Persuasion

Carrie Cracknell's skillful Netflix adaptation masterfully captures the subversive wit and charm of Austen's strident heroine.

Screenwriters Ron Bass and Alice Winslow retain much of the subversive, fundamental elements that made the original text so beloved, cheeky and subversive far beyond the boundaries of the time in which it was written. That said, even though this is very much “Not Your Mother’s” Jane Austen adaptation, the filmmakers wisely don’t alter the source material’s portrayals of class and character. Whether it be her Fleabag-esque, Enola Holmes-like or her Ferris Bueller-lite expository dialogue and reactions, Johnson adeptly holds the audience’s attention, letting them in on the joke—or at least hinting at her despair. Anne is holding out hope that he’s open to rekindling their romance, but quickly discovers that Wentworth is more awkward and aloof than ever. Her marriage prospects have vanished since she was persuaded eight years prior to dump her one true love, low-ranking Naval officer Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis). Because their union would’ve been solely for love, it was frowned upon by Anne’s family and closest confidant, Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird), whose transactional view of marriage has left Anne despondent and remorseful. Suffice it to say that Cracknell wants audiences to know that their impending journey isn’t going to be like any of the film’s stuffy, slavish predecessors.

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It's a shame the movie has so little empathy for a woman who felt marriage was her ultimate goal, and has discovered it's not the eternal pleasure that she'd been promised. And yet the sly scene-stealer is Mia McKenna-Bruce as Mary Musgrove, née Elliot. In these scenes of play and whispered confidences, Anne's sweetness is revived, sparkling alongside some of the movie's most sensational supporting players. This Anne clearly regards all around her as superficial fools, who denied her love and now stand in her way of even the most basic peace. In the novel, Anne is painted as clever, rational, and considerate to a fault. Richard E. Grant is splendid as the ludicrously posh and snotty Baronet Elliot; Yolanda Kettle serves as his partner in silly snootery. Johnson's signature mischievousness makes sense for a smirking version of Anne, but this translation lacks the ardent longing of the novel. Still, Anne's tale in the novel is one of sustained love, endured loss, and ultimately hope. Forget the demure "only Anne" who kept her heartache to herself. Also, despite being deemed a "six" at best, there's no denying this Anne is a stunner because she is played by Dakota Johnson. Perhaps the most comical part of this adaptation is that her social circle resolutely believes Anne to be a plain-looking wallflower. In her case, that's ending her engagement to Frederick Wentworth (a stiff Cosmo Jarvis). However, Austen's Anne didn't have the mean streak this movie puts in the mouth of her heroine. While the movie's Anne still does all these things, her voiceover and Fleabag-like side-eye to the viewing audience shifts the emotional weight of these choices from regret to pointed resentment.

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As with her last two films — The Lost Daughter and Cha Cha Real Smooth — she is the standout performer among a truly talented pool of actors. There is, however, a nagging sense of frustration at why Cracknell and her writers — Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow — were so hesitant about revamping characters in a more significant manner, when they appear to have shown zero hesitation in rewriting what those characters are saying. The gimmick here, of course, is that director Carrie Cracknell has infused in Austen’s mannered story a contemporary edge. Sometimes, she sneaks in glances at the camera that are virtually indiscernible. The dialogue, at least at first glance, sounds archaic, but there’s something about the delivery that makes you lean in for a closer listen. But now, she lives with her status-obsessed father and spends most of her time wondering how she could have been so stupid.

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Clueless may indulge crackling quips that wouldn’t make sense anytime but in the summer of 1995, but it’s also a candid tale of a girl growing up and embarking on the first mature relationship of her life. The result is harried and forgettable—the complete opposite of Austen’s quietest, noblest heroine. Little of that is present in this cinematic Persuasion, which portrays all of Anne’s self-doubt in knowing monologues delivered straight down the lens. That year, the BBC aired Andrew Davies’s Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, a pitch-perfect, six-episode version of Austen’s novel that remains one of the best miniseries in the broadcaster’s history. The novel is one of careful choices and genuine introspection, tinged with more melancholy than Austen’s earlier works. As if Persuasion doesn’t have enough faith in its own plotting, it sasses the script for the viewer’s sake, lest we grow bored by the familiar beats of the period rom-com.

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“This is definitely a relaxed, enjoyable, funny take on Persuasion, but it’s going to open the door to interest in literature. We were having a challenging time casting his role, and I’m sure I was probably to blame, because I was looking for Nick Young, and then Nick Young came into the room. In the four years since Crazy Rich Asians, he has starred opposite Blake Lively in the thriller A Simple Favor, romanced Emilia Clarke in Last Christmas, played a gangster in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, and headlined the G.I. Joe spinoff Snake Eyes. “I’m really drawn to characters that itch something not only in my mind, but in my heart,” Golding says. Within the story, he has his goal and he’ll do anything to get it—or to get into the pants of his perspective target. “I always joke to Henry, ‘Did I ruin your life?’ says Kevin Kwan, who wrote the book Crazy Rich Asians and served as an executive producer on the film. I’ve lived a really beautiful existence in a way that I’m so grateful for, being able to have experience in different levels of life. Confidence and a sharp wit—not to mention that million-dollar smile—have served Golding well. “When we were casting Wentworth and Elliot, we were thinking about a whole range of actors,” Cracknell says. “He’s one of those people who knows what he wants and is going to mold the universe to his will. For me, that made it easier to really enjoy playing such a colorful character on the screen.” “I think it’s sacrilege to say,” the actor says carefully, “but I really like modern takes on period dramas. Finding his way into the part was a charming challenge for Golding. “I try to concentrate on the material in front of me.

There's another, better film buried in the performances of the Netflix Austen adaptation.

At one point earlier in the film, Anne asks Mary, “Why must everyone always assume that all women want is to be chosen by an eligible bachelor?” But Cracknell’s Persuasion offers no evidence to the contrary. But Cracknell’s film is more about the feel of Austen than the brilliance of Austen, of which it nails neither. Instead of its intended effect—camaraderie with the audience—the gesture feels better suited to checking if viewers are indeed still awake. Anne repeatedly shoots glimpses at the camera, a la The Office, as if to say, Are you seeing this? Johnson is delicious in this scene, a perfect mix of bumbling and lit-from-within, but her performance crumbles like clay in the grasp of such a plodding script. “It’s clear to me that I want you in my life,” he says, despite all evidence to the contrary, as the seagulls circle and screech in the background. After a lot of pointless brooding that could have been solved in one straightforward conversation, everyone is eventually righted and placed into the proper relationships. I genuinely hope you find love,” he adds, and Johnson’s crushing groan of a laugh is one of the film’s more emotionally intelligent moments. A blushing, flabbergasted Anne throws the audience a look that’s as much a cry for help as it is a gathering storm cloud. The film tries, in a detached, listless sort of way, to adhere to the original novel’s story. Here, we see what a different film Persuasion might have been, had it followed the electricity of its actors and not a false sense of winking relatability. “Now I am single and thriving,” a luminous Dakota Johnson relays as protagonist Anne Elliot, sobbing into the bathtub and suckling from a wine bottle.

Dakota Johnson's Anne Elliot is a weirdly modern hot mess — much like the entirety of Netflix's new adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion.

She gets wine-drunk and yells Frederick’s name out of a window, because she knows he’s at a party across the lawn that she can’t attend because she’s tending to her sick nephew. In an effort to make Anne’s struggles with class expectations and societal norms more relatable, Cracknell and the writers apparently decided to make her a quirky free spirit. Perhaps the first felt like too much of a risk in an adaptation of a classic. Perhaps the second was too boring to the filmmakers. She’s an utterly delightful example of the character viewers love to hate. Characters frequently blurt out things like “I’m an empath!” or “If you’re a five in London, you’re a 10 in Bath,” in moments that are utterly discordant amid the otherwise period-typical dialogue. And not just narrate it, but talk directly to the camera, throwing it pithy glances and rolling her eyes in response to her obnoxious relatives. Contrary to popular belief, not every Austen heroine is a Lizzie Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. So much of the original Anne’s journey is about realizing she doesn’t have to conform to expectations. She’s a Regency-era Fleabag, even though that characterization is at total odds with the original character. Out of all of Jane Austen’s novels, Persuasion may be the most difficult to adapt for modern audiences. But instead of grappling with making these themes resonate in 2022, or taking time to let the book’s more thoughtful moments breathe, Carrie Cracknell, director of Netflix’s new movie version of Persuasion, decided to turn its lead character into a #relatable mess. She lives with her self-absorbed father and eldest sister, but when her family’s extravagant spending forces them to rent out their grand estate, a naval officer and his wife move in.

The new adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, starring Dakota Johnson, swings wildly from dour to dull.

We’re exes.” Then the camera pulls back to let you survey the result, as if this film has done you the service of making Persuasion make sense in the 21st century, in the same way that Clueless made Emma make sense in the 20th century. In Netflix’s Persuasion, Anne takes on the mannerisms of the heroine of a mid-tier ’90s rom-com, weeping in the bathtub, weeping into copious amounts of red wine, weeping as she pratfalls into accidentally pouring gravy over her head. As played by Cosmo Jarvis, Wentworth is shy, brooding, and vague; a Darcy cyborg without the specificity. Austen’s Anne reacts to these circumstances the way she reacts to most things: outwardly remaining as calm and composed as possible, while inwardly tortured. The film picks up briefly when Henry Golding arrives to play Mr. Elliot, Anne’s cousin and Wentworth’s rival for her heart. Anne has never gotten over Wentworth, but she’s now a spinster, resigned to devoting her life to caring for her sisters and her sister’s children. He’s now wealthy and respectable, in search of a wife of his own, and still furious with Anne for ending their relationship the way she did. Instead, she winks at the camera with her best Jim-from-The Office smirk, as if to say, “Aren’t we all in agreement that this is charming?” We aren’t. Unforgivably, it makes a mess of one of Austen’s most romantic moments, undercutting the iconic letter-writing scene until it’s lost all internal logic and, with it, all emotional power. While it aims for the candy-coated Regency pastiche that Bridgerton made fashionable, it’s too stolidly convinced of its own virtues to revel in the sudsiness that renders Bridgerton so satisfying. Anne Elliot — rich, pretty, and charming — was once madly in love with the penniless young sailor Frederick Wentworth. They were engaged to be married. As an imitation of Netflix’s hit Bridgerton, Persuasion is a pale copy.

Netflix's attempt to modernize the classic novel has led to a disaster of anachronistic dialogue and annoyingly wry glances at the camera.

As soon as Fleabag reached full cultural capacity, every single new show that happened to have a woman in it was branded ‘The new Fleabag’. Back to Life, Run, Mood, I May Destroy You, This Way Up, The Duchess, Everything I Know About Love, Out of Her Mind – all these shows (and plenty of others, including the French remake Mouche) have been tagged with the same lazy label. A bold new voice enters the arena, and then everyone in the world rips it off for years and years afterwards. The closest equivalent I can think of is J Robert Oppenheimer, whose impressive work in the field of fast neutron calculation led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb. It’s the sort of inelegant modernisation that allows one character to describe herself as an empath, and its comedic ambition peaks during a scene where Johnson says with a sigh, “There’s nothing worse than thinking your life is ruined, and then realising you’ve got much further to fall,” before immediately literally falling on her face. Of all the adaptations that Jane Austen’s novel has suffered, this is by far the most ostentatiously Fleabaggy. It isn’t just that Dakota Johnson’s Anne Elliott talks to camera, or even that she seems pathologically inclined to glance at us whenever anything happens whatsoever. Hopefully it isn’t too late to stop her, because the sweeping wave of full-body horror that will overcome her within seconds of pressing play is bound to hurt.

Elizabeth Olsen makes her escape from a sinister cult, while Dakota Johnson frocks up for a trip to Austenland.

But she can’t knock an odd sense of dislocation, exacerbated by visions of a ghostly man stalking her, episodes where she seems invisible to those around her, and a strange attraction to a disused out-of-town pavilion. He’s witness to the brutal persecution of overweight recruit Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio) by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (a terrifying R Lee Ermey). Later, in Vietnam as a forces reporter, he joins a patrol in an urban wasteland of bombed-out, blazing buildings (no jungle combat here) in a brilliantly sustained exercise in tension. Pete Docter’s animated comedy is up there with the finest in the Pixar canon, and features some of the most infectious laughter in cinema (courtesy of two-and-a-half-year-old Mary Gibbs). Billy Crystal and John Goodman voice Mike and Sully, residents of Monstropolis employed to hide in bedrooms at night and jump out at human children, whose screams then power the city (“We scare because we care”). But then a young girl, Boo (Gibbs), upends everything they know. Bette Davis shows her great range as Charlotte, the timorous daughter of a high-society Boston family dominated by her monstrous mother (Gladys Cooper). After Claude Rains’s psychiatrist frees her from her parent’s grip, Charlotte blossoms into a confident, outgoing woman – one who is happy to fall in love on a cruise with the married Jerry (Paul Henreid), a romance that develops in surprising ways. It’s a tale of late-blooming romance, lacking the youthful vim of Pride and Prejudice and so opting for quiet tenderness, as Anne’s regrets about a past relationship with Cosmo Jarvis’s sailor Wentworth – which had been blocked by her family – resurface when he reappears, still a bachelor but now much more eligible. A sense of unease suffuses the film, from the whistling drone of the soundtrack to Martha’s intimations of danger, which may or may not be real.

The director and writers of Netflix's 'Persuasion' explain the updated language, inclusive casting choices and why Dakota Johnson talks to the camera.

“Those are described as looking similar to like a Facebook news feed,” says Winslow. “There are little hints of that elsewhere in the script as well.” “I wanted the widest possible audience to see themselves in this film,” Cracknell says. “We wanted to capture that spirit of play in our engagement with the material,” Winslow explains. While England in 1817 wasn’t the most diverse place, this onscreen version of “Persuasion” was cast more inclusively. The most glaring alteration to “Persuasion” is the inclusion of modern-day language, including meme-ready Gen Z speak. For Kellynch Hall, majestic home of the Elliot family, the script noted that a particular wall, as Winslow describes it, “looks like Justin Bieber’s Instagram account if it were 1812 and the Regency oil painting filter were on.” “We’re all big fans of the book and pretty reverent to it in the ways we could be,” Winslow adds. While the novel is written in third person, with Austen playing the part of narrator, Cracknell’s “Persuasion” sees Anne (Dakota Johnson) speaking directly to the viewer. “We tried to make sure we were capturing the sensibility in all moments, even when some of the language changed.… “The film is set pretty faithfully in the sumptuous Regency period, but the physical behaviors, attitudes and elements of the aesthetic also lean towards now,” Cracknell notes. In “Persuasion,” a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel made for Netflix, protagonist Anne Elliot speaks directly to the camera, addressing the audience like an old friend. The goal of these noticeable changes is to welcome a fresh batch of viewers into Austen’s world.

Stage director Carrie Cracknell has a clear (if clearly derivative) vision in mind for this update of "Persuasion," starring Dakota Johnson.

Some years ago, Wentworth — “a sailor without rank or fortune,” played by ruggedly handsome Cosmo Jarvis (“Lady Macbeth”) — proposed to Anne, and she accepted, but her aristocratic family disapproved of the union, and she was persuaded to break the engagement. For Cracknell’s purposes, the trouble is that neither character is sure the other still feels the love they once shared, and so we wait the requisite 100 minutes for them to profess their feelings and get on with the wedding that neatly ties up all of Austen’s books. And yet, despite this overtly disobedient streak, she’s corseted by all the old-timey social conventions at play, which include sitting idly by while 19-year-old sister-in-law Louisa (Nia Towle) openly flirts with Wentworth, and entertaining a rival proposal from distant relative William Elliot ( Henry Golding). The Anne we meet in this movie wouldn’t hold her tongue while such things happened. Anne’s unashamedly conceited father, Sir Walter (Richard E. Grant, a vainglorious hoot), must rent the family estate, Kellynch Hall, reintroducing the man for whom Anne’s heart still throbs to their circle — only now, Wentworth is an officer of sufficient fortune to merit her hand. Flash forward to the present (Austen’s present, that is, of 1816), and the situation is changing. Two centuries later, the world is still struggling to even that balance, and no studio seems more committed than Netflix to giving women a chance to control their narrative.

Meet the cast of the latest adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion by Netflix and the characters they're playing.

Richard E. Grant has been seen in many films and television shows since the beginning of his long career in the industry. Mary Elliot (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is the youngest of the three sisters, as well as the first to be married. McKenna-Bruce is most likely to be seen, however, in the Netflix series Get Even and The Witcher. Sir Walter (Richard E. Grant) is a proud man who, as a baronet is used to a life of luxury and wealth. Lady Russell (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is Anne’s close friend and mentor, as well as a mother figure after her real mother passed away. Anne (Dakota Johnson) is the middle child of an aristocratic family, whose wealth is dwindling as a result of irresponsible spending habits.

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For me, that's one of the most powerful reasons to cast in this way. Captain Wentworth tells Anne, "I have lived with a thousand different imagined versions of you over the years," and it's heart-wrenching because it finally shows something Anne has long insisted – Wentworth knows and understands her. There's hardly time to fret that the romance between Anne and Captain Wentworth may never work out; as Johnson's Anne tells us at almost every turn, "hope springs eternal". She's delighted by her own wit and utterly unconcerned for her future, despite being an aging spinster in a family that is haemorrhaging funds. Rather than a romantic comedy of manners, it has the sorrowfully tender tone of a woman looking back on her life and imagining the happy finale she had not experienced herself. First published in 1817, it was the last novel she wrote and was completed while she was dying.

Whatever is wrong with this new version of Jane Austen's Persuasion has little to do with its modern makeover.

However, Louisa supposedly makes a romantic connection of her own with Wentworth that feels hurried and unearned in the script from veteran Ron Bass and newcomer Alice Victoria Winslow. Naturally, various obstacles stand in the way of Anne and Wentworth reconciling, beyond her pride and his mistrust. Austen influenced “ Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and now Bridget herself seems to have influenced Dakota Johnson’s thoroughly charming portrayal of Anne Elliot. There’s lots of drinking red wine straight from the bottle, crying in the tub and lying around in bed, narrating her romantic woes with a familiar, self-effacing wit. On the brink of financial ruin because of the impulsive spending habits of the vain Sir Walter Elliot ( Richard E. Grant, in a perfect bit of casting as the preening patriarch), the family must downsize to more suitable digs for the time being. Anne jokes that she’s “thriving,” and clearly she is anything but, but she’s so winning in her state of loss that we can’t help but root for her. Just this year, Andrew Ahn’s “ Fire Island” had the vision to take “ Pride and Prejudice” and turn it into a frothy rom-com in queer paradise.

In Persuasion, Dakota Johnson tries to navigate playing an Austen heroine written like she's a cringey mashup of Fleabag and Bridget Jones.

And oddly, this adaptation of Wentworth is arguably the most reduced version of the character in any translation, as Jarvis is directed to play him pining softly, never showing any of the qualities that an almost Admiral might have in regards to having loved and lost Anne. For Austen purists, this version of Persuasion only gives up the goods when it comes to the English locations and the lovely costume design. And in the case of Golding, who is supposed to be the cousin who almost wins her heart, he’s given an original story beat where he admits to Anne that his sole goal is trying to keep his inheritance from her father. And Anne talking to the camera means the movie excessively leans on telling, rather than showing, so we lose a lot of scenes where characters could be speaking to one another. And then there’s a lot of anachronistic dialogue littered throughout the screenplay, such as Anne saying, “He’s a 10. Both are heartbroken, so he goes to sea to nurse his ego while she is stuck in the role of family caretaker, reduced to playing agony aunt to her terrible father and sisters.

Dakota Johnson's enigmatic quality is her greatest strength as an actress; "Persuasion" and the recent "Cha Cha Real Smooth" fail to lean into it.

There isn’t much humor to “The Lost Daughter” — perhaps only the sort eliciting a bitter chuckle — but the film stands as proof of Johnson’s versatility. The age difference between Domino and Andrew is far from egregious, but it contributes to a gap in maturity. The film’s also-vacationing protagonist, a divorced professor named Leda (Olivia Colman), is reminded of her own struggles as a young mother while observing Nina. The women form an unusual bond over this connection. This enigmatic quality helped Johnson avoid being pigeonholed after her breakout role in “ Fifty Shades of Grey.” Filmmakers from Luca Guadagnino to Maggie Gyllenhaal have cast Johnson in projects that, in theory, ask her to suggest hidden depths that reveal themselves over the course of the films. Johnson leads “Persuasion,” the new Jane Austen adaptation widely seen as veering into “ Fleabag” territory. Does she mean what she says, or is she masking the truth?