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It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I am marking this only with a 6, mainly because of 2 things: a) The plainness of the leading actress's appearance that I know it was the director's decision. You are going to tell me that the leading man was not exactly Prince Charming... Correct! However, it was very bothering watching for two hours a supposed 26 year old young woman appearing and behaving like she is 46!!! OK, at the start of the film she was on the edge of becoming a spinster... However, near the end of the film she was more appreciated and confident and she also had two suitors literary running after her... Not even THEN could the director let the poor actress put on some make up, wear something else than those old curtains and do something with that bloody hair of hers?b) Why the director wanted every character that he wanted us to dislike TALK WITH THEIR MOUTHS FULL? Anne's sister Elizabeth, her father, Ms Pain, Mary, Louisa, ALL of them are at some stage doing that. However, is was not them that I wanted to slap, but the director - that believed that having people behaving like this he would have a worthy Jane Austen novel adaptation... What's next man? Directing a Shakespeare play adaptation, where the villains defecate in frond of us? Having said all that, the performances and the overall production were OK. The story could had been told with more lively pace (=less boring), though... and Anne could had been portrayed less than a cold "Plain Jane" girl... The only time we see her laugh is when she visits that widow, and to be honest I am not very well convinced that her heart was in it :)If you ignore all these, it is actually a watchable film :))

Although I have read all of Jane Austen, I am not a particular fan; I prefer her over any Brontë, but far prefer Eliot, Dickens, and Hardy over the lot of them. My favorite of her novels is her last, Persuasion, so I was poised to have my high hopes dashed. But this film exceeded even elevated expectations for reasons visual, verbal-- and reverential (the marvelous Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth).First, the visuals. Film adaptations of Austen (and her ilk) generally deliver a touch of grime along with glamor, but it's invariably picturesque: the tattered and torn peasants and ruffians are museum-quality. Not here. Director Roger Michel gets plain old mud on the skirts of his ladies during their long walks. Bad and/or yellow teeth abound, as they did in 1814, nowhere more notoriously than in England. Such small details are big indicators of how Michel, like Austen, prefers honest naturalism to pure aestheticism. Ivory-tower film-making is left to the likes of Merchant and Ivory.I hasten to add, however, that Michel also left the costume design to a very talented 33-year old, Alexandra Byrne, who went on to win an Oscar (for Elizabethan togs). Her Empire dresses and Royal navy chapeau-bras will not leave you wistful for Greer Garson wearing Adrian.As to the verbal: The screenplay perpetuates, as it should, Austen's repair to caricature for her satire. It is one of the author's failings, and it is writ large here; protagonist Anne (delicately brought to life by Amanda Root) is the only member of the Elliott family who isn't a grotesque: vain Sir Walter, strident Elizabeth, narcissistic Mary--all lack complexity, as do most of the women and many of the men. The caricatures do, however, provide comic context for the heart of the story. The number of times dutiful, plain Anne is influenced by persuasion from one buffoon or another is effectively stifling, and is therefore one of the ways in which this film adaptation truly reflects the novel. But this is cinema, not literature. Certain key moments in the film, some of them silent, reveal more than the dialog does to attentive viewers . At the shore in Lyme, all characters but two play with the sand and the surf; the two are Wentworth, who stares out at his true home, the sea, and Anne, who also simply gazes serenely out over the water toward— freedom? adventure? Wentworth's true home? It sets Anne apart with lovely subtlety. Another moment occurs at the end (which returns to the opening scene, with ships), when she and Wentworth set sail. At the sight of their the full-rigged ship, I felt a tug toward freedom, too, away from all the persuasive pressures of society. Wentworth's ship, now her home too, truly did feel like independence, perhaps especially for a woman whose horizons in the early 19th century were still barbarically circumscribed.

I just finished reading Persuasion and watched this version and the Sally Hawkins' version to see which version was best. This Adaptation was hands down the most accurate. Not only was it accurate, but it is a good movie that I would recommend to those who haven't read the book. Amanda Root does a fantastic job portraying Anne, I think Cirian Hinds was meant to play Wentworth, and it was altogether a good casting job. One thing I did not like about this version was that Lady Russell was much more severe in this adaptation than in the book. The Sally Hawkins' Lady Russell was closer to what I imagined. The other thing I did not like about this version was how subdued and unemotional Anne seemed upon seeing Wentworth again. She was clearly shocked and upset, but I liked how Sally Hawkins' portrayal showed her crying at the thought of Wentworth moving on. That seems more natural. Though the book (to my recollection) doesn't say that Anne cried, it seems like she ought to have cried. Very, very good movie!

This film is so flawless, it's hard to think of a place where it misses a single beat. I'm a great fan of the Merchant/Ivory cannon, and believe them to be unbeatable in their perfection of the Ideal. Here we are given a masterful lesson by Roger Michell in the perfectly Real. And it's OK to like both. I do not agree at all with the premise that romance and long dresses make any movie a chick flick, which is a fairly modern invention - both in grammar and a particular vein of shallow popular movie making. This is not that, and I cannot watch a true chick flick - they're not even good movies, none of them will be named here, you know which ones they are.Most of the well known period pieces made in the last 20 years are some of the very best movies we have. I think them not so much an acquired taste, as an appreciation that must be learned. Like many of the finer things and varied seasons of your life, it took someone showing you before you knew what you were looking at, or looking for. It is that way here. Once you see the truth they have to tell, then decide you don't prefer them - at least you've validated your own choice through actual experience. But to dismiss them out of hand from ignorance, or prejudice, or misplaced masculinity makes such a view less relevant. And I think more importantly, causes you to miss out on something you might find quite beautiful, had you seen it.For the uninitiated, let me take a moment to explain. It is the inner beauty of good people, the proper behavior and right conduct toward others as a societal norm - just because they are others like yourself, not because you wanted anything from them. Real Gentleman and True Ladies. This all happened for the first time in history on this scale and at this level within the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Though this is the period right before the Victorian, they are directly connected and that's what is on display here. It will feed your spirit if you let it. All of which comes out of the ethics and morality of Christian nations, and does not trace back to any other cultures on the earth.Just as the West came out of the Greece of Alexander, the modern world was birthed by the Britain of this time, and everyone knows it. The turn into the 20th century is the end of the England we Americans as a society, came out of. We did not get this goodness in us as a nation from ourselves, we got it from someone who had it before us. Good Infection as C.S. Lewis calls it. There is hypocrisy, contradiction and cruelty, of course, and people who are not so nice - that comes with a fallen race. But that is not what you are being shown. There is no excellence in the error of men, there is no light in their darkness. Darkness is the absence of Light - Light displaces it. All of the bad that men have done to each other is hardly worth making a film about, on it's own.Good films come from good stories, and stories get their strength from the Power of Words. Like the ones I'm using here. It's a power that God put into words, man had nothing to do with it. Films and stories are important only because Words are important. If it sounds like I'm preaching a little, you can't fault me for that - that's what Preachers do. So do film makers, film goers, writers, and people - like you. All with something to say, when given a chance - will say it. And everything ever said will be Judged.Thus ends my attempt at persuasion, for those of you who might give great period pieces a view. Let their good words minister, let their morality speak. In an age where people have become products, and talk is cheap. You'll get a little bit of help from the Light that is in them. A spoonful at a time is all we are given, because a spoonful is all we can handle. Pictures, and words and stories of the way people used to be. The goodness of God is the goodness that you see. Including the goodness in films like Persuasion - an example of how good film making ought to be.