New ‘Sense and Sensibility’ adaptation poorly translates its source material
The newest adaptation of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ has its merits, but fundamentally misrepresents the novel
★★✩✩✩
Sense and Sensibility
Directed by Georgia Oakley
Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles
Rated PG
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Jane Austen began writing over 200 years ago, but her novels still have a profound impact on popular culture. Although Austen’s work did not attain wide acclaim at the time of its publication, it is clear now that Austen achieved something truly remarkable. Barely out of her teens, Austen became one of the first writers of the modern novel, and centuries later, she remains one of the best the world has ever seen.
In recent years, Jane Austen’s novels have been adapted and reinvented over and over again, the latest being the new film Sense and Sensibility (2026) directed by Georgia Oakley.
Published anonymously in 1811, Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen’s first novel. It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, after the death of their father leaves them dependent on the generosity and whims of their neighbors and indifferent relatives. Marianne, a product of Romantic sensibility, dangerously follows her passions wherever they take her, while Elinor demonstrates immense strength in the face of heartbreak and impossible circumstances.
Sense and Sensibility has only become more relevant since Austen wrote it. Lord David Cecil, former president of the Jane Austen Society, said that the novel “illuminates a fundamental problem of human conduct.” More than a romance, the novel is an investigation of how humans should conduct themselves in this world. Our social media and AI-saturated culture is filled with performance and empty aesthetic. For us, integrity and sincerity are as, if not more, elusive than it was in Austen’s time, and the ability to recognize integrity is as crucial a problem as ever.
Sense and Sensibility, then, is a worthy subject for film adaptation. Does the 2026 film successfully translate the story to the screen? Well, no.
This is by no means the fault of the actors. The characters are imbued with their distinctly Austen vibrancy: Esmé Creed-Miles is as vivid and arresting as the romantic Marianne, Daisy Edgar-Jones faithfully represents the turmoil and passion beneath Elinor’s self-possession, and Fiona Shaw steals every scene she is in as the hilarious Mrs. Jennings. Especially impressive is Ceara Coveney’s portrayal of the insincerity and masked cruelty of Lucy Steele.
But more importantly, as an adaptation of a story, the film falls short. Film adaptations of books must necessarily make compromises and cuts, and the work of carving out the heart of a story to transplant it intact from one medium to another is precarious. Revisions to the story are often necessary, but the revisions made in the 2026 film undermine the story, leaving it mutilated rather than translated.
The history of Edward Ferrars and Lucy Steele is altered in the film, presumably to present Edward in a better light, but the result is a serious mangling of Edward’s character. An issue with adapting Sense and Sensibility is that Edward, out of a desire not to mislead Elinor, avoids her for most of the book, which is behavior that doesn’t satisfy the expectations for a romance film. The film has attempted to solve this problem by rewriting Edward’s backstory and adding scenes with him that consequentially call his integrity into question, undermining him as a character.
The worst changes, though, involve Marianne and Colonel Brandon. Marianne’s powerful journey, rendered crystal clear in the 1995 film, emerges muddled in the 2026 adaptation. Nothing demonstrates this fact as painfully well as the duel scene.
The film fabricates this scene in order for Marianne to discover that Colonel Brandon, despite her previous beliefs, does in fact possess a great deal of sensibility. Though this is true of Colonel Brandon in the novel, it is beside the point. In the novel, Marianne comes to love Brandon not because she has realized that he has sensibility; that would mean she has learned nothing from her entanglement with Willoughby. Rather, Marianne comes to love Brandon because she recognizes him as a man of integrity, where before, she confused Willoughby’s sensibility for integrity. Marianne’s journey has produced in her an ability to discern between the two.
The Marianne of the 2026 film, however, doesn’t seem to have learned much of anything. In her last conversation with Colonel Brandon, she confesses that her sickness has led her to much reflection and to the conclusion that second attachments are indeed possible. This is a sad diminishment of the Marianne of the novel, who comes out of her sickness with a serious reflection on her conduct and the harm it has wrought on herself and those she loves; this Marianne has determined not to abandon her sensibility, but to govern it. The Marianne of Sense and Sensibility has none of this newfound self-possession.
The issues that arise in this film are unsurprising for our day and age. The film lingers too much on the secondary issues of the novel at the expense of its core questions: how to conduct yourself in a world that is often treacherous, and how to maintain and recognize integrity. The film has no universal foundation to remain culturally relevant for the next few years, but Jane Austen’s novel will no doubt continue to astound us with its cutting and compassionate analysis of human nature for many more centuries.