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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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JANE EYRE MOVIE REVIEW

Too often, “modern” remakes of classic movies are a HUGE disappointment - each of you will have your own examples.

However, I cannot urge you too strongly to see the 2011 version of JANE EYRE, the classic novel by CHARLOTTE BRONTE.
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ROTTEN TOMATOES.COM provides 97 reviews from critics around the U.S., along with eleven pages of audience reviews.

However, I was grabbed by the ELLE MAGAZINE REVIEW from which they pulled a quote for a large poster in the lobby of the theater. Here’s a selection :

Fukunaga is a cinematographer turned director, and the thoughtful way he cuts back and forth in time keeps the story moving even while augmenting it and further piquing our curiosity. But what emerges most vividly is Jane herself. It’s her story, after all, but on-screen she has seldom been allowed to fully claim it—her sympathetic goody-two-shoes character overshadowed by that dubious object of desire, the far more vivid Rochester, smoldering away on the battlements….instead of a satanically tormented hero, we see a flawed, unhappy man trapped by a life-blighting circumstance.

That’s what Brontë saw too. It being the Victorian era, she had to sign her novel with a man’s name, Currer Bell, but she was a bold spirit nonetheless, and for all her demure exterior, so is Wasikowska’s Jane. Wasikowska (21 years old)… ...owns this part—it’s her Jane, and Brontë’s as well. For starters, she’s reserved rather than meek, and she speaks her mind as needed. She also solves the problem of the heroine’s famous lack of beauty, which defies Victorian and movie conventions alike. With Wasikowska seemingly devoid of makeup, cinematographer Adriano Goldman’s camera finds the plain-yet-luminous features that make her the beacon of light and moral courage that Rochester craves. Better yet, she perfectly dispenses the soft-spoken but mischievous wit that makes Jane someone we want to know as much as he does….

Like the original, his Jane Eyre is a love story, as fiercely intelligent as it is passionate. He uncovers what the bodice rippers miss: that these lovers are equals and, as such, equally deeply felt aspects of their creator.

I think this review gets it just about right - I read the book long (LONG) ago, and I’ve seen at least one of the earlier movies, but I hadn’t cared much for Jane Eyre, and I didn’t really remember the story too clearly (except for the crazy lady in the attic!). It didn’t matter - this version gives us all the important dialogue, and it’s got the important aspects of the story as Bronte wrote it - rather than being “translated” into something that someone thinks will appeal more to the audience than the original. I walked out of the theater marveling that a young woman, writing from an ISOLATED PARSONAGE in the Yorkshire Dales, could have such insight into the human condition.

This movie is magnificent (my opinion, of course—yours may differ!) As a BLOG AT MOVIFONE.COM put it:

What’s really remarkable, however, is how decidedly modern it feels, regardless of its period dress and Victorian set pieces. It’s the anti-period piece, period piece—but not through modernization. It seems timeless and modern because, ironically, of its commitment to the novel’s subtleties. Fukunaga is not mesmerized by some suffocating adoration of tight corsets, so the meat of the work is what’s on display—the feminist strength, the chilling undercurrents.

And though it’s all wrapped in a period package, it hits so distinctly on human truths, and evokes such modern concerns, that it’s a film that transcends its genre. It’s an evocation of the text, rather than a visual summary. Our Todd Gilchrist wrote: “in Cary Fukunaga’s interpretation of the Charlotte Bronte classic, you can almost see the text exploding with energy as the actors bring it to life—which is why even audiences disinclined to embrace period pictures or laborious literary adaptations will find themselves enchanted, even perhaps swooning in ‘Jane Eyre.’”

So…..even if you couldn’t stand your high school English class when they made you read this story, or you groaned and rolled your eyes through that movie with Rochester pacing about the set “smoldering”....GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/25 at 12:38 PM

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