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'Mansfield Park' director discusses camera, career and controversy

Sex in a film adaptation of Jane Austen? Such a thing is practically unheard of, almost unfathomable. Certainly a departure from the BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice," despite Colin Firth's smoldering eyes and soaked physique, or even Gwyneth Paltrow's feisty "Emma," playing at bows and arrows with Mr. Knightley.

Add to this same sexy Jane Austen flick pictures of black slaves being tortured, a lesbian encounter and a hunky leading man, and one would imagine that you had landed in "Amistad" meets "Basic Instinct." However, "Mansfield Park," the film which commits all of these "crimes" against the chaste Austen we know and love, is far from either. "Mansfield Park" is instead a brilliant example of unique artistic work from one of Canada's most distinguished female directors.

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Introducing the director Patricia Rozema last week, March 2, at a talk sponsored by the English Department, the Program in the Study of Gender and the Film Committee, Prof. Claudia Johnson of the English Department waxed enthusiastic.

Speaking of Rozema's first full-length feature film, "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing," Johnson sounded nearly as poetic as the film itself: "It [the film] was totally original and, as its title suggests, it was transporting. It gave viewers access to wonder, to rapture, to the seductive music of mermaids singing that only rare and very special people get to hear."

After such a glowing introduction, the audience waited for an almost ethereal presence to grace the stage. However the forty-one-year-old Canadian filmmaker's down-to-earth presence dispells any burgeoning myths surrounding her. As she began her talk, Rozema asked jokingly: "Shall I tell you how I got here? Air Canada, 732 . . ."

It was clear immediately that this talented female filmmaker came to talk and not to glorify her own growing legend but to perpetuate that of Austen herself. Austen seemed to share the stage with Rozema, as the modern film director defended Austen's wit, her political sensibilties and her status as a remarkably talented and intelligent outsider.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, she explained that she is always attracted to the character who feels "uncomfortable at dinner parties" and posited that Austen herself may not have been the kind of person who said the remarkably witty things that her characters say in the novels.

In "Mansfield Park," Rozema tries to represent this outsider in Fanny Price. In the film, Fanny, a poor relation of Lord and Lady Bertram, the proprietors of Mansfield Park, comes to live with her aunt and uncle and finds herself alienated and alone. Fanny falls in love with the Bertrams' son, Edmund. Unfortunately, Edmund falls in love with another, and the rakish (and, of course, handsome) wealthy neighbor Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, to her great chagrin.

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Rozema's adaptation adds sexuality, political consciousness and Austen's biographical background to "Mansfield Park," suggesting sexual tension between two women, condemning the slave trade and using elements of Austen's youthful writings to "flesh out" the character of Fanny Price.

Rozema's adaptation of "Mansfield Park" attempts "to be more truthful to the experience of the novel . . . to know Jane Austen better," Rozema said. "I chose to graft that [knowledge of Austen's life and works] on."

Critics have responded to the changes Rozema has made in the text of "Mansfield Park" with mixed feelings. Derek Elley of "Variety" argued in his review, "If ever a picture deserved possessory credit, it's this one, which should have been called Patricia Ro-zema's "Mansfield Park." It certainly isn't Jane Austen's."

Ironically, many of the elements Rozema has added to the film, such as a hastily accepted and later-refused proposal, are biographical details from Austen's own life.

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Rozema believes that she has excavated the "real" Jane Austen in her interpretation of the character Fanny Price, who is relatively thin, Rozema argues, in the novel: "I had to flesh out this character, and rather than just make it up . . . [why not] give her . . . Austen's writing itself?"

Rozema uses Austen's juvenalia — lesser known works which were often outrageous satires, parodying the dramatic styles of Gothic literature — in monologues where Fanny Price addresses the audience directly, facing the camera.

In her talk, Rozema discussed how moving and emotionally involving she finds direct address: "As an audience member, it made me very uncomfortable and completely fascinated me to participate in this relationship. . . . I love implicating the audience and drawing them in. . . . To create that intimacy is a strong motivation for me as a filmmaker."

Raised in a Dutch-Calvinist family in a suburb of Toronto known as "Chemical Valley," Rozema was not allowed to go to the movies as a child. She went on to study English and Philosophy at Clark College in Michigan, where Paul Schrader, independent filmmaker and the screenwriter for Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" earlier pursued an identical course of study.

Rozema's attitude about film was changed entirely by her experience of seeing Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" and "Face-to-Face" in a double bill in downtown Grand Rapids. She described it as "a moment of complete revelation to me. . . . Perhaps I had been brainwashed by my community, but I had thought that movies were mostly just frivolous, and it was completely thrilling to see something that was poetic and personal and had a kind of internal logic. Of course, I didn't think I could make movies; movies were just there like a mountain or a cloud or something."

After a brief foray into journalism for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, Rozema decided that it was time to tell her own stories: "I started to get very frustrated that I couldn't tell people what to say. . . . I just thought 'If you could say it this way, it would be much more powerful.' . . . Reality is very poorly structured."

Turning away from documentary journalism, Rozema chose in her creative filmmaking to explore the mental and emotional lives of characters: "Some of the most significant parts of ourselves and of our lives are completely unfilmable by a documentary or a news camera. Once you bring that camera into that room, it is a completely different room. . . . I could be more truthful if I could create or fabricate and try to express visually certain internal things."

Her films, like 1989's "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing," attempt to express these internal things, whether through direct dialogue with the camera or even fantasy sequences in which the heroines climb up the sides of apartment buildings. As Rozema says, "My goal is to make visible the invisible."

Rozema's other films, "White Room" with Kate Nelligan and "When Night Is Falling" — a love story between two women and a man, a triangle "set in a Christian college and a circus" — continued to explore the internal.

Her mix of fantasy and concrete human emotion has garnered her an impressive critical reception. The Washington Post reviewer called "White Room" "a suburban gothic fairy tale, a work of dark, conflicted magic that might have been cut from 'Blue Velvet' by 'Edward Scissorhands.' "

After having walked from a project she "lost faith in," Rozema became involved in "Mansfield Park" at the behest of Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, who had produced "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing."

During her talk, Rozema laughed in discussing her producer, imitating his voice saying: "'Patricia, Patricia, I'm gonna make you rich!' " Rozema's professional relationship with Miramax has, however, been a happy one. She recently signed a two-picture deal with that studio.

Weinstein had an adapted script of "Mansfield Park" which he asked Rozema to read. She read the script and found it unimpressive, offering to do her own version of the story "adding Austen to her own text." Ecstatic about her script concept, Weinstein joked to Rozema that he would "'make love to you [Rozema] right now!'" Deadpan, Rozema continued: "I took it as a sign of approval."

One of Rozema's most dramatic additions to the text, was her introduction of an awareness of slavery into the screenplay. Many critics have questioned this choice.

Rozema argues, however, that it is inherent in Austen's vision: "I was immediately excited by the fact . . . [that there were] just a few little references to slavery, an acknowledgement that the entire structure was founded on the back of these slaves. . . . I felt in my adaptation that it was not a violation to bring that forward, but in fact, I was bringing a contemporary audience up to speed . . . filling out the gray areas around the fiction."

However, the political commitment of the script also attracted the interest of the famous playwright, director and actor Harold Pinter who is "very interested in the underdog and the overdog," according to Rozema.

In "Mansfield Park," Pinter plays the overdog and the looming patriarch to perfection. Rozema's imitation was nearly as priceless as his performance as she mimicked: " 'Patricia, I always listen to my director!' " in a strong British accent.

Even Austen sometimes is the focus of Rozema's irreverent wit, "I have to admit that once in a while . . . [I wrote in the margins of "Mansfield Park"] 'Oh, give it a break, Fanny!' " However, Rozema's overwhelming respect for the author was perhaps the strongest message of her talk: "[Austen's legacy] just goes on and on and on and keeps reverberating; she is a writer of such great intricacy, accuracy and inscrutability, and there will continue to be interpretations of her work for generations, I am sure."

One can only hope that Rozema's extraordinarily personal and creative visions will leave a similarly strong legacy. She certainly is a "rare and very special" person.