Without getting into the interminable whining that characterizes every classic novel-to-movie adaptation, and having never read the book, I couldn’t help but walk out of Jane Eyre feeling like they’d left out some important stuff.
There is no way that movie was created from a classic feminist text full of social criticism and featuring an individualistic and passionate heroine. It felt more like an aborted Frankenstein adaptation with awesome gothic atmosphere, spooky tone and absolutely no passion or urgency during the two hour-running time.
Mia Wasikowska stars as the titular character, meaning this version’s Jane isn’t very plain. An orphan, her harsh upbringing includes an unloving aunt and a cruel boarding school where the teachers dole out corporal punishment like Iran.
All of this turbulence has made Jane resilient and independent, but also isolated.
She survives the school and takes the position of governess at Thornfield Hall, owned by the shadowy Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Rochester initially treats Jane with an earnest coldness that she takes for aversion, but starts to take an interest in her beyond the standard employer/employee relationship.
Alas, as it always is, it won’t be easy for this pair of star-crossed, class-conflicted lovers. Rochester has more than a few bones in the closet, and Jane struggles to balance her love of Rochester and her love of self-rule as a woman.
The whole movie unravels in a strange nonlinear storyline, beginning near the end so that Jane is simply reflecting upon past experiences rather than actually living them. It’s an odd narrative choice that does nothing but take away the mystery and intrigue that it seemingly intended to have added.
That’s the main problem with this dramatic adaptation of Jane Eyre — there’s no drama. The character qualities and themes easily related in book-form don’t translate. That sort of under-the-surface, virginal longing and tension that characterizes these 19th century British adaptations is wanting. The love story seems forced and awkward, with Rochester coming off more horny creep than
enigmatic courter.
Jane’s development is no better. Without the first-person storytelling of the book, the transformation of Jane that is so important to the novel (or so I read) goes unseen on screen, devastating the themes central to the novel’s place in classic literature.
Director Cary Fukunaga also seems to have had a love affair with the same few plunks of the piano and violin, as repetitive notes play over and over again. It’s as annoying as trying to get that ocean water out of your ear after a day at the beach. The whole score could have used some pop synthesizers, or at the
very least Britpop, to wake it and us out of the two-hour glaze.
This version of Jane Eyre isn’t a terrible period movie. It’s well acted, paced and full of beautiful gothic exteriors and dapper costuming.
It’s also a magnificent replication of what I’d imagine country life in 1847
England to be like. That is, boring and full of men with overgrown facial hair
and neglected libidos.
— Cameron Dunbar is a sophomore studying journalism. His good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Tell him yours at cd211209@ohiou.edu.
