09.15.04
Movie Review: Vanity Fair

I have not read the William Thackeray novel upon which the movie is based, but there are two clues that it was going to be a difficult adaptation to the screen:

1. The book is subtitled A Novel without a Hero

2. The chapters have titles like “In which Mr. Osbourne takes down the family bible” and “In which a charade is enacted which may or may not puzzle the Reader”.

Heroine or no, the movie centers around Becky Sharp, the Scarlett O’Hara of the Napoleonic Wars. Although she is frequently described as a ruthless social-climber, as played by Reese Witherspoon, Becky is comes across as pragmatic, loyal and kind. This causes some problems with the plot in the last third of the movie. When her husband leaves her, she tells him “I loved you in my own way”- and the viewer is left scratching their head, having observed Becky loving her husband in the most conventional way possible for the last hour.

While the prologue is too cute, and the entire movie loses steam after the battle of Waterloo, it still has a tremendously satisfying middle section, which works as an observation of the British upper classes- a group of people who lived very well by not doing much of anything.