MANSFIELD PARK (1999)

Cast

Plot

At 10, Fanny Price, a poor relation, goes to live at Mansfield Park, the estate of her aunt's husband, Sir Thomas. Clever, studious, and a writer with an ironic imagination and fine moral compass, she becomes especially close to Edmund, Thomas's younger son. Fanny is soon possessed of beauty as well as a keen mind and comes to the attention of a neighbor, Henry Crawford. Thomas promotes this match, but to his displeasure, Fanny has a mind of her own, asking Henry to prove himself worthy. As Edmund courts Henry's sister and as light shines on the link between Thomas's fortunes and New World slavery, Fanny must assess Henry's character and assert her heart as well as her wit. The film plays on the themes of moral rectitude and compromise, suggesting the rash, selfish or misguided actions which lead the other characters - often comically flawed, but never villainous - to fall from grace, and more generally the colonial crimes on which this 19th Century gentility subsists. One of the most ambitious - and successful - literary classic adaptations in recent memory.