I feel like I never really “got” Jane Austen until I watched the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I had read the book the year before I watched it and was impressed with Austen’s dialogue, but felt that I had not fully understood its emotional tension. It wasn’t until I watched the 2005 film that I really understood what draws readers to Austen. It was only then that I realized how illuminating a good adaptation can be. A good adaptation of a novel shows readers the details they missed, adds nuance to dialogue, and helps the audience better appreciate the source material. Unfortunately, the new Persuasion adaptation did not spur me to similar realizations about the art of adaptation.  

In both the novel and film, we are told that no woman wants to live her entire life in calm waters. But one of the joys of Jane Austen’s novels—and particularly Persuasion—is how we sit atop calm waters while observing the storm beneath us. Persuasion is the last of Austen’s novels published before her untimely death. It sports the most mature heroine in several senses. Furthermore, it is largely focused on the virtue of prudence. None of these features are promising when considering how such a story might be adapted to the screen in our time. 

Instead of broaching the difficult questions of adaptation, the 2022 film remakes its heroine to fit millennial and Gen-Z diction, relies on awkwardness for comedic effect, and shoehorns vague criticism of self-care and wellness through mocking dialogue about being an empath. The film assumes that Jane Austen’s novel must be irrelevant now and modernized to fit current sensibilities. But Jane Austen has always been relevant. Many young people find themselves marrying later than previous generations, postponing marriage and children for financial and career reasons. People are often lonely. Women and men alike face daunting and unfair romantic expectations. It isn’t hard to see why the works of Jane Austen remain fixtures. 

With its anachronistic take on the Regency era, Cracknell’s adaptation seems poised to parallel modern anxieties of marriage and wealth. While perhaps not the most faithful adaptation of Austen, Ronald Bass’s screenplay likewise focuses on women’s independence and idealizes its historical era, not unlike the recent Netflix sensation Bridgerton. Interior shots frequently feature wallpapers of romantic landscape paintings of the English countryside. The film seems to perceive its audience as romantics longing not just for an Austen love story, but also for a maximalist and pastoral aesthetic of daily domestic life. While not unique to media produced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Persuasion further romanticizes nature and rural life. 

In the novel, Austen depicts Anne as a quiet observer in a family rather unappreciative of her, not quite fully known by anyone aside from Captain Wentworth, her former fiancé around whom the plot revolves. This adaptation never allows Anne to be alone. Anne is infrequently shown actually dealing with various unpleasant interactions. Instead, reminiscent of the protagonist of Fleabag, Anne turns to the camera to speak directly to the audience and describe the character of a person or the emotions of the scene. This is in most cases done to the detriment of the scene. Not only does this breaking of the fourth wall interrupt the flow of scenes, dialogue, and dramatic tension, it is also one of the largest departures from the novel the film makes. Austen, after all, writes in the third-person, not permitting such judgments and interior narration be revealed to readers. Half the fun of reading Austen is finding tension, pain, sorrow, and joy hidden in her dialogue. 

As we awaited this adaptation, it was easy to feel like Captain Wentworth: half agony-half hope. After all, it has been nearly thirty years since the last attempt to bring Persuasion to screen. Our hopes though, unlike Anne’s and Wentworth’s, were not borne by those who could bear their weight. If the post-pandemic period is fated to give us only adaptations flavored by Fleabag and Bridgerton, then Austen fans may find themselves in the wilderness. There we may wait like Anne yearning, hoping that perhaps we will have again a great film in the spirit of Jane.