Sense and Sensibility

Very rarely do you get another adaptation of a beloved story that feels as justified as this one does. It doesn’t try to recreate the moments that makes the 1995 film special or even cling too much to the original source text, but instead it finds its own way to make you fall in love with the story.

While both films are excellent in their own right, I loved how this one leans so much more into giving you more time to watch each of the couples up close. As great as the 1995 film is, it almost has so much restraint that you end up shocked at who ends up with who and it feels unearned. Same with the interiority of Elinor. In the 1995 film, the restraint shown by her character almost the whole runtime pays off in those final moments, but in this version we see and understand so much more of what’s going on in Elinor’s mind (but not so much that it feels obnoxious). Which makes the ending hit different, but I still found it equally effective.

Also I just love that we got so much more of Edward and Elinor.

I think the best comp here is Gerwig’s Little Women adaption. Not that this is as good as that, but that it was a wonderful entry point for a whole generation to that a film adaptation of that story. If you grew up on the 1994 Little Women, you probably still prefer that one to the 2019 one. But for those whose first film adaptation was the 2019 one, that is their Little Women movie (of which I am one). Same goes here. Some adaptations of classics are so poor that they don’t earn the status of being claimed as a whole generations adaptation, but this will not be one of those. And I will proudly claim it as my favorite.