Mansfield Park

Fanny Price is taken from her poor family and sent to her wealthy relations at Mansfield Park. There she is neither servant nor family; she grows up somewhere in between. Years later a brother and sister arrive from London and unsettle the house, and Fanny receives a proposal. She refuses it. The subject is not romance but where the money comes from. Sir Thomas's fortune comes from a slave-worked sugar plantation in Antigua, and this adaptation brings that forward. In Jane Austen's novel the matter passes briefly; Patricia Rozema puts it at the centre. The form steps outside the classical period template: Fanny speaks directly to camera and the narration turns from time to time to things she has written. The production built Fanny out of Austen's own letters and juvenilia, so the Fanny on screen is sharper-tongued and much more a writer than the one in the book. That choice divided Austen readers. Frances O'Connor plays Fanny, Jonny Lee Miller plays Edmund and Harold Pinter plays Sir Thomas. Who it is for: viewers who like period adaptations approached politically. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fidelity to the novel; the film changes both character and tone noticeably.