Fairly Vain

Mira Nair's Vanity Fair is a lush, dazzling moving picture with sound. It's an aesthetically beautiful film. Despite devoting two and a half hours to getting to know it, I can't say much more than that. Nothing really happens in this movie.

Becky Sharp is an orphan. That puts her pretty far down the ladder in 19th century British society. But she's a cunning creature--and purty too--so she sets about finding herself a suitable man. That is to say, finding herself a man with money. Sound like any other books/movies about British society? All of them? Right.

To begin, She spends about a half hour gazing decorously at a chubby colonial magistrate when people are about, then flashing her devious and sultry smile when no one's looking. Food literally falls out of his mouth from astonishment each time she does. He gives her a parrot. I think he represents Stupid Affluence.

There's a character for Piety, who never has a chance, and several characters representing the Status Quo, whom of course want nothing to do with her at first, but who gradually accept her.

Unfortunately, one of the Status Quo's makes stupid affluence think better of marrying a governess, and stupid affluence ambles back to India.

She next meets up with Dashing Husband Type, whom she actually connects with on some level, but really loves for his title.

Unfortunately, Dashing Husband Type actually turns out to be a hard-gambling Roustabout who has little money of his own and forfeits his inheritance by marrying Becky.

Things happen, roustabout has a winning streak followed by a losing streak followed by more gambling, interrupted briefly so he can go command some troops at the battle of Waterloo.

Another man enters Becky's life, she likes him for the same reason she liked Roustabout and Stupid Affluence.

Meanwhile there's been a subplot about Becky's friend representing Virtue, who marries for love and is God and society's punching bag from then on.

Then there's a non-climax and a fakenouemont (denouements require climaxes) involving a bit of redemption for Becky, then it ends--two and a half hours later.

There's a problem here, and I don't know whether this is a problem with Thackeray's book or the adaptation. Books (and presumably their movies) from this genre are supposed to be about growth. The name for the genre is German. Translated it means "novel of development". Dickens and Austen were masters of this. Thackeray and/or the half dozen screenwriters who collaborated on this are not masters. They don't even seem to get it. There is no development in Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp begins life as a perky, cute social climber and ends life a perky, beautiful social climber.

Her comeuppance doesn't come up. The movie ends exactly where it started. Good prevails for others--kinda--but by then the movie is deep into wrap-it-up mode.

Even if it wasn't meant to be in the Austen and Dickens vein, which I think it most definitely was, Vanity Fair still falls short because, without a plot to speak of, movies like this must rely on good characters. Vanity Fair has none. They're poor representations of archetypes and ideals, not real people.

By the end of the movie, we've learned exactly two things about Becky Sharp: She purty and she's down to slum, as long as there's money involved. That's really all you need to know.