The Literature Network - `Vanity Fair'.(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

`Vanity Fair'.(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

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From: Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Date: 20040901
Author:Williams, Joe

Byline: Joe Williams

British costume dramas rarely survive the journey to Middle America, where the locals aren't beholden to an aristocracy. But "Vanity Fair" is unusually accessible, because Indian-born director Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding") strips away the fancy-pants pretensions of the ruling class with a deftly comic touch. Yet, in doing so, she's also stripped the massive William Makepeace Thackeray novel of its complexity, reducing a caravan of social climbers to a Reese Witherspoon vehicle and forcing a famously cunning character to impersonate a heroine.

In a ...

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