Posted: 09/04/2004

Vanity Fair

(2004)

by Hank Yuloff

Rags to riches. Intrigue. A woman pulling herself up the social ladder through cunning, guile and a wicked amount of self created good luck. That is what the trailer promised me when I went to see Vanity Fair.

I got that, but the two minute twenty second trailer was a faster and more to the point story than the two hour twenty minute movie. That is a problem with long, intricate books. Too many characters that come and go and too many bits of information that can not be incorporated into the movie. That’s why I am not ever totally pleased with Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books. In the reading, you can get involved and lose yourself in the period and the pacing, but in the movie, you only have so much time to get the story told. Look at Lord of the Rings: it took three movies all over 2 hours in length and there were still things changed.

So looking at the ‘Hank Yuloff Rule Sheet,’ I will scan down to number 3: All movies based on books will not be compared, but judged on their own merit. Vanity Fair was based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s epic (read that as LONG) novel from the 1840’s that takes place in England. As period pieces go, Vanity Fair is quite pleasant to look at, though I found myself comparing it unfavorably to one of my favorite movies, Age of Innocence (1993).

Reese Witherspoon (Pleasantville, Sweet Home Alabama) stars as Becky Sharp, the daughter of a struggling painter who becomes a governess to get closer to the aristocratic class she wishes to join. Our first glimpse of her is at the age of 9 when she strikes a bargain with the Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne from The Usual Suspects, Ghost Ship) to buy one of her fathers paintings for 2 ½ times the asking price. How odd, I thought, that this Marquess would come to be such an important character later (much later) in the story but disappear for 30 minutes at a time otherwise. The same thing happened with several other people populating the scenery. In fact, there are many many characters who come in and out of the story, each with his or her own plot line that took well over an hour to develop so that we could have the beginning of the aforementioned social climbing. If you are a fan of the book, you will no doubt have a great time seeing these characters come to life, but from a movie point of view, I did not care about the fate of any of them (save for Meg Wynn Owen who plays the role of Lady Crawley, a wealthy spinster who is the most charming woman we see).

The best scene in the movie is an Indian dance number—yes, dance number—performed for the King of England, though the music of which felt like it could have been the background for the latest Eminem tune. The King himself only gets one scene thought I get the feeling that in the book she sleeps with the King and every other male who can help her climb the social ladder. With a PG rating, this film leaves everything to the imagination.

There are love triangles without enough love to keep your attention and allusions to dates that, unless you are a student of European History (thanks to my high school AP European History class, I was in the know) you were lost. In fact, there are huge jumps in time that are so poorly presented that without the lines of text on the screen we would be entirely lost. Another thing that will keep your attention, though not to the movie, is watching Witherspoon’s appearing and disappearing pregnancy, not very well hidden, even by the period piece clothing.

So as an amusing follow up to your past readings, Vanity Fair would be a worthwhile jaunt to the early 1800’s. For the rest of us, staying in the present would be a better course of action.

Hank Yuloff is a fan of period piece movies. In fact, he challenged another writer to a duel in order to review this one. We will miss that other writer.

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