Review of The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) by Omid975 — 20 Sep 2014

Watching The Jane Austen Book Club (2007), it constantly crossed my mind that to start one club of my own with people I know on Skype, but of course about movies! The actors have so greatly played in a story that has been perfectly chaptered and yet of course keeps the continuity of life and love among five couple of people, six of whom have started a club reading the six novels by Jane Austen. I have personally never read her novels, although tempted, just have watched the 1996 version of the movie of her Sense and Sensibility over 20 times perhaps. Jane was never married but somehow she has managed to create a great atmosphere of dramatic love and romance between men and woman maintaining the dignity and pride in the meaning of self-respect in women. In this amazingly cinematographed peaceful work of art, a six-time-married old woman gathers her friends and someone else whom they just let in, to form a club so that they would cheer up their friends who have just lost the love their lives; one loses a dog, the other divorcing from the husband. They don’t know what is yet to come but they passionately read each book in a month. Each title of the novels isn’t so far from what its picker’s going through in his/her personal life and although picking process may sound coincidental for some of them, it still works out for each and every one of them.

I recollect having things read and understood about Jane Austen like she was a self-controlling confident woman with very powerful beliefs that a woman is as strong as man but what for sure is that she was not a lesbian, however, Allegra (Maggie Grace) jokes about a theory that maybe one of her book’s characters was a lesbian. We know that she is one and even though it’s been evoked so nicely by Maggie, it would make it more interesting to see that she also has heterosexual preference.

Feminism is not an issue in this movie, it is rather about feminine life and obviously the relationships in it. However, it’s not merciless about men’s lives! Hugh Dancy as Grigg joins them and portraits a man’s understanding of Jane Austen who likes comic books and used to think of her novels as being girlish and now growing not only to like them also criticizing the characters of them carefully. The Ironies are raised when he wants to prove that the woman she likes is not happy and that she’s just alone like Jane and wants to be in control.

Decisions are taken at the last moment before making a fatal mistake based on Jane’s characters self-control mentioned in her novels.