When a story has been around for 200 years, like Jane Austen's first novel, Sense and Sensibility, it can be hard to imagine seeing it in a new light.
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Plus, as someone who has long adored the 1995 adaptation written by and starring Emma Thompson, I was skeptical that this year's take on the classic story could possibly live up to it — not to mention its chances of living up to the movie I make in my head each time I revisit the book.
But I was pleasantly surprised by this new version, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood and Esmé Creed-Miles as her sister Marianne. The story follows these two sisters after their father's death, when they each meet suitors who are not exactly what they seem.
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While past adaptations of this story seem to mainly take place in stuffy drawing rooms and ballrooms, this new version adds a sense of life and tangibility by focusing on the natural world around the Dashwoods. Dreamy, lingering shots of trees, flowers, and meadows ease you into the movie, and director Georgia Oakley masterfully weaves this thread of nature throughout, resulting in a world that feels like you could step right into it through the screen.
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Georgia told BuzzFeed that much of the film shoot took place in the southwest of England, which she described as "proper wild." The crew had to contend with the whims of herds of sheep that wouldn't get out of the roads, and the cast had to "hitch up their skirts and trudge for five minutes" just to get to a bathroom.
The challenges of shooting on location also paid off in the cast's chemistry with each other. The Dashwood girls and their mother, played by Caitríona Balfe, feel like a real family. The instant attraction between Daisy Edgar-Jones's Elinor and George MacKay as Edward Ferrars is palpable, and Herbert Nordrum as Colonel Brandon and Frank Dillane as Willoughby both play beautifully off Esmé Creed-Miles.
But what really brought this story into 2026 for me was the emphasis this adaptation puts on the relationship between Elinor and Marianne. Their bond and the way each learns from the other's excess of sense or sensibility form the true emotional core of the film. Yes, there is swoony romance to be had here, but the film never loses sight of their sisterhood.
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The treatment of Marianne in particular stood out to me. As the romantic, passionate avatar of "sensibility," Marianne is often cast as a silly girl, almost a sidekick to prudent, reserved Elinor, queen of "sense." Instead, this new take on the story treats the two as equal co-protagonists. I jotted in my notebook, "Finally, justice for Marianne!"
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In my screening, there were many big laughs and even a few gasps (and how many 200-year-old stories can do that?). And there was a slight twist on the traditional ending to the story that actually made me cry a little bit in public.
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Of course, it's not completely faithful to Austen's original text. When the trailers first dropped, stone-cold Austen fans pointed out that the hair styling was not period accurate. And there are some scenes that had my inner English major grumbling that Jane Austen would never have allowed that (mainly certain characters communicating directly with each other! Face to face! About their emotions!!! I need my fainting couch). But for a movie attempting to bring an old story to life for a wide audience today, I think it's a beautiful intro that will hopefully inspire new fans to pick up a book.
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There's always value in coming back to a classic, but I had to ask Georgia, why Sense and Sensibility now? "I think the main thing that attracted me to this story now is that, you know, ostensibly things have changed a lot for young women in the 200 years since the book was written. But at the same time, the very kind of fundamental conflicts that we face as young women are still kind of the same." Georgia went on to say, "But underneath it all, it's about the gap between what young women are set up to expect from their lives and what the world is actually prepared to offer them."
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Since seeing the movie, I've dipped back into the book again to find that screenwriter Diana Reid's script is, in some ways, closer to the text than I realized. For me, this is a rare instance where having seen the film has brought new life to the text, which is a truly magical thing.