Sense and Sensibility

There are some people who will never watch a film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. The author's very name has become associated with a "chick flick" stigma that, while apropos in some respects, earns a quick dismissal from most of the male population almost immediately...except those who begrudgingly admit Alicia Silverstone was hot in Clueless.

And Sense and Sensibility (1995) is unlikely to change their minds. Because Austen's world, no matter how cleverly actress/screenwriter Emma Thompson adjusts it to fit our own, requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. And while the male species seems just fine justifying the existence of aliens, zombies and 25-foot sharks, the Y chromosome seems to balk at the that idea women were once reliant on men for every social and financial necessity. Or, at least, they don't find the idea very entertaining onscreen.

After the death of her husband leaves his entire estate to a child from another marriage, Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters - Elinor (Thompson), Marianne (Kate Winslet) and the youngest, Fanny - take up residence in the country estate of a distant relative. Their only real hope of economic survival is for the girls to marry. But with so little to offer a prospective husband monetarily, the prospects seem slim.

Yet several suitors do appear: the soft-spoken Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) vies for the affections of Marianne with the dashing bachelor John Willoughby (Greg Wise). While Elinor finds herself falling for the shufflingly self-conscious charms of Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant), a relationship that ends before it even has a chance to being when a visiting relative confesses she's been secretly engaged to Edward for the past five years.

The romantic back-and-forths certainly could have seemed dated and overly dramatic if not for Thompson's remarkably witty and relatable script, which makes all this "man's world" nonsense seem not quite so impossibly tragic. Populated with characters actors that own every scene (Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton and plenty of other future Harry Potter alums), Sense and Sensibility wrings just as much comedy out of its story as it does tears. Austen's women must live by a certain set of rules, and it's the scandalous pleasure of watching them bent and broken that give the film it's punch.

Thompson and director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) get nearly everything right, which explains the six Oscar nominations and one win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Equal to the accomplishment of any science-fiction epic, Sense and Sensibility is a perfect example of world building; a world not quite so far fetched but equally complicated.

Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray does beautiful work with the film's verdant scenery. The extra features are carried over from the 2002 DVD release and include two commentaries, several featurettes, deleted scenes and a new isolated score track.