Note: This is a piece on the 2005 Pride & Prejudice that I wrote for an Intro to Cinema class I took in the summer of 2026.
Movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, Pride & Prejudice (published in 1813), have always been popular. Two of the most well-known are the 1995 BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle and the 2005 adaptation (dir. Joe Wright) starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Mcfayden. These adaptations are so popular that they are known by the names of their stars (The “Colin Firth Pride & Prejudice” or the “Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice”) rather than the directors. Further, these adaptations are known for certain imagery and symbolism that have become iconic even beyond the popularity of the movies themselves.
For fans of the movies, the “hand flex” in the 2005 adaptation or “wet shirt Darcy” in the 1995 version have become shorthand by which these adaptations have not only become known but have become strongly identified with.
How does a director take material that has been adapted many times, including a well-loved adaptation from ten years before, and make it his own? A strong vision and some serendipity can help.
Development of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice
When Joe Wright was tapped by Working Title to direct Pride & Prejudice, he quickly read the novel. After falling in love with the story, he came up with ideas for what he wanted to convey, which was the era in all of its natural and messy elements.
He worked with screenwriter Deborah Moggach to capture the character development and look and feel of what it must have been like to live in a late 18th century-early 19 century setting. There would be mud, dirt, rain, a chaotic household full of young people, and a coarse earthiness that was at odds with the usual mise-en-scène of period movies.
Moggach’s script went through around 10 drafts, including a dialogue pass by Emma Thompson, who wrote and starred in the 1995 adaptation of Sense & Sensibility, which won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Wright and his DP worked together to come up with the Steadicam shots that showcased the lively chaos of the Bennet household and the kinetic energy of the ballroom scenes, and his design team created a fully lived in experience for the actors who worked in the house for 10 hours a day. Some of the most iconic shots were serendipitous, including a scene of Bingley (Simon Woods) sweetly following Jane Bennet (Rosamund Pike) through a crowded ballroom. Wright’s goal was to capture the fullness of the experience through setting and design and carefully chosen images that comprised the film’s mise-en-scène.
The following are examples of the directing choices that gave the film its look and feel.
It’s Never Just About the House
One of the first decisions Wright made was to lean into the difference between Bennet money and Darcy money. In the book, the Bennets and Darcy are of the same social class. Darcy is richer, but he is not a peer (part of the nobility). He’s just rich. In the movie, the Bennets have a farm, but have just a handful of servants and don’t quite have a lot of money to throw around. Darcy by contrast is fabulously wealthy, with a massive estate.
The decision to emphasize the contrast between their situations was an artistic one, and is meant to highlight the distance between Darcy and Lizzie, not just in status but in life experiences and in upbringing.
The action and energy of the Bennet household also contrast with the quiet sameness of the Darcy home. When the movie finally shifts to Pemberley, the giant house is almost empty. It feels lifeless, emphasized by the scene in the statue room, quite literally a metaphor for lack of vitality. We see Lizzie’s impact when she meets Darcy’s little sister Georgianna, who almost immediately embraces her, and we are meant to see the vivacity that Lizzie will bring to their lives when she and Darcy marry.
The Score
Dario Marianelli wrote the music for the movie. The score is a deeply romantic work, and it fits the period of the movie perfectly, as it borrows stylistically from 19th century and earlier classical pieces. The score emphasizes the themes of young, romantic love, and underscores the sense of yearning that pervades the film.
Marianelli was inspired by early Beethoven sonatas when developing his character motifs and movements for individual scenes, and the combination of simple piano solos and swelling orchestral music add another layer of emotional resonance to the movie.
The music adapts to Lizzy and Darcy’s emotional development, and when Lizzy plays the piano – poorly – in the drawing room at Rosings, this is the theme she plays, connecting the relationship of the two characters but illustrating that they’re still separated by misunderstandings. It’s the same music that is played in the final scene between Lizzy and Darcy. Only that time, it’s played well.
Nature Symbolism
Wright includes images of the natural world throughout the film. The opening scene of Lizzy walking through a backlit meadow is echoed by one of the last scenes of the movie, of Darcy walking through the same meadow to propose to her a second time. The lighting is lush and gorgeous throughout. There’s rarely any hard lighting.
When Lizzy and the Gardiners go off to visit the countryside to take her mind off of her family’s woes, the film shows a montage of various images from their journey. At one point we are shown a galloping herd of deer, and an immediate hard cut to the comfortable coach with its white horses, juxtaposing wild nature with serene modern society. It also foretells what is about to come. Lizzy is about to meet Darcy again, but Lydia elopes with Wickham, and the natural world is about to come up hard against society expectations.
One shot of Lizzy in the countryside is of her standing on a cliff, cloak and dress blowing in the wind, and it’s an image that could have come straight out of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, published nearly 40 years later.
The First Proposal
Wright places the proposal scene at a faux Grecian temple, known as a folly. Wealthy landowners built these follies as a way to pretend that their land had more of a history than it actually did. The name folly is apt, because Darcy’s proposal does not go well as Lizzie turns him down.
All the while, the rain is coming down hard. Rain is a romance trope. It symbolizes letting go of one’s self control, being at the mercy of the elements, and being swept away by emotions.
In this scene, though, the emotions are anger and sadness as well as love, and both characters are too proud to admit they’ve done anything wrong. Darcy is hurt and humiliated when Lizzy rejects him, and Lizzy is angry at him for hurting her sister and insulting her family.
Still, as they spar verbally, they come closer and closer together until they almost kiss.
If it weren’t for the hand flex, this would be the scene everyone would be talking about.
Finally, the Hand Flex
“Our bodies are so much smarter than our minds often. Although their conscious minds are fighting against each other, their bodies are two magnets drawn to each other,” Wright recalls. “As they touch, even that little hand lifting helping her, which is pure etiquette of the period, somehow creates this kind of electronic shock wave through them both, and he has to shake it away.” – Joe Wright, People Magazine, April 6, 2025
The hand flex is a split-second shot of Matthew Mcfayden’s hand stretching after he helps Keira Knightly into a carriage. Over the past 20-plus years, the image has gained a life of its own as a symbol of unspoken sexual attraction and a yearning for love. It has become a kind of shorthand for unrequited emotion and has entered the popular lexicon for romance and movie fans alike.
The flex was not written into the script. Mcfayden suggested it as a way to convey the slow growing physical attraction between Darcy and Lizzie. Wright has said that he didn’t even think they got the shot very well at the time, which goes to show the kind of happy accidents that can occur on set.
The Audience Effect
The hand flex also illustrates something else. Symbolism is a two-way street. A filmmaker makes a movie with intentionality. Everything in the frame is there for a reason. But movie goers don’t know all those reasons and so they have to make their own meaning, as illustrated by the Kuleshov Effect (as every film student learns). That meaning could be what the director wants them to come up with, or it may be something different.
Once a movie goes out into the world, directors have no control over how it will be perceived. This goes for criticism and reception, of course, but also how the director’s intentions will be understood.
In his 2005 Pride & Prejudice, Wright had a very distinct vision of what he wanted for this adaptation. He and his cast and crew worked together to realize this vision using all the elements of filmcraft and storytelling at their disposal. Ultimately, the success of the movie had everything to do with this kind of prework and professionalism, as well as that strong point of view that laid out the imagery, sound, and lighting in service of a story.
Fans might identify this as the Keira Knightley P&P but the story Joe Wright tells makes this adaptation his own.
Bibliography
Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice. W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
Deshardins, Charlie, and Andrea Asuaje. “Deborah Moggach on the legacy of her ‘muddy-hem’ adaptation of ‘Pride & Prejudice.’” WGBH, Dec. 15, 2025. https://www.wgbh.org/culture/film-and-tv/2025-12-12/deborah-moggach-on-the-legacy-of-her-muddy-hem-adaptation-of-pride-prejudice
Gillespie, Mariah. “Mozart and Marianelli, Pride and Prejudice: A Scrupulous Study of the Score.” mariahgillespie1.blogspot.com, https://mariahgillespie1.blogspot.com/2011/10/mozart-and-marianelli-pride-and.html. Oct. 11, 2011.
Monahan, David, and Richard Barsam. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. W.W. Norton & Company. Eighth Edition, 2025.
Neuner, Emily. “A Brief History of Architectural Follies.” Florence Griswold Museum. www.florencegriswoldmuseum.org.
Romney, Rebecca. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Marysue Rucci Books, 2025.
Sanchez, Chelsey. “Pride & Prejudice Director Joe Wright on Scrapped Scenes, Darcy Auditions, and the New Netflix Series.” Harper’s Bazaar. April 21, 2025 https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/a64526182/pride-and-prejudice-joe-wright-20th-anniversary-interview/
Shandilya, Mayank. “9 Most Romantic Rain Scenes In Movies.” Nofilmschool.com, Jan. 13, 2026. https://nofilmschool.com/most-romantic-rain-scenes
Trudeau, Andy. “Oscar-Nominated Scores: ‘Pride and Prejudice.’” NPR. March 5, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2006/03/05/5245902/oscar-nominated-scores-pride-and-prejudice,
Wilshire, Meredith. “Director Joe Wright Says Pride & Prejudice Hand Flex Scene Wasn’t Scripted: ‘I Didn’t Think We Got It’ (Exclusive).” People, April 16, 2025. https://people.com/joe-wright-shares-infamous-pride-and-prejudice-hand-flex-scene-wasn-t-scripted-exclusive-11715833
Zuckerman, Esther. “The ʻPride & Prejudiceʼ Hand Flex: One Gesture and the Web Is Still Swooning.” The New York Times, April 18, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/movies/pride-and-prejudice-hand-flex-joe-wright.html
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