Why Aish­warya Rai in Bride and Prej­u­dice is the best Eliz­a­beth Bennet

It is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that a Jane Austen fan, when asked to pick the best Pride & Prej­u­dice, will choose either the 1995 BBC minis­eries or Joe Wright’s 2005 film. Make no mis­take, they must choose. No one is per­mit­ted to sit on the fence in this bat­tle, the pas­sive-aggres­sive cousin to the Edward-vs-Jacob fight of the late noughties. The arse­nal of each side is pret­ty well stocked: one claims his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy, the oth­er beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy. For every Matthew Mac­Fadyen hand flex, there is a Col­in Firth emerg­ing from a lake. Per­haps the win­ner can be decid­ed based on who is the bet­ter, more faith­ful Eliz­a­beth ​‘Lizzie’ Ben­net – Jen­nifer Ehle or Keira Knight­ley? But while these two heavy­weights bat­tle it out, nei­ther has realised that some­one else has already tak­en the crown: all hail the true Lizzie, Bride & Prejudice’s Aish­warya Rai.

Many have thought Lizzie’s wit to be her defin­ing fea­ture, but that is not an attribute unique to her. Char­lotte Lucas, all the male char­ac­ters exclud­ing Mr Collins, and even Lizzie’s younger sis­ter Lydia dis­play some lev­el of wit. Instead, the two things that define Austen’s most famous hero­ine are a love for her sis­ters (par­tic­u­lar­ly Jane) and an innate need to always be out­doors. Through­out the book, Lizzie walks miles, run­ning up and down coun­try hills – any and all prob­lems are tack­led whilst she is uncon­fined by four walls. Case in point: upon hear­ing Mr Dar­cy may have scup­pered Jane’s chances of a pro­pos­al, she rush­es out of a warm church and into the pour­ing rain. Who would do that unless they need­ed air and space to ful­ly digest their thoughts?

Let’s not for­get that she has this reac­tion because of her deep love for Jane. Lizzie Ben­net, or Lali­ta Bak­shi as she’s called in Bride & Prej­u­dice, adores her sis­ters. This not only defines her but the sto­ry. In Sep­tem­ber 1813, Austen wrote to her sis­ter that she went to a gallery and spent the whole vis­it search­ing for a paint­ing that could be Lizzie and anoth­er that could be Jane – cru­cial­ly, she wasn’t search­ing for Dar­cy. To Austen, Lizzie was first and fore­most a sis­ter, as evi­dent by the fact that she could nev­er accept the pro­pos­al of a man who so destroyed the hap­pi­ness of Jane.

Twen­ty years ago, Gurinder Chad­ha tack­led this clas­sic, com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry via a Bol­ly­wood-British fusion. The film was released to a mixed response. Peter Brad­shaw gave it two stars and wrote in The Guardian that it was a ​“low-octane and glassy-eyed Bol­ly­wood romp”, while Rolling Stone​’s review not only said they liked it but implied Austen her­self would have too. Crit­ics were less divid­ed on Rai – they all heaped on praise… for her beau­ty. Com­pli­ments ranged from ador­ing prose on her flaw­less face to some­thing a bit more sim­ple: Peter Tra­vers wrote that she was a ​“world-class hot­tie”. Though accu­rate (Rai was crowned Miss World in 1994), the true beau­ty of this Lizzie was not her face but how her per­son­al­i­ty per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed who Austen intend­ed her ​“most delight­ful crea­ture” to be.

The ​‘out­doors’ in Bride & Prej­u­dice is Amrit­sar, India, and it is clear to any­one watch­ing the film that if there is one thing Rai has pride in, it’s her coun­try. She sparkles in any scene that dives into Bol­ly­wood tropes, such as the var­i­ous dance num­bers. When she and two friends sing about how Amrit­sar has come alive at the prospect of a wed­ding, Rai too comes alive as she sings along the streets of the city. Her smile is brighter, her ener­gy height­ens and the result is a joy­ful per­for­mance more con­vinc­ing than any moment where her hap­pi­ness is due to Dar­cy. Most adap­ta­tions (yes, even Hallmark’s Pride And Prej­u­dice And Mistle­toe) take Lizzie’s out­doorsy wild­ness as a tool to pit her against Car­o­line Bin­g­ley. It exists only to say ​‘Hey Dar­cy, I’m not like those oth­er girls’. But in Bride & Prej­u­dice, when­ev­er Rai is out­side and immersed in Indi­an cul­ture, she brings such a full-bod­ied and com­mit­ted per­for­mance with her that you can’t help but think there is nowhere else she would rather be.

The only oth­er scenes where Rai is as ener­getic are where the Bak­shi sis­ters are laugh­ing togeth­er. It’s hard­ly a won­der that the most mem­o­rable moment of the film is a dance num­ber called ​‘No Life With­out Wife’. As Lali­ta and her sis­ters dance around the screen pok­ing fun at the lack­lus­tre Mr Koli (aka Mr Collins), Rai is clear­ly hav­ing the time of her life. It’s impos­si­ble not to laugh with her and even the most song-averse watch­er would hum along. As she and her on-screen sis­ters jump around, the lines come eas­i­ly and feel organ­ic. Rai puts her all into that per­for­mance in a way she doesn’t with any oth­er char­ac­ters; com­pare that to scenes where she ​‘laughs’ with Dar­cy and it feels like we’re watch­ing two dif­fer­ent actresses.

All in all, Rai’s love of Bol­ly­wood and the effort she and Gurinder Chad­ha put into scenes between the sis­ters cre­ate a Lizzie who is less con­cerned with Dar­cy and more con­cerned with her fam­i­ly. Like Jane Austen, wan­der­ing around that gallery, Rai is look­ing for a Lizzie who stands up for her fam­i­ly and her peo­ple, rather than a roman­tic heroine.

Does this mean Bride & Prej­u­dice stands a chance at being crowned the best adap­ta­tion of the nov­el? No, but it has to be com­mend­ed for achiev­ing some­thing that the oth­ers couldn’t. Lizzie is one of the most loved lit­er­ary hero­ines in Britain and it’s nigh on impos­si­ble for a film to pro­vide a ver­sion that is any­thing less than a joy to watch, but she is almost always some­what lack­ing. She’s too inter­est­ed in romance, too con­cerned with Car­o­line Bin­g­ley or too book­ish to tru­ly encap­su­late the wild, wil­ful hero­ine of the source mate­r­i­al. But in Brude & Prej­u­dice, despite the change in set­ting, time peri­od, and name, we find our more authen­tic Eliz­a­beth Ben­net in Lali­ta Bak­shi. Rai’s Lizzie is far more than a ​“world-class hot­tie” – she is exact­ly who Austen meant her to be.