A modern spin on old England

In “Gone with the Wind,” her classic novel of the American Civil War, Margaret Mitchell modeled the story and its social-climbing heroine on “Vanity Fair,” William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about British society.

Director Mira Nair has located some of that “fiddle-dee-dee” spirit in Reese Witherspoon, who plays Becky Sharp in the luminous new version of “Vanity Fair.” Nair’s picture breathes less rarefied air than the Merchant-Ivory films about the same period.

Eileen Atkins plays Miss Matilda Crawley, wealthy dowager sister to Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). Her relatives all want her money, but only Becky is clever enough to turn Matilda’s withering wit back on her. Becky has come to the country with her best friend, Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), who is smitten with George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a cobra in a red-flocked coat.

Though low-born, Becky manages to win over Miss Matilda. The movie follows Becky’s triumphal march from the Battle of Waterloo to the card-playing fields of Baden- Baden, rapturously drinking it all in.

Thackeray set out to satirize English society – he was an outsider to it, born in Calcutta. In the “Vanity Fair” that Nair imagines, Becky Sharp is the first woman of the modern age. As Thackeray wrote, “Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?”

Not Becky Sharp. But after all, tomorrow is another day.