Proudly Prodigious

Watching a Movie with Susan in Amsterdam

Susan and I went to see Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley. As the title faded off the screen, Susan asked, “What does prodigious mean?” “Er… well prejudice means judging someone by looking at them.”

I don’t know why they made another new version of Pride and Prejudice; the BBC TV adaptation cannot be bettered. I enjoyed the movie though. Keira Knightley is a perfectly delightful Lizzy Bennet. But then again, she is perfectly delightful full stop. There could be a movie called ‘Keira’ where a camera follows her round a supermarket, and as long as there were plenty of close-ups of her eyes and lips (“Green apples or red? Hmm, I’ll pout while I decide”) I would pay 10 Euros to watch it.
There was one sensational scene in the movie. Keira Girardin was asleep and the camera was suspended above her, and it got closer and closer to her eyes, and just at the very second I thought she would open her eyes, the whole scene changed and she was stood on a rock at the edge of a cliff in Derbyshire, and the scene was so wide, so vivid with untamed beauty, and so unexpectedly thrilling that I gasped, and my soul tried to jump out of my body to be closer to the screen.
I asked Susan what part she enjoyed most. “I liked it when she was looking at the statues of Mr. Darcy and she was thinking that he was so rugged and manly and she was feeling very sexual at that time.” “Yes, you could see that she was thinking about what she had turned down,” I said. “But,” said Susan, “she was right to worry about Mr. Darcy because he was too prodigious.”
I chuckled. “What, did I use the word wrong?” she said. “Yeah… no… it’s just that women don’t normally complain that a man is too prodigious.”

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