Vanity Fair

Most of the reviews I've read of Vanity Fair (2004) seem fixated on the relationship (or, as many would have it, chasm) between director Mira Nair's film interpretation and the 1847 William Makepeace Thackeray novel that inspired it. While I certainly don't wish any ill will upon Thackeray's sprawling literary masterpiece, there is a matter that concerns me: very few people – at least of my generation, which sits on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y – seem to have read it. This is not to discount its worthiness or challenge its place within the canon of English literature, but rather to raise questions about the criteria upon which movies based on novels are judged.

I'm not going to pretend to have any concrete answers to such questions (for instance, referencing the Harry Potter books, which are arguably of lesser literary value than Thackeray's work, seems unavoidable when considering those films), but the reviews of Vanity Fair, many of which were steeped in references to Thackeray's conception of its protagonist, Becky Sharp, at times seemed irrelevant given the presumed paucity of viewers who have also plowed through the 768-page novel. Critics – ranging from Salon's Charles Taylor to The New Yorker's Anthony Lane to Slate's David Edelstein – took Nair to task for her rendering of Sharp as a plucky proto-feminist in the mold of one of literature's other darlings, Scarlett O'Hara.

Bringing to the table no prior knowledge of the story other than the dreadful Technicolor Rouben Mamoulian film version, entitled Becky Sharp (1935), I found Reese Witherspoon's portrayal of the lead character to be irritatingly modern and self-sufficient. The orphaned daughter of an opera singer and a painter, Becky Sharp is a steely young woman determined to work her way up England's intricate social ladder. Unfortunately, Witherspoon's Becky treats each obstacle she's faced with with the breezy, unflappable air of one of the actress's more popular screen characters, Legally Blonde's Elle Woods. She is more effective in the early scenes, where Becky's vast ambitions are shown to a greater comic effect, but she has more difficulty registering Miss Sharp's tumble from grace.

As it happens, the characters that surround her are no more multi-faceted. While his easygoing turn in Bend It Like Beckham (2002) allowed me a glimmer of hope, Vanity Fair is further evidence that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has yet to stop acting with his cheekbones, or, more crucially, has ceased playing a variation of his Velvet Goldmine (1998) character, Brian Slade. Romola Garai's Amelia Sedley is in many ways the opposite of Witherspoon's Becky – overly simpering and wishy-washy, a one-note character whose wholesomeness soon grows tedious. James Purefoy does alright in the role of Becky's starter husband, Rawdon Crawley, but as the film goes on he seems to have little to do aside from look defeated. Among these performers, only Eileen Atkins's clever performance as Rawdon's aunt manages to breathe full life into the picture.

This is not to say the film is entirely unappealing. Although Nair spends far too much time preoccupied with Britain's relationship with India (to the extent where she feels compelled to include an anachronistic Bollywood dance number in the middle of the film), her delicate unraveling of pomp and circumstance of early 19th century England often displays a biting wit. In a way, it seems she is attempting the opposite of the dainty Jane Austen film adaptations that flowed into cinemas during the 1990s. The country depicted in Vanity Fair is a decaying society steeped in hypocrisy and brutal social customs that leave little room for outsiders.

Witherspoon's Becky Sharp may not be one the screen's more enduring characters, but who knows, maybe it will inspire people to pick up the book.