Is it Oscar season already? Summer is barely over and now we've got the first of many two-hour-plus period pieces adapted from classic literature, demanding to be noticed by the Academy. This one's British, too (or faux-British, in the case of its star), so it'll command that much more attention. Based on the 1848 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair has many of the hallmarks of your typical Oscar-baiting film, although Thackeray's acerbic tone (his book is subtitled A Novel Without a Hero) keeps it from indulging in the full-on melodramatic uplift of so many films jockeying for awards.
Whether it will get any attention come Oscar time, Vanity Fair is accomplished entertainment in its own right. The film's first hour or so is a delightful mix of droll, dry humor and keen character insight, with unscrupulous lead character Becky Sharp played with wit and charm (and a surprisingly convincing English accent) by Reese Witherspoon. Becky starts out as a penniless orphan, put to work in a girls boarding school and unceremoniously shipped off to be a governess for a wealthy family when she's of age. Becky's only friend is the naïve, kind-hearted Amelia (Romola Garai), who has no regard for the high society of which Becky longs to be a part.
In her time as governess to the slovenly Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins), and then assistant to his tart, bitter spinster sister (a wonderful Eileen Atkins), Becky delivers scathing bon mots, exhibits remarkable ingenuity, and is every bit the amoral protagonist (but not heroine) of Thackeray's novel. Director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala) wisely hired Gosford Park screenwriter Julian Fellowes to do a rewrite on the screenplay, and his insights into class structure greatly enhance the story.
"I thought she was a mere social climber," Amelia's mother says of Becky, "but now I see she's a mountaineer." That astute assessment is what drives the film's beginning, but once Becky meets Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), the son of Sir Pitt, her mountaineering takes a few detours along the paths of love. While Witherspoon and Purefoy make Becky and Rawdon's love both believable and worth celebrating, it represents a lessening of the wit of the film's first half and a departure from the cynical view of the novel.
The plot only gets more complex from there, as Nair and her three writers face the daunting task of adapting a rambling, nearly 900-page novel into a feature-length film. Even with the excision of many minor characters, there is far too much going on and too many people to follow for everything to come together gracefully. Rather than maintain Thackeray's cynicism, Nair makes Becky a more sympathetic figure, and focuses less on the boorish natures of the characters and more on their soft, loving sides. She even ends on a more optimistic note.
While the plot may drag, everything else remains top-notch, as Witherspoon keeps Becky balanced perfectly on the edge of sympathy and contempt, and even when she's doing something completely wicked, we can't help but like her. The supporting cast of British period-movie all-stars (including Hoskins, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) do their jobs well, and the costumes and cinematography are outstanding. The subject matter, at its core a critique of a society obsessed with money and prestige, has obvious analogies to the current day, and Nair is able to make the material feel relevant 150 years after its initial publication.
It's a shame, then, that she pulls back so often, whether out of deference to studio desires or an artistic urge to make her main character more likeable. Vanity Fair is an ambitious film that seems at times to mistrust its own reach, but for all its flaws, makes for a worthy start to the painfully long awards season.