Alan Rickman

I recently read Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. As I like to do after I read a Jane Austen novel, I netflixed the movie. As I was watching it I almost immediately realized that the actor playing Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman) also plays Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movies. This turned out to be a big problem. Every line he uttered screamed out Snape to me and I could not think of him as anything else. Not only is his voice so distinctive, his lips move in this strange way that focused my attention on them no matter how hard I tried to observe the entire scene. The two points of his upper lip act as if they have invisible wire attached to them. They both lift like a curtain being drawn up as he speaks, or actually snarls his speech. Because of this one actor that in my opinion stood out like a sore thumb, the entire movie seemed surreal and out of focus to me.