood and the atmosphere of their films and demonstrated the inner state of the characters. In “Sense and Sensibility”, this seems very similar. In some of the scenes where we see the sisters in the carriage, there are beautiful landscapes around them. The landscapes that we see are usually very calm and reserved. It’s sunny, and there is no wind, and the grass is not moving. We never see storms or huge winds. It’s raining sometimes though. Interestingly enough, it’s raining when Marianne is sick, which demonstrates her sister’s real feelings for her. In the book, the nature is vividly described by the writer, who takes time to emphasize every single detail. However, for many people, there is nothing better than actually seeing the picture with their own eyes. People remember what they see very vibrantly. I would call the nature scenes one of the most important scenes in the entire film. I will dare to claim that the nature scenes are the elements that make the film stronger than the book in some ways.
Another important element that I would like to bring up is music. In the books we don’t have any music. And thus, it’s harder to understand the feelings of the characters at a certain moment. The film has a magical soundtrack, which starts from the opening scene and goes on throughout the entire film. It helps the film flow smoother, and it creates a special atmosphere that book lacks. Editing is also something that speeds up the film and doesn’t make the audience feel stuck in a certain moment, which sometimes happens in books, when we want to skip some text and move to the text moment. It is extremely important for writers to describe every single detail, even if it’s not important. Sometimes, the readers just get tired of being in one setting for many pages. Although it is more than two hours long, “Sense and Sensibility” is a very fast moving film. If one remembers the size of the book of Jane Austen, one can understand the amount of effort that was put by the director and the screenwriter into the film in order to fit it into two hours.
The voices of the actors and their face expressions, however, remain the most important element, which makes the film a very strong adaptation in my eyes. None of those elements are present in the book, which does not make it less effective but definitely emphasizes the advantages of the film. It’s always important to have a strong connection between the audience and the actors, and this film completely succeeded in doing so. One of the things that is also very important to mention is that the language of the film is universal, which means that anybody can understand it if the appropriate subtitles are present. The book of Jane Austen was translated into hundreds of languages, and there would be no surprise if a lot of information were lost. The film does not lose the initial mood and atmosphere by adding subtitles, which is surely an advantage. Of course, the specifics of English language cannot be understood by those who don’t speak it either way, but as I said, the voices save the situation.
In the modern world, people don’t have enough time for reading books unfortunately. People have a lot of work, and they spend a lot of time standing in traffic. Of course the majority of us prefers watching films to reading books nowadays. We remember films better, and films save our time. Sometimes, however, we cannot rely on the films a lot. Even the best directors and the best screenwriters were known to change some famous books in a negative way. Some adaptations lost a lot of details and for the sake of time, omitted many events. But there are some films that are brilliant and just as great as the books. In my opinion, “Sense and Sensibility” is one of them. Ang Lee did a great job when he studied the culture of the past. We can see his efforts in every single detail of the costumes of the characters and in every setting. In this film, nothing was dropped or omitted. The characters were even more vibrant and realistic than in the book. I especially admired Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. It often happens that one reads the book and then watches a film, and his perception of the book changes completely as a result. This was what happened to me when I watched “Sense and Sensibility”. In this paper, I have proved that “Sense and Sensibility” was one of the best adaptations that were ever made. The book and the film effected people in different ways, but the way the film did was not less strong.