Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray's novels have seen some interesting incarnations over the years. First, in 1935, Rouben Mamoulian, one of early Hollywood's most underrated innovators, took the novel Vanity Fair and made the film Becky Sharp, the first film shot in 3-strip technicolor. Later, Stanley Kubrick took one of the authors lesser known books and made Barry Lyndon, one of the directors finest artist achievements. Now Vanity Fair has come along again, this time directed by Mira Nair. Poor Ms. Nair doesn't seem to realize that Becky Sharp isn't a character that we were ever meant to sympathize with. The whole purpose of the novel was to show what lengths a woman had to go to in order to achieve social status if she was born with none. She had to sell her soul, and while we might feel sorry for her, I don't think we were ever meant to like her. But with this film I want to like Becky Sharp, despite the fact that the film tends to gloss over her less-savory, more wretched characteristics in a desperate plea to have the audience empathize with her. Of course part of that is due to the fact that Reese Witherspoon is just so darn likeable as an actress. Despite that fairly significant criticism, it is also a generally enjoyable, handsome, lifeless period piece with an impressive cast of British character actors. Try films like Barry Lyndon or Dangerous Liaisons instead.