The Jane Austen Book Club

Last night three of us saw The Jane Austen Book Club. I hadn't realized it had been a book since I more frequently read non-fiction. That only made it more exciting and fresh for me. It was a wonderful movie and viewer experience. It was brilliantly written for pace, well-acted by pros with lesser parts and wonderful new-to-me, great performers. I love that we are seeing more actors from the UK. Emily Blunt was a good example of this as was was Hugh Darcy. Neither gave away that they were not American. Perhaps the Romanian linguist from My Fair Lady might have been able to distinguish the accents but I, an American, did not.

It is easy to keep up with actors' aging since one does not look into their mirrors daily. I would never have recognized Lynn Redgrave who gave a brilliant performance as a the mother none of us would want to call our own.

I have committed to watching only 'feel-good' movies for the rest of my life. Occasionally, I blushingly admit, I go off that wagon for exceptional dramas and documentaries. This movie had every dimension one could ever hope for in entertainment, covering expressed emotion and all the behaviors eliciting it, inner human conflicts, humor, clever dialog, biases, assumptions, ultimately showing the viewer that much of what we strongly believe has acceptable alternatives to those beliefs. If my review mattered to anyone else, I would say, "Go see this movie and come out of the theater with a lightened heart and soul." The world may briefly seem a better place than we all know it to be.