Vanity Fair: C+

Late in William Makepeace Thackeray's 19-century satirical epic Vanity Fair, after Rebecca "Becky" Sharp (Reese Witherspoon) has re-emerged once more into the societal fabric of upper-middle class Europe, she charms her way out of poverty and into the graces of her former friend (and suddenly weatlthy widow) Amelia (Romola Garai) with a hilariously articulate "history" of all her past wrongs and set-backs. The intended joke from Thackeray is a layered, complex one: in some sense, we balk at the ludicrousness of her schemes of self-justifications; on another we are to laughably sneer at the hypocrisy of Amelia's heartfelt embrace of her wayward friend the moment she finds Becky has undergone any sort of "struggle"; and on another, we are to chide ourselves for wanting in some small way to see this cunning, avaricious woman succeed. Yet nowhere was it intended for Becky Sharp's madly overripe, desperate personal histories to be taken for truth, or for any prospective audience to retrospectively label Ms. Sharp, through the lens of all her "heartaches," an empowered feminist, or worse, heroine. But that is exactly what happens in the modern, Mira Nair-directed and Julian Fellowes-written, screen version of Vanity Fair.

It is a massive mistake for such a task to be undertaken, the results of which will be expounded on below, but foremost among the follies is that the original version of Becky Sharp is a fascinating, compulsively likeable character. Vanity Fair is famously subtitled "The Novel Without a Hero," and while some claim Amelia as the exception to such a rule, very few could be tricked in finding traditional Victorian merits of heroic behavior with Becky Sharp. In her very quest to be a lady, a figure of society, she should be applauded, especially as she so connives in public for the very same things her more dainty compatriots scheme for in private. In her reckoning, "I must be my own mama," and set up not only a profitable marriage, with money to spare, but a niche in the best halls of London all her own. In the novel, what then ensues is 800 pages of her quest for just these things, and her presence on the pages is a beneficial, two-sided, thing: on one hand she is our entrance into the glamorous balls and soirees and scandals of London society (since presumably both she and the reader are outsiders), and on the other she is the perfect satiric subject - heedless and intelligent, cold and "warm," perpetually searching for something she occasionally posesses (only to throw it away looking for something better). She is a complex, fiery, indelible creation. At the time of the novel's publishing, there were none who were her equal.

As a film's hero, however, she has obvious cinematic progenitors. Her DNA can be traced all the way back through Elle Woods, a previous Witherspoon creation who was far more suited to her own movie, and up to Scarlet O' Hara. As an O' Hara-descendant though Becky is a disgrace, as is the film for dampening her fun (and our's at watching her) in pursuit of a period-piece with feminist underpinings. The following applies mostly to our "heroine," but also to the film itself: where Ms. O' Hara sought after her heart's desires in measure with her material needs, Rebecca Sharp merely seeks her true love until she doesn't; she is a (supposedly) winning, relatable, plucky governess-turned-soldier's wife who quite spontaneously begins scheming after a man she barely knows, as well as his place in society. The grinding gears of the plot are heard most loudly here, no thanks to Fellowes watered-down adaptation, but at least the audience will thank the change of pace. Watching another minute of Witherspoon parading about, tossing out her one-liners like some British Veronica Mars, as she valiantly tries to make ends meet in a man's world would have been intolerable. And so is the final result of the picture.

William Makepeace Thackery wrote a rambunctious, sprawling attack on Napoleonic British society that was by turns pointedly witty, sentimental, and pointedly witty about its own sentimentality. Mira Nair directed a sprawling saga about finding your place in the world with The Namesake. And Julian Fellowes created a breathlessly arch, sardonic British period-mystery with Gosford Park. So what is keeping the latter two from adapting a sprawling, witty, saga from the former's novel? I'm not quite sure what stopped them, but I imagine whatever compelled them to continue headlong with their production - a movie that oafishly attempts to meld modern feminism with Thackeray's tale - must have been very witless and dull indeed.

"I had thought her a mere social climber, but I see now she is a mountaineer," quips Amelia's mother, Mrs. Sedley (Deborah Findlay) regarding her daughter's on-again off-again friend. It is one of the few delightful bon mots worthy of the original that Fellowes thinks up, but it serves the watcher in hindsight only to remind them what a dull mountaineer Nair and Witherspoon have concocted. For the most part they have a great cast surrounding them (Rome's James Purefoy is pretty winning as Rawdon Crawley, a gambler both entranced and then redeemed through his marriage with Becky), but in watering down and re-imagining the original literary property, they serve not only to confuse and anger those looking to see tribute being payed, but also to confound any audience new to Fair's world; I mean, if Becky Sharp was really such an empowered and sensible woman, what on Earth would she want to do with a world like that?