<i>Pride & Prejudice</i> Is Still the Ultimate Romance, 20 Years Later

In 2025, there’s something nostalgic about a simple will-they-won’t-they romance, where each small gesture is packed with emotional weight: a proposal in the pouring rain, a near-kiss in a field at dawn, a hand flex. It might be why we haven’t been able to quite let go of Joe Wright’s 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice after all these years.

In Wright’s hands, Jane Austen’s 1813 novel feels modern and familiar. There’s mess, mud, hangovers, and gossip, which defy the typical politeness of the era. However, when Wright made his feature directorial debut, he hadn’t yet read Austen. “I was 32 and thought I was cool and that possibly Jane Austen wasn’t cool,” he says. But when he did pick up the book, it knocked him out. Pride & Prejudice had a vitality to it, the product of a 21-year-old author “discovering her talent for the first time,” he tells ELLE.com.

Wright flew to Canada to meet Keira Knightley, then 18, on the set of Domino and instantly found in her the same youthfulness and down-to-earth nature as Elizabeth Bennet, the book’s protagonist. He paired Knightley, a rising star on the heels of Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean, with Matthew Macfadyen, who was cast after a long search for Mr. Darcy. “[Matthew] has a kind of sadness behind his eyes,” Wright says.

And so, romantic film history was made. “People talk about actors having chemistry on screen,” Wright recalls. “I think often, actually, it’s about respect. It’s not about attraction. It’s about two people wanting to be the best that they can be for each other, and Matthew and Keira had that in their very first reading together.”

Everything about Pride & Prejudice gives off the feeling of youth, down to the frequent parties the cast and crew would have while shooting across the United Kingdom. One night, Wright found himself wandering off to a swing to sober up, twisting himself one way and the other. This moment gave him the idea for a farmyard montage of time passing. In the film, Elizabeth watches seasons go by from this swing; it might be the most intimate glimpse we get of her perspective. “When I see that moment, or a photograph of that moment, I like the fact that it was actually me, at one in the morning, going round and round on a swing, feeling rather sick.”

If Wright knew the formula for why Pride & Prejudice has endured all these years later, he’d do it all over again. Ultimately, he chalks it up to being “the right story with the right cast at the right time.” And if Internet culture has anything to say about it, the viral right hand flex is proof. It’s a moment of electricity that comes right after Elizabeth visits Netherfield Park to help her sister recover from an illness. Lizzy steps up into the carriage to return home and Darcy lends her an unexpected hand. It’s the first time they touch, and it stuns Lizzy. Then, there’s a quick close-up of Darcy’s hand flexing as he walks back towards the house.

Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in Pride & Prejudice.

In an era of overt sexualization, especially in media, it’s a true feat of storytelling to make a subtle gesture so thrilling. “I think our bodies sometimes are wiser than our brains, and their hands know that they have found their soulmate before their conscious brains have figured it out,” Wright says. The hand flex has become a move, a symbol of yearning, that’s made endless rounds on social media and has appeared on official merch around the film’s 20th anniversary. It’s even made its way into contemporary television. This about sums up the collective feeling.

“You can never tell what’s going to work, even at the time, let alone 20 years later,” Wright says. “At the time of shooting, it was like, ‘Oh, this is a disaster. It hasn’t worked at all.’” Wright’s interest in the capacity of hands to express what words can’t goes back to his days as an amateur magician performing sleight-of-hand tricks. “I was called the Great Kazam when I was a kid,” he says.

Jena Malone, Rosamund Pike, Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn, and Carey Mulligan in Pride & Prejudice.

Looking back on the film—before he directed Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Darkest Hour, before he had children—Wright thinks time has looped in a way. “I feel like I’m sitting here right now talking to you about this film that I made yesterday, and yet, it wasn’t me who made it at all,” he says. He recently rewatched the movie with his kids, aged 6, 10, and 14, for the first time in two decades. His young daughter was glued to it. “It was really gratifying to see that passed on.”

In celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary, Pride & Prejudice is in theaters for a limited run.