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- The 2005 film adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” still has a thriving fandom.
- The scene when Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet touch for the very first time, and he walks away while flexing his hand, has become a beloved meme.
- The movie’s editor Paul Tothill told Insider that he’s delighted by the viral TikToks.
- He said he’s happy fans have an appreciation for the movie 15 years later.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The 2005 adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” is a film built on subtleties.
A raised eyebrow from Elizabeth Bennet to her sister while mid-dance with a nagging suitor. The reticent stare of Mr. Darcy, watching from a shadowy corner as a lively dance unfolds before him. Jane’s inability to make direct eye contact with Mr. Bingley, lest she fall apart completely. And, perhaps above all other moments of intimacy revealed to us in the film, the flexing hand of Mr. Darcy as he briskly walks away from Elizabeth Bennet, having just touched her for the very first time.
“Over the last 15 years, I had forgotten how much that ruled the edit [of the movie],” the film editor of “Pride and Prejudice,” Paul Tothill, told Insider during a recent call. “It’s all those subtleties.”
Our call to Tothill, who has also worked as a film editor with director Joe Wright on “Atonement” and “Anna Karenina” was prompted by the discovery of a thriving “Pride and Prejudice” fandom on TikTok.
If you deign to explore hashtags like #MrDarcy or #PrideandPrejudice or #JaneAusten on TikTok, you’ll find thousands of videos with a combined 100 million (and counting) views.
Among these, there's a common theme of appreciation — and downright swooning — for the moment in the movie when Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet touch for the first time, and he walks away while flexing his hand.
Insider sent Tothill a selection of these TikToks, which you'll find embedded throughout this article, and rang him up to hear his thoughts on fans' appreciation for that scene.
"I watched the TikToks," Tothill said through laughter. "I was astonished. It causes my 18-year-old twins quite a lot of amusement that dad's experience with social media is only texting and emailing. I don't touch Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or anything else, because life seems quite full enough without it all, to be honest. But it's quite an obsessional thing going on there, isn't it?"
The obsession over the 'hand flex moment' has long been a highlight moment in the Jane Austen adaptation
"Pride and Prejudice" tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet, the second-eldest daughter in a large family in need of more economic security. When Elizabeth meets the seemingly snobbish and exorbitantly wealthy Mr. Darcy, the two clash at once. But their attraction for one another builds and breaks through a series of miscommunications, eventually leading to a blissful union of love.
The moment when Mr. Darcy touches Elizabeth's hand comes about 25 minutes into the movie after the pair have exchanged barbs and glances multiple times in a number of social settings.
As Elizabeth goes to step into her family's carriage, Mr. Darcy surprises Elizabeth by taking her hand to assist her. The camera zooms in close on both of their bare hands as they touch for the first time.
Before Elizabeth can fully register the gesture, Mr. Darcy has already turned to leave without a word. Once again, the shot pushes in, and Mr. Darcy's hand takes up most of the frame. His fingers flex, almost as if in anguish. You can feel the tension resonating through the screen. It's electrifying and (dare we say it?) rather sexy.
The breathtaking movie moment has not been lost on the film's many legions of fans, nor the cast and crew of the movie itself.
In a behind-the-scenes feature for the film, Keira Knightley (who starred as Elizabeth Bennet) explained the significance of their first contact.
"They don't really touch," Knightley said, referring to men and women of the 18th century. "Women don't shake hands with men, so the first time Darcy touches Elizabeth is when he helps her into the carriage. Which is a really beautiful moment, because it's the first skin-on-skin touch, and I think today we don't think twice about that at all."
In 2010, someone uploaded a clip of the scene to YouTube, where more than one million people have watched it to date.
Earlier this year, BuzzFeed writer Ehis Osifo wrote an article dedicated to the hand-flex moment, calling it "the steamiest scene in cinema."
This past October, writer McKenna Morris wrote an essay reflecting on the 15-year anniversary of "Pride and Prejudice," musing on about the qualms some Jane Austen fans had of the adaptation, but also highlighting Wright's mastery of emotional cinematic language.
"The film does not just rely on dialogue to tell the story; all of Darcy's internal struggle, his repressed desire for Elizabeth during her stay at Netherfield, is made clear with a single shot of his flexing hand," Morris said.
—s. (@juIiettecai) March 22, 2019
Tweets about the scene have gone viral, and now, of course, there are the TikToks.
What the movie's editor, Paul Tothill, believes is the emotional meaning behind Mr. Darcy's flexing hand
Tothill took it upon himself to rewatch "Pride and Prejudice" ahead of our conversation. This time, he did something he'd never done before: Watched the full movie through with director Joe Wright's commentary in the background.
The added context reminded Tothill of a conversation he and Wright had during the movie's filming about why the director found scenes of people leaving or arriving places "tedious." But in Austen's novel and setting, the carriages and societal performances of arrivals and departures were baked into the storytelling.
When it came to the moment when Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth touch for the first time, Wright says in the director's commentary that the close up of their hands together, just as Elizabeth is stepping into a carriage, carries all "the emotion."
"The hand scene is specifically interesting because I was talking to my wife about it a couple of days ago and she thought the hand flexing was a sort of rejection," Tothill said in our interview. "And I'm sure there are, as I saw on TikTok, slightly different thoughts about it. I think for me, that flexing is Darcy's slight confusion."
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Tothill thinks Mr. Darcy's confusion is born from the way Elizabeth (or "Lizzy") always "surprises and unsettles" him.
"She's not part of the social mores, those social graces that were so constricting at the time," Tothill said. "She didn't care about any of that. They're all wrong in terms of they shouldn't be together, but apart from anything else in that world, he's drawn to how she challenges him constantly — and that shocks him."
"That little flexing of the hand is almost like there's an electricity still running through it from the touch," he continued. "He's maybe shaking it off, but he wasn't expecting it, let's put it that way."
Tothill said it's one of his favorite moments in the film, in part because Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth don't quite meet each other's eyes. Their avoidance of one another's gaze, like the many other subtleties in the movie, says a lot about how they're feeling in the aftermath of that contact.
"Things are spicing up in that particular Jane Austin fashion; somebody helping somebody else into a carriage," Tothill said. "It is quite electric."
Though Tothill was surprised by the level of interest people still have in "Pride and Prejudice" all these years later, he says the trending TikToks are heartwarming, just like the movie.
"I'm delighted that it's still attracting people," Tothill said. "When I was watching it this afternoon, it just brought back lovely memories. I think Joe had a fantastic time shooting it and we had a very happy time in the cutting room."