Austen literalists may be thrown by some of Rozema's changes: the introduction of and emphasis on arguably anachronistic political and social concerns, the addition of occasional hints of lesbian sexuality, and the interpolation of elements of Austen's own life and character into protagonist Fanny Price. This is definitely not your mother's Mansfield Park.
The film opens with 10-year-old Fanny (Hannah Taylor Gordon) traveling from her poverty-stricken Portsmouth home to the eponymous estate to live with the Bertrams, her wealthy relatives. Despite the warmth of Sir Thomas (Harold Pinter), the master of the house, Fanny is treated like a domestic by her aunt, Mrs. Norris (Sheila Gish), who is also part of the household. Shunted off to a garret room -- which is, apparently, supposed to be depressing, but which any child nowadays would kill for -- Fanny grows up (at which point actress Frances O'Connor takes over) with a status uneasily balanced somewhere between servant and relative. While there are two Bertram daughters -- Maria (Victoria Hamilton) and Julia (Justine Waddell) -- roughly her age, her closest friend is youngest son Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller). The relationship is platonic on the surface, but every directorial nuance lets us know from the start that these two should end up together.
Just when Maria, the elder daughter, is preparing for a loveless but socially proper marriage to the doltish Mr. Rushworth (Hugh Bonneville), the seductive brother-sister pair of Mary (Embeth Davidtz) and Henry (Alessandro Nivola) Crawford arrive and shake up Mansfield Park's social stability. Henry sets his sights on Maria, Mary sets hers on Edmund, and both of them (it is implied) set their sights on Fanny, who is, by any reasonable standard, the prize of the bunch.
Further confusing the household dynamics are the comings and goings of eldest son Tom (James Purefoy), a rebellious young man whose dissolute, self-destructive behavior may be, in part, the result of his liberal social consciousness. The resolution to this stew of romantic tension is arrived at through a merry-go-round of mostly (but not entirely) chaste couplings and uncouplings.
For some Austen buffs, the most contentious element may be the changes Rozema has wrought in the protagonist. To make her less of a stiff, the director has wisely moved her closer to the vibrancy of the Emma Thompson character in Sense and Sensibility; she turns Fanny into an aspiring writer, crediting her with passages taken directly from Austen's own diaries and letters.
But for others, the biggest problem may be the contemporary lens through which Rozema views the story. The Bertrams become a symbol of the hypocritical contradictions underlying the genteel social manners of the period's upper crust. Add to that the implications of subterranean sexuality: Not only are two scenes touched with Mary Crawford's desire for Fanny, but some other subtly fleeting moments suggest that both Sir Thomas and Fanny's father are less than completely paternal in their feelings toward her. These provocative suggestions are not social anachronisms -- lesbianism and incest are clearly not 20th-century developments. But they are, to some degree, literary anachronisms, out of place in Austen's representation of the era.
