Even without Firth, 'Pride and Prejudice' delights

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Colin Firth is the definitive Mr. Darcy. At least, he was until now.

Joe Wright's "Pride and Prejudice," grittier and sexier than Jane Austen's classic novel, features a brooding Matthew MacFadyen as the enigmatic hero. If Firth's Darcy was swashbuckling and aloof, MacFadyen's is human and vulnerable. And his high-voltage exchanges with Keira Knightley (she of the chiseled jawline), who plays Lizzie with intelligence and holds her own opposite onscreen veterans Donald Sutherland and Dame Judi Dench, belie the film's PG rating.

Fans of the much-loved 1995 BBC miniseries starring Firth and Jennifer Ehle will be glad to hear that Wright's version is equally endearing. When Darcy strides toward Lizzie out of the misty sunrise, his long coat billowing behind him, and looks into her eyes with his baby blues, it's easy to forgive the movie for lacking the Colin-Firth-in-a-wet-white-shirt scene that launched a thousand swoons.

The palpable attraction between the two leads is all of a piece with the kinetic feel of the movie as a whole. The spunky Lizzie and the taciturn Darcy famously overcome mutually bad first impressions and unequal socioeconomic standings to find love, but without the polite Regency-era balls and pristine halls that have defined so many Austen adaptations in the past.

Instead, director Wright sets his debut film in pre-Victorian 1797, the year in which Austen wrote the first draft of Pride and Prejudice. He swoops the camera through earthy houses that teem with laughter, livestock and girls with muddy hems, and punctuates those intimate, immediate shots with sweeping vistas of the verdant English midlands.

If Charlotte Bronte had used all her Gothic sensibilities to write Austen for the screen, this is what it might have looked like.

But from the moment Lizzie asks Darcy at a ball if he dances and he retorts, "Not if I can help it," it's clear that Austen's sardonic narration is at the heart of the movie.

Most of the subplots have been abridged — Rupert Friend, whose resemblance to Orlando Bloom cannot have escaped the casting directors' notice, is onscreen as Wickham in only three scenes — but at only 128 minutes, the movie feels remarkably complete.

Sutherland and Dench give subtly comic performances. Sutherland's obviously capped teeth are anomalous and distracting, but as Mr. Bennet he embodies the deep sadness that his character masks with dry wit. As Lady Catherine, Darcy's controlling and rich aunt, Dench commands the screen imperiously with the arch of an eyebrow or the dismissive wave of a bejeweled hand.

Of all the screen versions of "Pride and Prejudice," from the 1940 Lawrence Olivier version to last year's Bollywood flick "Bride and Prejudice," Wright's is by far the truest to the spirit and letter of the novel of any in recent years, while still feeling contemporary and accessible. Let Bridget Jones have Colin Firth. With a crop of rising stars and a fresh take on the classic story, this movie doesn't need him.