‘Ignorant’! ‘Island of Fire’! Iconic Jane Austen film and TV adaptations
As Jane Austen once said, “A lady’s fantasy moves very fast”, which is why it is very important to keep her busy with ingenious movies and serials. What could be better than watching a program inspired by Austen’s greatest works?
In June 2021, Netflix announced upcoming production The Netherfield Girlsstarring Maitreyi Ramakrishnanwhich has been described as a contemporary take on Pride and prejudice. Following the style of Easy A or 10 things I hate about youfollows the exploits of the Bennet sisters as they deal with love, heartbreak and societal pressures.
For The Netherfield Girlsthere were many other notable adaptations of Austen’s prose, including Ignorant in 1995, sanditon in 2019 and the Keira Knightley-LED Pride and prejudice in 2005. These productions either adapted the classic stories for a modern setting or brought Austen’s words to life in a more traditional time period.
One of the most notable modern adaptations is Amy Heckerlingcult classic from the 90s, Ignorantwhich was inspired by the matchmaking novel, Emma.
“You don’t go, ‘You know what, the world needs an adjustment Emma and mine will be genius,” Heckerling said City & Country in July 2020. “You find yourself driving around wondering, ‘What am I going to do next,’ and thinking, ‘I stink and everyone hates me.’ Then you start asking yourself: ‘What do I like and what makes me happy?’ … You really had to want to do what you were doing. I started thinking about what really amused me, which was very positive characters; I just don’t understand how people can be positive and it kind of devastates me.
After a re-reading of the 1815 novel, the director was inspired to revisit Austen’s story with a new twist.
“I started thinking what if there was a teenage girl who, no matter what, couldn’t burst her bubble,” the screenwriter explained to the magazine. “I wondered what this particular character is, what the best bones are for a three-act feature film… I reread [Emma]and everything in it was so perfect and so relatable to that time period – or any time period, really, because she is so wise – that I started thinking about what the equivalent would be in the world I lived in, in California in the the nineties.”
So, Ignorant was born when Heckerling reimagined Austen’s world into a more contemporary setting.
“Well, the ’90s sure were a fun time,” the New York native shared Decide in July 2020. “But there was a lot of the Jane Austen novel that I was influenced by, and that’s utterly timeless, in terms of the way a young person thinks and the specific character types she has fun with, and the romances, the different groups in the social domain. … It’s all so perfect in that book.”
Heckerling’s own love for Austen enabled her to recognize book characters and storylines and easily translate them into modern stories. She said Interview magazine in May 2016 that she initially wanted to write a story with a main character who was the ‘opposite’ of her and saw the world through ‘pink glasses’ in a ‘happy bubble’.
“Amy didn’t just love Emmabut she knew, ” Autumn de Wildewho directed the 2020 interpretation Emmatold City & Country in July 2020. “She understood the point of view and she understood the history, so she was able to rework the story in such a way that if you know the book you recognize it. But if you don’t know Emma, you totally get it and you can identify with it, even if you’re not that rich girl or the girl who got the makeover or the stoner skater boy. That’s a real testament to Amy Heckerling’s genius.”
Similar to Heckerling’s adaptation, Gurinder Chadha – who notably directed Curvature it Like Beckham – meant to visit again Pride and prejudice And woven into Bollywood traditions throughout her 2004 movie, Bride and prejudice.
“I was doing the dishes one day when I got the idea, why don’t you take the most amazing love story ever written,” Chadha said. FemaleFirst in March 2005. “It was about a big family, they don’t have much money, daughters to be married off; very Indian! And the more I started working on it, the more I realized how relevant Jane Austen’s late 1700s writing is to today’s little India. And then it really started to fit and take shape.”
Chadha previously told The Telegraph in September 2004 that Pride aand prejudices is a “universal love story” so well known to the public. “So they can sit back, not worry that they’re going to miss the story, and just end up in a different movie language,” she explained of her decision to recreate a beloved story.
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Keep scrolling below to look back at some of the most iconic Austen Adjustments: