As it happens, Bingley is completely charmed by the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane (Rosamund Pike), but his best friend, Darcy, brushes the Bennets off as if they were gnats. After he first sees Lizzy at a public ball, he tells Bingley, within her hearing, that she isn't handsome enough for him to even dance with, a line that fuels Lizzy's contempt for him and spurs her to find ways to cut him down.

And when we first see Macfadyen's Darcy, our feelings mirror Lizzy's, as they should. His face is an imperious, highfalutin blank; his eyes look a little small and dull; his nose might have been molded, badly, out of clay. We wonder, as she does, what on earth makes him think he's so hot? Macfadyen's natural handsomeness is perfectly obvious in these early scenes, and yet he keeps us from seeing it. That's the key to Darcy, and Macfadyen carries it, effortlessly, in his pocket.

"Pride & Prejudice" moves fast -- it doesn't unfold languorously, the way many adaptations do, as if they were desperately trying to mimic the experience of reading. But everything in it feels essential, and in that way, watching it is like reading. As historically authentic-looking as "Pride & Prejudice" is, it has far more invested in emotional authenticity -- you feel engaged every moment. The script, by Deborah Moggach (reportedly, it received some fine-tuning by an uncredited Emma Thompson), preserves the essence of Austen's language even when that language needs to be streamlined or paraphrased for dramatization's sake. For instance, when Lizzy's best friend, Charlotte Lucas (the hugely appealing Claudie Blakley), announces that she's going to marry the Bennets' dull cousin, the vicar Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander, who, in his prim preacher's garb, gives a marvelously understated comic performance), the news has a double sting for Lizzy: Collins has already proposed to her, and she has declined without giving it a second thought. Her mother, distressed at this news, has told Lizzy she'll never see her again if she doesn't immediately agree to the marriage. "And I will never see you again if you do," says her father, who has spent more than 20 years suffering the nonsense of his ridiculous wife, but who won't let Lizzy become a victim of it. (Sutherland's performance is astonishing: His protectiveness of Lizzy, in this scene in particular, has the aura of good-natured humor about it, but the anxiety that shadows his face is heart-rending -- this is a man nearing the end of his life who realizes he has no way of guaranteeing the happiness and well-being of his favorite daughter.)

What's more, Collins is crucial to the Bennet girls' welfare because he stands to inherit the Bennet estate. Even though he's a distant relative, he's the closest male relative, and so Lizzy's rejection of his proposal means she's letting the family's meager, if comfortable enough, fortunes slip through her fingers. Knightley (an actress I have not been able to bring myself to fully like, until now) plays the moment beautifully: Her face is lit by a rare flash of petulance, which softens when Charlotte -- who is nearing 30, and whose plain, pleasant face doesn't have the vibrant character that Lizzy's does -- says to her, "Not all of us can afford to be romantic."

The line is a condensed reimagining of what Charlotte actually says in the book, but it's an arrow that flies true. "Pride and Prejudice" is often treated as a forerunner of modern romantic comedy, which it is. But it's also a novel in which economic and social constraints are inextricable from romance. I'd argue that Austen's awareness of the importance of money makes the story more romantic rather than less: This isn't a story about people running off together, saying "Money be damned!"; it's about people coming dangerously close to turning down love, simply because their concerns about how they're going to live must come first.

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