A Wider View: Persuasion

Natural light suffuses Persuasion, directed by Roger Michell. The camera lingers on the unbeautified faces of naval men, impoverished tenants at Kellynch Hall, and Amanda Root’s Anne Elliot, pale indeed before she regains her ‘bloom.’ Persuasion decisively departs from prior televised adaptations of Austen both by replacing staginess with naturalism and also by foregrounding working men and women. Very unusually, it was created as a television film and was subsequently acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for release in cinemas.

Playwright Nick Dear, writing his first adaptation for the screen, was surprised by how much he related to the novel. He said: ‘I was struck by the realism, the truthfulness, of Austen’s depiction of two people who fall in love, part, and are then reunited. No author, to my mind, has done it better. And anybody who’s been lucky enough to have loved and been loved in return, I thought—especially those of us who’ve had a bit of a wait—will identify with this.’

In a significant departure from the original novel, Anne and Captain Wentworth, played by Ciarán Hinds, celebrate their reconciliation with a kiss. This scene was added at the insistence of executive co-producer Rebecca Eaton, whose Masterpiece Theatre program broadcast British drama in the US, who said: ‘I thought our audience would go nuts with frustration and irritation if, after two hours of rooting for Anne and the captain and longing for their reunion, they couldn’t see them kiss.’ As Eaton recalls, Michell ‘finally said, “Look, I’ll shoot the scene two ways. They’ll kiss in the American version, and they’ll touch hands in the British version.”’ Eaton triumphantly notes that the theatrically released film ends with the kiss, a scene also shown on the poster.