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Luxury Class
Reese Witherspoon climbs the social ladder in ‘Vanity Fair’
by Joe Tarr
The things that can make high school such a wretched ordeal also make for delightful drama. There’s something intoxicating about watching conniving, ruthless people screw each other over, randomly box people out of their world, or get their comeuppance; most of us have at one time or another been chewed up and spit out by whatever social force we happened to run afoul of. Even if you’re usually the one doing the chewing and spitting, there’s bound to be someone for you to identify with.
Every society and social group has a power structure—whether it be based on race, pedigree, wealth, choice of friends, knowledge of obscure indie rock bands, or taste in clothing. What makes these structures so difficult to navigate is that they are subtle, unwritten and usually arbitrary.
Mira Nair has spent much of her career mining the social conventions, looking at the ways they bind people and how some struggle against those constraints, breaking the taboos for better or worse. As a native of India, which has one of the world’s more pronounced (although certainly not worst) caste systems, Nair has an intuitive understanding of social exclusion. In her films—Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, and Monsoon Wedding—Nair’s characters struggle with social conventions, traditions, racism, classism and cultural prejudice. So her movie adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair—about a social climber in early 19th century England—is a natural choice. That it sometimes misfires is made up for by the beautiful cinematography and the fact that it’s fun to watch.
The story focuses on Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon), a girl orphaned at a young age. As a grown woman, she’s intelligent, beautiful and has an intuitive understanding of people, but she still lacks money, connections and pedigree. According to the roles allowed woman then, she becomes a governess and begins forming alliances to try to improve her lot. She finds favor with the wealthy spinster Matilda Crawley (Eileen Atkins) but then loses that approval when she elopes with Ms. Crawley’s favorite nephew, Rawdon, a womanizing gambler (James Purefoy). When war and financial troubles strike, Sharp finds patronage from the Marquess of Styne (Gabriel Byrne).
Although it’s a more serious turn for her, Witherspoon has spent much of her career playing roles, mostly comedic, that center on social machinations (most notably in Election). She’s equally at home playing the evil bitch who ruins lives and the precious It girl, who ushers others into popularity. She’s more a charismatic star than a chameleonic actress, but she’s infinitely captivating. Her deep blue eyes suggest both deviousness and vulnerability.
She doesn’t quite have the acting chops to convey the complexity of Becky Sharp, however. Her motivations are always suspect, which is consistent with her character, but her more self-serving moments—the disregard for her son, for instance—simply don’t work. A scene where she performs an exotic, Indian-inspired dance at one of the Marquess’ parties falls embarrassingly flat.
But Witherspoon has so much natural charm that her shortcomings as an actress don’t matter as much. She’s the prom queen everyone gravitates to and the movie’s center, even if it is hard to wash the hint of American suburbia out of her.
The other actors seem much more at home playing the hoity-toity British aristocrats, aristocrat-wannabes, and the vulgar new-money merchants who buck the system but still crave approval. Byrne mocks rigid social mores—“It’s the women who locks the doors to society,” he says at one point—yet benefits the most from them; at the top of the social order, he’s free to do as he pleases.
A great storyteller, Nair keeps the movie tight and evenly paced, with some help from screenwriter Julian Fellowes, who won an Academy Award for his work on Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s brilliant (and much more cutting) movie about British classism.
The Indian influences on this world—it was a time when the wealth of the colonies was enriching imperialist England—are drawn out and emphasized. One of Sharp’s early suitors, who has made a fortune in India, keeps reappearing, reminding her of a path not taken.
It is ironic that the country holds such a magical pull on the characters, for it has an equally brutal class system. Of course, people trapped by rigid social structures desire escape. And India, like any exotic locale, offers a hope at redemption, a place to recreate oneself.
Another culture’s caste system always seems more ludicrous—and more easily dismissed—than your own.
September 9, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 37
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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