Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-02-06
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Collector's Edition, Colour, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, English, Greek, Czech, Italian, Hebrew, Finnish, Icelandic, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 131 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Emma Thompson scores a double bull's-eye with Sense and Sensibility, a marvellous adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not only does Thompson turn in a strong (and gently humorous) performance as Elinor Dashwood--the one with "sense"--she also wrote the witty, wise screenplay. Austen's tale of 19th-century manners and morals provides a large cast with a feast of possibilities, notably Kate Winslet, in her pre-Titanic flowering, as Thompson's deeply romantic sister, Marianne (the one with "sensibility"). Winslet attracts the wooing of shy Alan Rickman (a nice change of pace from his bad-guy roles) and dashing Greg Wise, while Thompson must endure an incredibly roundabout courtship with Hugh Grant, here in fine and funny form. All of this is doled out with the usual eye-filling English countryside and handsome costumes, yet the film always seems to be about the careful interior lives of its characters. The director, an inspired choice, is Taiwan-born Ang Lee, here making his first English-language film. He brings the same exquisite taste and discreet touch he displayed in his previous Asian films (such as Eat Drink Man Woman). Thompson's script won an Oscar. --Robert Horton

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
DVD 9
Italian
Spanish
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.0 English Italian Spanish
Dolby Digital 5.0
Director Ang Lee And Co Producer James Schamus Audio Commentary
Emma Thompson And Producer Lindsay Dorans Audio Commentary
Two Deleted Scenes
Emma Thomsons Golden Globe Acceptance Speech
Trailers
Czech\Danish\Dutch\English\Finnish\Greek\Hebrew\Hungarian\Icelandic\Italian\Norwegian\Polish\Portuguese\Spanish\Swedish

Synopsis
Actress Emma Thompson both wrote and stars in this adaptation of Jane Austen's SENSE AND SENSIBILITY a novel that perceptively examines the social manners and laws of early-19th-century Britain. Set in the English countryside, the film follows the loves and heartaches of sisters Elinor (Thompson) and Marianne Dashwood (Kate Winslet). The two have extremely divergent approaches to life: Elinor represents 'sense' and believes in behaving with propriety and thoughtfulness, while Marianne represents 'sensibility' and basks in her own emotions. Both women, however, experience confusion when their lovers, seemingly on the verge of proposing marriage, spurn them.

Customer Reviews

Austenmania is well-served here, but are these productions missing something?
Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay written by Emma Thompson, made up one part of the holy trinity of Austen productions which aired in 1995. That crowning year for Austenmania began with the BBC production of Persuasion in April 1995 (starring Amanda Root and Ciáran Hinds), followed by the impeccable BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle) in September and October, and was capped off in mid-December by this film version of Sense and Sensibility. Emma Thompson's much-praised screenplay (for which she won an Oscar and a Golden Globe) straddles the difficult divide between pleasing the community of Jane Austen purists and making the 1811 novel appealing to a wider audience of cinema-goers with a bent for romantic drama. The dialogue and mannerisms are modernised a little, but not to the absurd degree displayed in Joe Wright's weak adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 2005 (which has a miscast Keira Knightley in the lead role).

In the novel, Austen counsels us once again towards rational love and shows the dangers of Marianne's self-blinding, guileless abandonment to passion (played by a pre-Titanic Kate Winslet in tight, corkscrew ringlets). Many Brigid Jones fans will undoubtedly be able to identify with her uncontainable romanticism and headstrong devotion to following her feelings irrespective of what someone like Elinor (Emma Thompson) - steady, reserved and so mature, she's almost dull - might think. And so it is that the one sister is able to learn something crucial from the other: Marianne is forced by circumstance to realise the near-fatal risks of passionate devotion to someone of whom she has only an impression, rather than true knowledge; and Elinor, sobbing like a human Niagra Falls at the close, that an excess of emotional repression can be devastatingly misunderstood as the absence, rather than secrecy, of love.

In terms of doing what it says on the tin, the film cannot really be faulted (although you have to like Hugh Grant's routinal foppish inarticulacy to buy him in the role of Edward Ferrars). But I can't escape the feeling that something is lacking in some of these safe, 'suburban' period dramas. What marks Jane Austen out as a genial writer is the sparky high irony with which she tells her social dramas. And the key problem that adaptations of her novel face is: how to convey her idiosyncratic voice? Don't these rather academic productions bypass that problem by reproducing Austen's narrative as closely as possible whilst only half-heartedly addressing the difficult question of voice? Can very efficient and safe filmmaking like this genuinely reproduce Austen's deft irony?

The market for films emanating a nostalgia for the high morals, manners and decorum of England's Regency period has mushroomed. The question now, twelve years after these versions were first released, is whether filmmakers are prepared to consider new ways of interpreting these novels and, in doing so, to challenge and push viewers beyond nostalgia and their comfort zone to a new, and perhaps deeper, understanding of Austen's timeless classics.

Sensational
I must admit I was put off watching this for many years because I have never been a fan of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett or Hugh Grant and the fact that all three were in it was a definite turn off. I finally watched it one rainy windy afternoon when there was nothing worth watching on tv and was captivated. Fine acting, fine script, beautiful costumes, wonderful settings - well worth watching and I'm sorry I didn't do so sooner. One of the few examples of a film living up to the book.

Faultless.
The magic of the movies allows a story of no obvious relevence, to touch your soul.
The triumph of sense and sensibility being the delicate and acutely observed range of emotion in a period setting.
The cast illustrating the gift of an actor who can lift a character from the page and render them in a truely memorable film.
I love this film, you've got to watch it.