Aesthetics In Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice And Atonement.

Lizzy’s Neck and Briony’s Eyes: Aesthetics in Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice and Atonement.

This research paper uses Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Atonement (2007) to demonstrate the importance of Aesthetics in order to attract the audience. It will point out the main characteristics and techniques that make both films aesthetically pleasant for the audience: the choice of thecast, the importance of music, the selection of the settings, the design of the costumes, and specially the cinematography and the way in which the films were promoted, observing the differences between both productions in terms of the main source and the year of their publication (Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 1813 and Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001)) and how the director and the producerswill use such different texts to attract both faithful readers and people who know nothing about the novels. It will mention how the director manages to go beyond the written pages of these novels to create a beautiful and eye-pleasing yet realistic piece of art that appeals to very different types of audiences.

"Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, likemy heart’s going to cave in." (American Beauty). These words could illustrate, apart from a well-known movie line of a successful five Academy Awards film, what any ordinary audience could feel after watching Joe Wright’s two first feature films. Both of them share some characteristics: they are an adaptation of two novels that take place in England and both of them can be considered as Periodfilms. Moreover, in terms of casting and crew, they share the same actress in the main role and most of the crew working with Wright. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) is set at the beginning of the 18th century in the countryside, while Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) takes place mostly before and during the Second World War. In this research paper, through the analysis of Pride & Prejudice(2005) and Atonement (2007) (both of them produced by the British film production company Working Title Films), I will focus on the importance of “attract[ing] bigger audiences through visual spectacle” (Durgan) and the main aesthetic characteristics and techniques used by Wright to create an attractive and eye-catching piece of art. I will discuss about the importance of the right choice whenselecting the cast, the use of the right music, the costumes, the idyllic settings, the promotion of the film and specially the role of cinematography and the key aspects of both films that made Wright achieve success and be considered as one of the most promising directors of the last decade.
One of the most essential issues to take into account when starting the project of a new film is the choiceof the cast, as they are going to be one of the key aspects of success (or failure). In 2003, Joe Wright chose Keira Knightley to be Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice even if she was, as Laurie Kaplan points out, much more than ‘tolerable’ (Kaplan). She was a 20-year-old British young actress who recently had achieved worldwide success with Disney’s first part of Pirates of the Caribbean(2003) (although she was quite famous in England for Bend it Like Beckham (2002) and for Working Title’s Love Actually (2003)). When they had to choose an

appropriate Mr. Darcy, Wright and his crew were much more under pressure as they knew that this character is one of the most beloved ones in literature. They wanted more than a pretty face: they wanted a man of imposing presence yet capable oftransmit vulnerability and the answer was Matthew MacFadyen. For the rest of the cast there is an intelligent valance between very well-known actors such as Donald Sutherland or Judi Dench and young, emergent actors like Carey Mulligan (2010’s nominee for Best Actress in the Academy Awards) or Tamzin Merchant. The good chemistry between Knightley and Wright made them work together again in...