Sense and Sensibility.

The only way to turn a classic novel into a vivid movie is to bring a lot of tough love to the project. Reverence alone won't do (as witness Visconti's paralyzed and paralyzing version of Death in Venice), and brisk assurance without tact produces such vulgarities as Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Richard Brook's Lord Jim. But boldness in the service of love can result in films like the Noel Langley-Alistair Sim Christmas Carol, Eric Rohmer's poignant rendering of Kleist's The Marquise of O, John Huston's great expansion of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King.

Add one more film to the honor roll. Judging by her adaptation of Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson is the toughest of tough lovers, the most disciplined of Janeites. Lovingly directed by Ang Lee, the movie doesn't send you scurrying back to the original to find out why Character X did this or that, or how Character Y really felt, because what's up there on screen is satisfying in itself. But if you do return to the book, you may be astonished by Thompson's expansions and curtailments. And you will certainly be struck by her complete understanding of what this novel is really about.

Sense and Sensibility is a tale of two sisters: the reserved, sensible Elinor, who finds Mr. Right apparently too late; and the romantic Marianne, who finds a Mr. Right who turns out to be Mr. Wrong. It's a good novel, but I wonder if it would enjoy classic status if Jane Austen hadn't written anything else. Just as Barnaby Rudge has ridden to immortality on the coattails of Pickwick Papers and Bleak House, S&S has survived the depredations of time mainly because it is boxed, in complete sets of Jane Austen, with the true masterpieces, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma. Its plot is serviceable yet seems a little overloaded with breathless messengers riding posthaste on frothing steeds. The two protagonists are poignantly drawn and some of the supporting players are richly comic. But the faithful lovers of the sisters, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, are two sticks walking about in frock coats. (On the other hand, Willoughby, the cad who betrays Marianne, is alive precisely because he is a cad, and the author, casting a cold eye on him, sees him clearly and from more than one angle.) And there are too many minor characters whom we cannot really see in our minds' eyes as they perform what are purely functional roles.

Yet Sense and Sensibility has something no other Jane Austen novel--with the exception of Persuasion--has: naked emotion. We smile at Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy, we laugh at Emma Woodhouse, we are disturbed by the sexual predators of Mansfield Park, but when Marianne runs across a ballroom to the man she is obsessed by, and who is ignoring her, and exclaims "Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this?" only to be met by cold looks and even colder words, we may feel tears coming to our eyes and the hairs on our forearms rising. Sense and Sensibility is a very direct book.

How well Emma Thompson and Ang Lee have understood this and how cleanly they have cut to the core of Austen's comedy and drama! Thompson doesn't hesitate to turn the book's happily married Sir John Middleton into a widower because she understands that Sir John's comicality registers most vividly when he appears in tandem not with his starchy wife but with his mother-in-law, Mrs. Jennings, the great supergossip of English literature. As written by Thompson and as played, to the hilt, by Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Sprigg, the two good-hearted meddlers become a great comic team.

But that is a masterstroke of excision. As an example of creative enlargement, look at what the scriptwriter has done with Edward Ferrars. In the book, Elinor's choice of such a dull man as her life's companion diminishes her. But Thompson makes it clear from the start that what Elinor cherishes in Edward is not his self-effacement but his generosity and the tact by which that generosity enacts itself. When the film's Edward finds that his visit to the Dashwood house has deprived the youngest sister, eleven-year-old Margaret, of her bedroom, he tacitly claims a less agreeable guest chamber. When the child hides herself from all visitors, Edward brings off a playful ruse that coaxes Margaret back to civilization. Although Hugh Grant's performance is the only faulty one in the movie--too much squinting and shoulder-hunching--he does render Edward's diffidence as pure charm and courtesy. We believe Elinor is right to love this man, and that's what counts.

But what counts most of all is that the screenwriter comprehends the theme of the novel. Like much of Austen's fiction (and much of Henry James's) S&S is about honor. Not the sort of honor defended in duels but the kind all men and women defer to when they honor their commitments. Jane Austen, pace George Eliot or Doris Lessing fans, remains the supreme feminist of fiction because her major female characters are always presented as moral agents, not as fortresses of virginity determining which males will be allowed to breach the gates nor as bluestockings preoccupied by the bees of idealism buzzing in their bonnets. When Elinor understands that Edward may be to marry her because he has already pledged himself to a Miss Steele, she not only approves of his scruples but tries to expedite the dreaded marriage because she'd rather see her lover retain his honor than be with her in dishonor. Not exactly a modern girl, this Miss Dashwood, but Thompson makes us understand that she is as chivalrous as any knight on a white charger.

Jane Austen was a genius at characterization and plotting but physical description was never her forte. That's not a defect, just a negative attribute of her special art. But this puts a burden on the director to supply the visual equivalent of the novelist's sensibility. Ang Lee triumphs. He never permits his camera to be a tourist of the English countryside but uses the settings to support the emotions of any given scene. He and cameraman Michael Coulter have drawn upon the paintings of Vermeer for certain of the quieter domestic scenes and (I think) Constable for some of the outdoor passages, but the lighting of Marianne in agony on her sickbed is pure Caravaggio, and justly so. Lee's subtle directorial touches can be relished at second, even third viewings. Let me cite only one shot: the overhead view of Elinor sitting on a landing and holding a cup of tea that nobody wants while--to Elinor's left, front, and right--every other member of the all-female household locks herself in her bedroom to howl over Willoughby's hasty departure. Elinor's heart is breaking, too--for Edward's sake. But how can a girl weep when the rest of her family holds the monopoly on grief and she is expected to be the dry-eyed pillar of common sense? So she just sits and thinks and sips the tea that nobody wants while we, perched by Lee high above the landing, gaze down on her in admiring pity, in smiling commiseration. It's a very poignant and very funny shot, and has perfect Austen pitch.

Greg Wise, as Willoughby, had the teen-aged girls four rows down from me swooning through the first half of the movie and hissing him in the second. Way to go, Greg. They then transferred their swooning to Alan Rickman as noble Colonel Brandon. Way to go, Rickman. Imogene Stubbs is amazing as the steely Miss Steele. Simultaneously laughable, smarmy, and frightening, she leans right into her rival's bosom, flutters her eyelashes, and verbally batters away at the mid-section with a relentlessness that Joe Frazier would have envied. Kate Winslet, as Marianne, is both formidable and pitiful in the coils of passion, and, in those scenes which require vocal fireworks, Winslet unleashes a voice that might do justice to Shakespeare.

To Emma Thompson's performance as Elinor I would like to raise a monument of words, but I can only toss a pebble onto the pile already heaped by fellow critics. In passages of wit, she is the driest of clarets, in scenes of grief and yearning, the most full-bodied of Burgundies. My metaphors are drawn from wine because I wish to offer a toast to the finest actress (and now, apparently, one of the best scriptwriters) currently working in the English-speaking cinema.

I regret that circumstances didn't permit me to review Persuasion last year. Let me just state that I think it a very good adaptation but that certain elements in it--the drizzly (and lovely) photography, the anachronistic music (Chopin, among others), the generally hushed quality of the soundtrack, and the almost self-effacing performance of Amanda Root (of, to be sure, a self-effacing heroine), nudge it a little further into the nineteenth century than the sensibility of Jane Austen belongs. Nevertheless, this movie's style does capture the tenderness and melancholy of a book written by a woman who probably sensed her impending death.

The little I saw of Pride and Prejudice on the Arts and Entertainment channel repelled me. Here was a cuddly Elizabeth Bennet, and how in the name of F. R. Leavis can a Jane Austen heroine be cuddly? Here was a Darcy who dived into cold lakes to quench his sexual appetite. Was the fellow educated in Jesuit boarding schools? Here was a camera that looked at the English countryside as if it were a National Trust guide showing yuppie Yank tourists the Stately Homes of England. ("And over here, ladies and gentlemen, the servants' quarters. Note the ruddy faces of our healthy, happy yeomen.") If the film Persuasion steers Austen close to Bronte country, this Pride and Prejudice dumped her right into the land of Regency Romance paperbacks.