The title of Thackeray’s 1848 satirical novel, Vanity Fair, is drawn from the 17th century allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, where, in the town of Vanity, a year-round fair is held at which all worldly pleasures can be bought, not to speak of real estate, titles, honors–even kingdoms. Thackeray’s novel, originally published in installments, looks back to the early 19th century and paints a devastating portrait of an English society with a highly refined pecking order–a class system which, in its fine gradations of status, seems the equal of the notoriously rigid caste system of India (where British colonial dominance was long established). Within each level of English society, Thackeray creates a memorable roster of characters–the pompous, the vain, the ambitious, the snobbish, the arrogant, the hypocritical, the manipulative.
It is that social milieu and those shabby personalities that Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) best captures in her film of the novel. At the center of the action is Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon), an impoverished orphan who is determined to rise above her standing at the lowest rung of society. Ambitious, clever, and opportunistic, Sharp weds handsome Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), an army officer and gambler, son of her employer, Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins), for whom she works as governess. Sir Pitt may be a baronet (a titled commoner), but the family is down at the heels, living in a funky old country house, and Sir Pitt himself is boorish and vulgar. Yet he holds himself superior to the Osborne family, who are wealthy, but untitled merchants. Osborne senior (Jim Broadbent) is himself arrogant and unfeeling, lavishing his affections and his ambitions for a title in the family on his supercilious and snobbish son, George (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers).
Thoroughly confused yet? Still to be introduced are Becky’s best friend, the self-effacing Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai) and her family; the genuine aristocrat, powerful and nasty Lord Steyn (Gabriel Byrne); and Dobbin (Rhys Ifans), Amelia’s loyal friend and long frustrated admirer. Even the King gets into the picture, the indisputable top of this seething heap; he says, "I am the king. I confer precedence."
There are others, too, and a major problem of the committee-written screenplay is that it includes too many of them, most skittering by on screen for a short scene or two, failing to establish more than the slightest character-sketch, leading to confusion about who is who and where they fit in.
A second major weakness in the film is Reese Witherspoon in the central role. One side of Becky Sharp is vintage Reese Witherspoon territory (Pretty in Pink, Election), the clever, ambitious, cocky challenger to the status quo. ("I thought her a mere social climber, says one character of her, "I see now she’s a mountaineer!") When that is the side of Sharp in play, Witherspoon is droll, but when a serious or genuinely emotional moment comes along, she provides neither the depth of characterization nor the range of feeling to elicit sympathy.
Nair also seems to want to avoid making clear the sexual relationships in which Sharp engages during her climb up the social ladder. Only with her husband is any sexuality depicted. Either Nair was reaching for an MPAA rating or she is bogged down in a modesty inappropriate to this bawdy work.
Production values are first rate in the traditional Masterpiece Theatre mode, with elegant settings and costuming, all photographed in rich color and smoothly edited. Many of the cameo roles, even in their confusing context, are witty and amusing (note especially the always superb Eileen Atkins as the deliciously acerbic Matilda Crawley) and the overall satirization of the manners, morals, and lack thereof of 19th century England is sharply on target. But a Vanity Fair with a half-realized Becky Sharp is, in the end,a Vanity Unsatisfactory.
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