Myra Nair’s version of Vanity Fair has all the color and motion you’d expect from the director of Monsoon Wedding, and Reese Witherspoon is predictably pert and winsome in the central role of Becky Sharp. The film bubbles along in a dazzle of brief scenes, with secondary characters appearing and disappearing with bewildering regularity. There are balls, battles, catty conversations and insensitive asides, and unlike so many adaptations of English classics, in which upper class sensibilities define the tone and pace of the goings-on, in Vanity Fair things are viewed largely from the bottom up. We are well aware of the social position to which Becky aspires, and sympathize with her on that account, but Nair shows us nothing attractive about that zone of life except its freedom from destitution.
All and all, the film is a great pleasure to watch, and it would be a shame if anyone stayed away on the basis of carping from literary types who liked the book better. And yet, that having been said, it seems to me that Nair’s Vanity Fair is kind of a dream-film, in which pieces seem to be missing, actions are sometimes incomprehensible, and character development invariably gives way to exigencies of plot. It could hardly have been otherwise. Unlike the talk-filled miniatures of Jane Austen, or the sentimental novels of Dickens, (whose sentimental caricatures are easy to transfer to the screen), Thackerey’s magnus opus is a complex novel, and as such it defies abbreviation.
By the same token, although it may be said that Witherspoon is very winsome in the role of Becky Sharp, she bears only a passing resemblance to the original. Thackerey’s Sharp is beguiling and clever, but also desperate and unprincipled. Wihterspoon’s Sharp, on the other hand, is so perky and optimistic that we never feel the grasping necessity that gives the character her moral complexity. Similarly, Thackerey’s Osborn is a wastrel, but also a man and a soldier, whereas Nair’s Osborn looks and acts like the rock star Prince’s degenerate younger brother, and we have trouble believing that Amelia would ever have cared a farthing for him. Amelia’s estrangement from her son is not adequately developed, and her rapturous embrace of Dobbin near the end of the film is so sudden it seems ridiculous. The same could be said of other characters and situations, but the point should be clear. Colorful and fun? Yes. Rich and deep? No. Becky Sharp’s sudden decision to travel to India with Josh at the very end of Vanity Fair merely underscores how little emotional gravity the film possesses.
