Netflix's Take on Jane Austen's Persuasion Is So Awful, If She Saw It, She'd Die All Over Again.

Never let accuracy get in the way of doing a sh*t job of telling a story.

Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliott petting a bunny in Netflix’s Persuasion.

First, the disclaimers. You know I always like to start with those.

In addition to being a writer (most of us are half-feral and reeking of bourbon), I am a lay historian (humorless pedant willing to do murder over the slightest disagreement on obscure historical facts).

Now that I’ve outed myself as the exact kind of person you should never take advice from—and on principle avoid—especially when it comes to Jane Austen adaptations, here is my rage-take on how Netflix butchered the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language. Their adaptation of Austen’s classic, Persuasion, is so appallingly shallow and ham-fisted, I had to watch it in fits and starts, pausing to stave off hyperventilation.

It will come as no surprise to you to learn that I’ve read Persuasion over a dozen times. Pride & Prejudice, more than two dozen. The degustation of an Austen novel is best done in layers, like eating a fresh croissant. First, the burnished shell shatters against your teeth, yielding to its tender bready insides and flaky crumb, notes of butter and yeast and just a hint of sugar melting across the tongue. Second, the sigh of blissful contentment.

For me, that’s Austen.

The whiz kids at Netflix decided to scrap her playbook. Faithful adaptations clearly bored them. Besides, they were aiming their sights at a younger demographic. They wanted the “date movie” people, viewers who’d snoozed through English class and were all out of f*cks to give when it comes to authenticity and good storytelling.

Netflix had it all figured out, see. Give the under thirties a “relatable heroine” (Dakota Johnson of Fifty Shades fame), a hunky love interest (rock-jawed Cosmo Jarvis), and the same kind of edgy interracial casting that made Bridgerton a hit, and cha-ching, baby!

I get it. Sort of. How many times can you rehash a storybook ballet like Sleeping Beauty or Shakespeare’s Henry V without wanting to gouge your eyes out? The urge to “do something different” must be overwhelming. But doing an Austen update intelligently is quite a bit more challenging than merely doing it differently. Different is easy. Intelligent … not so much.

Dakota Johnson as Anne Elliott and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Lady Russell in Netflix’s adaption of Jane Austen classic Persuasion

I remember going to the Houston Grand Opera one year to see their version of Macbeth. The director set the entire opera inside a lunatic asylum. Lady Macbeth wore a shiny white leatherette naughty nurse outfit and black fishnets. It wasn’t modern, it was annoying, which is why I walked out after the first act. It wasn’t even about Macbeth. The whole thing was a stage show fetishizing the director’s creative “vision”.

That’s the same feeling I had with Persuasion. It was so busy being transgressive and arty, it completely missed the point of Jane Austen’s story.

Austen’s heroine, Anne Elliott, is a young gentlewoman once in love with a penniless sailor named Frederick Wentworth. Her family—in particular, an older friend named Lady Russell, who serves as a de facto surrogate for Anne’s dead mother—convince Anne not to marry a man with no money and uncertain prospects. Anne allows herself to be persuaded (hence the title of the book) and breaks off their engagement.

When the movie (and novel) open, it’s eight years later, and Anne has never stopped loving Wentworth. No one else begins to compare to what she feels for him, but no other offers of marriage have been forthcoming. Meanwhile, Wentworth landed himself a position as captain in the navy. He’s a wealthy man now. Moreover, he’s shoreside, looking for a wife, and circumstances have brought him back within Anne’s circle.

Why Austen’s novel works and Netflix’s movie doesn’t is because the movie has Anne languishing around with her pet rabbit, fretting and sighing, breaking the fourth wall by directly addressing us, her audience, through the camera. It’s a cheap, lazy device used by lazy writers for feeding viewers exposition and internal monologue. Instead of showing us all the rivalries and micro-tensions that make Austen’s Persuasion so deliciously readable, Netflix just ironed them out. Consequently, the pace is bloodless, plodding, and slow.

Anne Elliott’s emotional restraint in the face of great torment is the propelling force of the real story. Instead, we have Dakota Johnson sobbing in her bathtub, pissing on the side of a tree, and swilling red wine straight from the bottle. Why not just cast Amy Schumer? When did Hollywood decide that “relatable heroine” meant earthy broads boozing it up—is this how they see young women? Is this their 2022 version of that stale old trope, the manic pixie?

Why Austen fans are apoplectic right now.

At one point, alone on a beach during a time when no woman was allowed to be alone anywhere in public, much less a beach, Dakota’s Anne hurls herself into the water and swims. Circa 1818. When women weren’t taught to swim. In she goes, costly silk dress and bespoke stays and everything, while Wentworth casts smoldering glances at her from a nearby cliff.

Oh, my quivering nethers.

And then there’s the “edgy” dialogue and wildly on-purpose anachronisms. You could tell that director Carrie Cracknell and screenplay writers Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow were mighty pleased with themselves:

“Here’s the playlist he made me.” (A playlist? I nearly spit blood.)

“If you’re a five in London, you’re a ten in Bath.” (Gross.)

“He listens with his whole body … it’s electrifying.” (What is this—Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop catalogue?)

“I need to think about my Bath persona.” (I’m just surprised they didn’t use the word “brand.”)

“We’re worse than strangers. We’re exes.” (Austen’s actual line was, “Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.” Netflix starved the dialogue of all poetry. The term “exes” didn’t come about until over a hundred years later.)

“He must have presumed I was out of his league.” (Out of his league? It’s an American term relating to the sport of baseball, for heaven’s sakes!)

What Cracknell and the others clearly forgot (or didn’t care to address) is the idea that most people willing to watch an Austen adaptation want Austen, not this cosplay Bridgerton redux. We want dialogue that remembers where it comes from. Heroines that don’t micturate on trees. Restrained, understated Merchant-Ivory performances that don’t lob a bottle of red wine at your face.

Mostly, we want Netflix to stop making executive decisions about how raw, medium, or well-done we like our steak and stop trying to sell us on the sizzle.

This writer’s movie rating? Two thumbs and all ten toes, DOWN.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin

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