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Jane Eyre reviews and spoilers

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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:55 pm

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2992

12Mar11

news
"Jane Eyre," "3 Backyards," "Black Death," More

by David Hudson

"The most famous line in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is 'Reader, I married him,'" Jessica Winter reminds us in Slate, where Dana Stevens reviews the latest adaptation. "Depending on the reader, it may also be the most puzzling, given that I is a wealthy young woman and him is a one-eyed, one-handed, pushing-40 grump who proposes to a nanny half his age only to admit at the altar that he's already got a wife and she's locked in his attic. Dreamy! Yet in a 2009 poll by British romance publisher Mills and Boon, readers voted Edward Rochester the 'most popular hero in literature,' ahead of the likes of Heathcliff, Rhett Butler, and Colin Firth."

"So far there have been at least 18 film versions," notes Charles McGrath in the New York Times, "going back to a 1910 silent movie, and 9 made-for-television Janes — so many that they sometimes seem to quote from one another as much as from the novel… So moviegoers may be forgiven if in recollection all the Jane Eyres seem to blend together in one continuous loop, with Joan Fontaine, the 1943 Jane, suddenly becoming colorized and morphing into Susannah York, while Rochester turns, like a character in a horror film, from Orson Welles into George C Scott and then Timothy Dalton."

"Reader, I liked it," announces the NYT's AO Scott. "This Jane Eyre, energetically directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) from a smart, trim script by Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe), is a splendid example of how to tackle the daunting duty of turning a beloved work of classic literature into a movie. Neither a radical updating nor a stiff exercise in middlebrow cultural respectability, Mr Fukunaga's film tells its venerable tale with lively vigor and an astute sense of emotional detail."

In Slant, Bill Weber notes that this version opens "in medias res, with distraught 19-year-old Jane (Mia Wasikowska) fleeing an imposing stone castle in the wake of her life's most harrowing discovery. A diminished figure seen dashing across the Derbyshire moorlands in an elevated God's-eye shot, pausing for a despairing sobbing fit and pelted with windswept torrents before her rescue by a bland young clergyman (Jamie Bell) and his sisters, Jane is thus introduced… as a blank slate of suffering against her rocky, spectacular surroundings. Then the narrative moves backward to the neglectful rearing of preadolescent orphan Jane (Amelia Clarkson) by hateful relatives, and her fateful hiring as governess at the Thornfield estate by the 'abrupt and changeful' aristocrat Edward Rochester (smoldering Michael Fassbender), whose terrible secret ultimately sets in motion the girl's panicked exodus. If this Jane Eyre, in the wake of at least 20 earlier movie versions, doesn't fully sustain this spirit of reinventing the Brontë story (it can't match the boldness with which Jane Campion recalibrated The Portrait of a Lady for the 1990s), there are sufficient rewards to engage a viewer who hasn't encountered this quintessential Victorian, death-steeped romance since sophomore English, principally the two leads and their duet of Byronic morbidity and virginal fluster."

More from Ed Champion, Richard Corliss (Time), Todd Gilchrist (Cinematical), Karina Longworth (Voice), Michael Nordine (Hammer to Nail), Tasha Robinson (AV Club, C+), Justin Stewart (L), Ella Taylor (NPR), Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York, 4/5) and Stephanie Zacharek (Movieline, 9/10). Interviews with Fukunaga: Kimber Myers (Playlist) and Matt Singer (IFC, video, 2'42"). Interviews with Wasikowska: John Jurgensen (Wall Street Journal), James Rocchi (MSN Movies), Andrew Scott (Cinematical) and Jen Yamato (Movieline). Interviews with Fassbender: Sam Adams (AV Club), Andrew Scott (Cinematical) and Matt Singer (IFC, video, 2'56").
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http://www.dailyactor.com/2011/03/review-jane-eyre/

Review: ‘Jane Eyre’

March 11, 2011 by Lance Carter

I’ve never read the book Jane Eyre, and I’m betting I never will (I’m still trying to finish the final Harry Potter book). Thankfully, Director Cary Fukunaga has pretty much ensured that I’ll never need to crack open the classic book.

And that’s a good thing because the film is quite good. The performances are wonderful and Fukunaga turns 19th-century England into a thing of dreary beauty.

When we first see Jane (Mia Wasikowska) crying as she runs along a wet cliff of rural 19th-century England. She is found and taken in by a clergyman (Jamie Bell) who, along with his sisters, nurses her back to health. Cutting back and forth from her miserable childhood to her present day, we see why Jane is so strong (bull-headed?), resilient and sad. She eventually takes on work as a governess for a young French girl at a huge rural estate. The estate belongs to Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender) a man who is adept at hiding his secrets. The two eventually grow to trust each other. Is something more brewing? Well, you’ll have to see the movie. I can’t spoil it for you. Geez!

Having only seen Wasikowska in two films so far – Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right – I was surprised at how great she was as Jane. She brings a quiet strength to the role that is perfect. Jamie Bell as the clergyman John Rivers looks like he was born to act in period films. His side burns alone authentic him like no one else in the cast. Michael Fassbender (the future Magneto) keeps you guessing as Rochester. Is he a good guy who is struggling to get out of his mean demeanor? Or is he just the jackass that Jane thinks he is? And Dame Judi Dench… well, she’s just perfect. I think it’s mandatory to have her in all British period films, isn’t it?

Look, this film may not be for everyone but If you’re interested in this type of film, it’s everything you want it to be.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:04 pm

http://hardtofindcars.net/jane-eyre-reviewed-mia-wasikowska-as-jane-michael-fassbender-as-rochester/

2011
03/11

Jane Eyre reviewed: Mia Wasikowska as Jane, Michael Fassbender as Rochester.

After you’ve seen Jane Eyre, check out our Spoiler Special discussion:

You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the Spoiler Special podcast feed via iTunes or directly with our RSS feed.

Jane Eyre. Click image to expand.I’ll confess that I wasn’t exactly jonesing for a fresh big-screen adaptation of Jane Eyre (Focus Features). A full generation hasn’t yet passed since the 1996 version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg as the steadfast orphan-turned-governess and William Hurt as her enigmatic employer, Rochester. Zeffirelli’s version was overstuffed and a bit silly, but I agree with Jessica Winter that Gainsbourg’s grave, circumspect, haunted performance made her “Jane incarnate.” The greatest challenge for any adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel rests with the title character. Jane Eyre is a heroine we come to love for her introspection, her questioning nature, her voice (which we experience intimately in the novel’s use of first-person narrative and direct address). None of these are qualities that register easily on film, where the self-contained, long-suffering Jane can all too easily come across as a passive drip.

Now, Cary Joji Fukunaga, the young director of the immigration drama Sin Nombre, has chosen the 20-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) as his Jane. Wasikowska’s wispy, ethereal beauty at first makes this seem like a poor choice, given that Jane’s much-mentioned “plainness” figures importantly in the plot. But makeupless and unsmiling, her hair coiled in a low, middle-parted bun, Wasikowska has the severe gaze of an early photograph. She’s not “a little toad,” as one uncharitable character calls Jane in the early pages of the novel, but she’s no plum-lipped Keira Knightley either.

Fukunaga’s vision of Jane Eyre is refreshingly un-Gothic. Though all the story elements are in place for a thunder-on-the-moors-style gloomfest (and though there are, in fact, several thunderstorms on moors), this film is low on Romantic atmospherics and flooded with natural light. The cinematography by Adriano Goldman recalls the look of Jane Campion’s Bright Star, another literary love story that incorporated nature not just as a pretty backdrop but as a thematic element; here, the lead couple’s volatile relationship seems inextricably tied to the changing landscape around them. This Jane Eyre is as lucid and matter-of-fact as a film can be whose story hinges on brooding gentlemen with secrets and muffled screams from the attic.

Summarizing the plot of Jane Eyre seems pointless. Even those few who haven’t read it in high school English class (where it makes for a surprisingly rip-roaring YA novel) probably grasp the basic outlines of the story. Jane, a plain-looking, intelligent, cruelly neglected orphan, moves through a series of different miserable circumstances (pitiless aunt, grim boarding school, lodging with lovesick curate) until she winds up at Thornfield, the isolated estate of the bachelor Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Jane acts as governess to his ward, Adele Varens (Romy Settbon Moore), who may be the fruit of Rochester’s dalliance with a French dancer. Over time Jane’s relationship with her initially forbidding employer grows from barbed exchanges to shared confidences, and finally into love. But those sounds coming from the attic aren’t just the beams settling. . . .

Moira Buffini’s script errs on the side of being too spare at times–these are characters of such few words that their motivations can seem opaque. But leaving the odd blank for the viewer to fill in was more merciful than cramming every available space with verbiage, incidental music or, worse, voiceover. Wasikowska is the revelation here–her wary, intelligent face tells us volumes about this abused but unbowed young woman. But the small roles are also beautifully cast: Jamie Bell as the solemn young curate, Judi Dench as Rochester’s loyal housekeeper, Sally Hawkins as Jane’s vain, greedy, ultimately pitiable aunt.

Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank, Inglourious Basterds) has chops enough to pursue any role he wants (his Basterds character, an English film critic turned David Nivenesque spy, was one of the best things in that movie). But if Fassbender took the low road and chose to make a career as the thinking woman’s literary dreamboat, I wouldn’t complain. Here he makes for a transfixing, if curiously unreadable, romantic hero. Rather than brooding heavily in the style of Orson Welles or William Hurt, he plays the character as a maddening quick-change artist: one minute he’s solicitous and tender, the next sarcastic and cutting. As in the novel, Rochester’s temperament is so mercurial that he effectively functions for stretches as the story’s villain, a never-quite-resolved tension that works better on the page than onscreen. But the film’s ambiguous ending seems curiously appropriate to its status as the latest in a long line of adaptations. If this Jane Eyre ended on a settled note, there’d be no need for the next.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:05 pm

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/mwop/moviefile/2011/03/jane-eyre-plain-jane-with-a-fe.php

Reviews of Movies We've Actually Seen, Taste the Reading Rainbow
Jane Eyre: Plain Jane, With a Few New Twists
by Angel Cohn March 11, 2011 6:00 AM

When I told my mother I had seen this movie, she groaned and asked me if I fell asleep during it. I explained that I loved Jane Eyre in all its incarnations (well, excepting the mediocre musical) and then started rambling about The Wide Sargasso Sea and The Eyre Affair and wondering how my mother could think a story that had fire and a crazy person living in an attic could possibly be boring. Then we decided to agree to disagree. If you are siding with my mother? Don't bother with this movie. In fact, stay far away, because it is beautiful, but slowly and methodically paced (I think in quite an effective way) and that will likely put you to sleep as soon as you watch a scene with limited talking for a good five minutes. If you, like me, are a fan of the Charlotte Bronte work, I think this film, while arguably not the most necessary thing in the entire world, is a well-done adaptation of the source material.

The story is framed by Jane Eyre (played here by Mia Wasikowska of Alice in Wonderland fame) running away from Thornfield Hall, into all manner of inclement weather and into the helpful arms of Billy Elliot, er St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell). He and his sisters get her back on her feet, as we look back at Jane's troubled childhood. Young Jane (Amelia Clarkson) is pretty stellar as she deals with being orphaned, horrible relatives, the death of a friend and abusive teachers. Then we see that Jane left her boarding school and got a job as a nanny for the ward of the wealthy Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). The two have an immediate rapport and interesting relationship, that is looked upon oddly by Thornfield Hall caretaker Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench). Rochester seems to woo another, he's got a hidden past, she saves him from being burned to death and then all seems well as they fall in love and are about to get married. Until she finds out what exactly is hidden in the attic of Thornfield Hall.

It's got a dark and gothic look, as most of the action of the story takes place during the gloomy winter months when all of the trees are dead and there is fog all around, and the director (Cary Joji Fukunaga) took the opportunity with the atmospheric conditions to give a few "jumpy" moments. They aren't supposed to be actually scary, like the trailers would like you to believe. This isn't a horror remake of Jane Eyre (though, I'm sure one will be in the works at some point), the "scary" moments are just suspenseful moments in the story, as they should be.

The acting is top notch. Dench naturally steals every scene she's in with her looks and glances, and Fassbender is the appropriate combination of domineering and dreamy, and Wasikowska manages to exude the control that is necessary for playing the highly reserved titular character.

Again, with the many adaptations already out there, this isn't exactly new subject matter, or a story that was crying out for a new rendition, but it is well executed. This small film might not have an enormous appeal, but I'm pretty sure that the current generation of kids will be watching this instead of reading the book in order to pass their high school English classes. The likelihood of me getting my mom to watch it though is pretty slim to none.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:08 pm

http://www.edgenewyork.com/?116873

Jane Eyre
by Kevin Taft
EDGE Contributor
Friday Mar 11, 2011

Mia Washkowska stars in Jane Eyre (Source:Focus Features)

Just hearing that Jane Eyre has been adapted once again for the screen might bring about a mind-numbing "Of course they are" response. One of the most recognizable novels of all time, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is the quintessential novel of female independence and equality, and has been an oft-filmed tale for the big screen and for television. With the rise of female role-models being the bad-tempered and bad-mannered women of reality TV, Jane Eyre brings us back to how women should be thinking about themselves: "Equal--as we are!" as opposed to, "Do my boobs look hot in this top?"

Cary Joji Fukunago (Sin Nombre) directs this latest update by screenwriter Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe), who takes the familiar story and makes it feel contemporary, giving it a gothic touch that will appeal to modern-day audiences. The film opens with Jane (Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska) stumbling out of Thornfield Hall, sobbing, and finally collapsing on the doorstep of a clergyman’s (Jamie Bell) home. But then it thrusts us back to Jane’s upbringing, which is a harrowing tale in itself.

At age ten, Jane (Amelia Clarkson) is not only physically abused by her adoptive brother, but emotionally manipulated by her aunt (Sally Hawkins). Her aunt wants so badly to get rid of her that she sends her to a boarding school where she lives year round. Once there, she is met with contempt by her headmaster and teachers, but because she is a strong-willed girl, she doesn’t stand for much of what they dish out. Unfortunately, this makes her an outcast, and the headmaster insists that the other school girls ignore her for the duration of her life at the school. Thankfully, she finds a friend in Helen Burns (Freya Parks), but the friendship is short-lived when Helen dies of consumption.

Once Jane graduates, she is sent to be a governess at Thornfield Hall. There, she is assigned to teach English to the master’s daughter. The Hall is a massive home, overseen by the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench.) After years of abuse, Jane finally feels free and accepted. But when the master, Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender, of Inglorious Basterds fame), arrives, Jane starts to feel the weight of oppression. Rochester is snarky, rude, and arrogant, but Jane, after struggling for so many years, matches him wit for wit. This banter impresses Rochester, who sees an equal in Jane, even though she is his paid "subordinate." Eventually, Rochester falls for Jane, and despite her naivety regarding intimacy and her past treatment by both the men and women around her, she falls for him in return.

But there is a mystery that will test both of them: The ghost that seems to haunt Thornfield Hall. Every night there is a moaning coming from the walls, and more than once, strange happenings occur late at night: A fire. A physical assault. Just what is this entity, and is it supernatural or is it something darker?

This version of Jane Eyre is skillfull in every way, and it’s a testament to the actors and filmmakers that we care so much about what will happen to Jane. The screenplay by Buffini is Oscar-worthy, and the dialogue snaps with a clever immediacy that is energizing.

This beautiful film is heightened by spectacular performances all around, starting with Clarkson as Young Jane. A remarkably focused actress, Clarkson allows us into the Jane we will grow to know and love, and her ease in front of the camera is remarkable. Judi Dench is always lovely, and while she doesn’t have a lot to do, she adds a much needed warmth to a world that is too buttoned up for its own good. Fassbender is stoically handsome, at first making us dislike him intensely, but finally allowing us in to the damaged soul underneath. The brilliance of his performance is that we don’t always know if we can trust him, just as Jane doesn’t truly feel she can have faith in his actions. But like most people, we are not black and white, and his behavior is brought on by an inner struggle he has yet to resolve.

Which brings us to Mia Washkowska. An accomplished actress in her native Australia, she has blazed a path for herself with well-received roles in The Kids are Alright and Alice in Wonderland. Here, she proves that she is "the" actress to watch. Something of a Gwyneth Paltrow/Clare Danes hybrid, she never strikes a false note, and the strength, anguish, and confusion she feels is readily available to us with just a glance. She is that good. It’s a shame that the film is being released so early in the year, because she is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination.

While the movie runs on a bit too long toward the end, it is a continuously compelling story with characters so rich and emotionally complex, you want to study them. This is a throw-back to the old Merchant/Ivory movies that, while being a bit talky, never failed to engage. And with master filmmakers at work behind the camera and a cast that brings Bronte’s classic characters to life in front of it, this is a film worthy of our attention.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:11 pm

http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/03/jane-eyre-feverishly-soulful/

Jane Eyre “Feverishly Soulful”
03/10/11 - Posted by Sasha Stone in 2011 17 Comments

NPR’s Ella Taylor says about the remake of Jane Eyre:

Cary Fukunaga’s feverishly soulful remake of the multiply remade Jane Eyre rises to most challenges — not the least of which is making Mia Wasikowska, a golden child of current cinema, look homely.

Okay, so maybe that isn’t exactly the kind of review you want to lead the charge to help this movie get enough Oscar traction to hold until the end of the year, therefore, I hereby nominate Jane Eyre as the Most Deserving Likely to be Forgotten by Oscar time film.

But why remake Jane Eyre at all you might ask? Here is a great Patricia Zohn essay on Huffington Post that tells you exactly why: Jane Eyre, a heroine for the ages.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:18 pm

http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3ic620932ad3405aa4522f622b5684fc2c

Film Review: Jane Eyre
Lovers of Charlotte Bronte's classic will luxuriate in the spooky Gothic atmosphere, but the film's pallid Jane fails to nail a character who changed how women view themselves.

March 10, 2011

-By Erica Abeel

For movie details, please click here.
It takes either industrial-strength confidence or simple chutzpah to tackle a film remake of Jane Eyre, the beloved 1847 novel by Charlotte Bronte that no less a figure than Virginia Woolf declared un-putdownable. There exist 18 film versions of Jane—the 1944 one with Joan Fontaine especially memorable—and nine made for television. Now, with only one feature behind him—the affecting Sin Nombre, about immigrant migrations—33-year-old Cary Fukunaga delivers his own take on the iconic tale, casting Mia Wasikowska as Jane, Michael Fassbender as Edward Rochester, Judi Dench as his goodhearted housekeeper, and some prize English real estate playing itself.

Fassbender and Dench are stellar actors who can hardly put a foot wrong, and the foggy expanses and howling winds of the Derbyshire dales, where much of the film was shot, are a filmmaker's best friend. Sadly, though, this Jane Eyre, though visually stunning, is a kind of classics-lite version, punching up the Gothic horror aspect of the story while stumbling in its attempt to capture its indelible characters. The film's weakest link is Wasikowska in a crucial bit of miscasting.

Fukunaga includes the touchstones common to all the previous film versions: Rochester thrown by his spooked horse; the screams at night and the burning bed chamber; Jane running across the barren moors. And the script closely follows the original story. The orphaned Jane is raised by her cruel aunt (Sally Hawkins, cast against type) and does time in the harrowing Lowood school before being accepted as a governess—the period's avenue for penurious women—in Thornfield, the hulking manse of the brooding, Byronic Mr. Rochester. There, Jane dares to imagine, rightly, that she has formed a deep connection with the master of the house, despite competition from the alluring, beribboned Blanche Ingram (Imogen Poots), a woman of Rochester's social class. But after discovering the nasty business in Rochester's attic, Jane lights out for the moors, finding shelter in the austere home of cleric St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) and his sisters. There, she weighs the role of missionary's wife that he offers against unfinished business at Thornfield.

Rather than follow the novel's linear storyline, screenwriter Moira Buffini chooses to tell most of the story in flashback, beginning with Jane's year-long stay with Rivers, a section that in the novel arrives late. Theoretically, this strategy brushes the cobwebs off the narrative and pitches you straight into Jane's crisis, catering to today's impatience with a leisurely rollout. But Buffini's shuffled timeline sometimes proves confusing; even viewers familiar with the novel may initially struggle to determine past from present.

The film's major misstep, though, is the casting of It-Girl Wasikowska. True, she did credible work in The Kids Are All Right, and at 18, she's exactly Jane's age. But Wasikowska doesn't yet have the acting chops to capture a character whose insistence on her own self-worth, seemingly arrived from nowhere, announced a revolutionary new heroine. She loses us from the earliest scenes, when she huddles weeping in the bracken and you half expect her to text, “OMG, there's some old freak in the attic.”

Wasikowska's underpowered turn makes Rochester's attraction to her somewhat implausible. In the crucial scenes where they match wits and she keeps her dignity despite her lowly status, he hasn't enough to play against. You wonder why he doesn't just hit the Continent with saucy Blanche Ingram. And the always-charismatic Fassbender has been misdirected to make Rochester seem more like a studio exec with heartburn than a man tormented by a tragic mistake. Wasikowska, with her abbreviated face, oddly reminiscent of Jeremy Renner, and Fassbender, with his great leonine head, are also physically mismatched and seem spliced together from two different movies.

Still, this Jane Eyre will likely find an audience among those hungry for a Bronte fix, as well as fans of Gothic atmosphere and tropes from horror films. In fact, perhaps the film's true stars are towering, dank Haddon Hall as Thornfield, the go-to pile for English period films, and those undulating moors that make romantics of us all. The tech package is superb, using natural lighting for the fog-wreathed cliffs and dark bracken, and fireplaces, candles and oil lanterns for the interiors.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:23 pm

http://splatteronfilm.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/jane-eyre-2011/

March 12, 2011 · 11:53 pm

JANE EYRE (2011)

Charlotte Bronte created the beloved, young heroine in 1847, simply but affectionately calling her Jane Eyre.

ABUSE or Training?
Poor, mistreated, forgotten, unloved, Jane Eyre. Battered by her only family as a child, then more so as a girl at the Lowood School, her only friend dies by her side, leaving Jane alone again. In truth, I can’t seem to read past the scenes in which Helen dies. I’ve tried. I am broken by her death, by the death of an only friend. Once loved, but again forgotten, Jane Eyre grows unbecomingly, leaving the school as a young woman to become a governess in the home of a Mr. Rochester. Jane seems to move from abuse to abuse, from ignorance to neglect, then back to abuse. She longs for independence and love, but finds none.

Story. Plot. Characters. CHECK. Dark. Brooding. Desperate. CHECK.

ABANDON or Consent?
Only one takes notice. Rochester sees through her, it seems. She shutters at his gaze. But I’m not certain that his notice is at all good for her. I’m saying it now: I’m not a Rochester fan. Yes, I’ll admit that I loved watching William Hurt vulnerably admit love to a much younger Charlotte Gainsbourg under the artful direction of Franco Zeffirelli (1996). But today, as Michael Fassbender eerily enveloped Mia Wasikowska, I felt like I was taking an “Issues of Abuse” class. Mia certainly proves a lovely Jane. She is likable and otherworldly, just as a Jane should be. Rochester plays his part beautifully, but I’m left wishing I could send Jane a ticket to London to get her out of the moors and into a place with more fish in the sea. Oh, Jane. Tragic.

JUSTICE or Cruel Fate?
Together, at last, as equals. She: now rich, handsome, fulfilled, but lonely still seeks him out. He: now lowly, lost, poor, maimed, blinded, but freed from his prior responsibilities may marry. They are finally equals. Right? Then why the knots in my stomach?

I’m not saying that a happy ending is a must. But hope is. If I’m left with the only hope that a young, thoughtful, accomplished girl can finally be in love with a staunch, deceitful, abusive man, I remain hopeless, feckless, daunted.

Oh, Jane. Poor, poor Jane Eyre. And poor me. And poor Annie. And poor Claire for having slipped away for distraction only to be dragged by the perfunctory Victorian bonnets across the lonely moors of Britain. At least, as it was so aptly put afterward, it was “like, a gothic piece, with, like no Edwards or, like, Jacobs to worry about.” Yes, at least that.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:24 pm

http://thefml.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/coolest-movie-in-the-world-jane-eyre/

Coolest Movie In The World: #JaneEyre
Posted on March 12, 2011 by miguel

The coolest people in the world (Fassbender, Mia W., Cary Fukunaga)?

Is there anyone cooler than Mia W. currently working in show business? (Maybe Michael Fassbender?) If you think there is someone cooler, please tell me, cause after #JaneEyre (using the hash-tag here because as a tribute to the coolness of the film and nothing more) I sure don’t know of anyone. In one calendar year, Mia W. starred in the biggest live-action film of the year, played the pivotal role in the most culturally relevant film, and now put a spin on a character so defined and ingrained in literary history that it was doubtful anyone could do anything that would ever qualify another adaptation or interpretation as cool. But that is exactly what #JaneEyre was – for me at least.

For the most part, literary adaptations seem to fall into either modern reinterpretations of classics (“Easy A” for “The Scarlett Letter” and “Clueless” for “Emma”) or classic interpretation on classics (Demi Moore in “The Scarlett Letter” and Gwyenth Paltow in “Emma”). What is rarest is an adaptation that can take things modern and interprets them classically. #JaneEyre does just that.

“Jane Eyre” was a great novel and I read it a few years ago in grad school when I was studying adaptation for a blah, blah boring class at Columbia and was watching a 2006 version produced on PBS. This version was very good but was something that was like Gwyneth’s “Emma” or that “Sense and Sensibility” with Kate Winslet. Good – but safe, and wrapped in the blanket of the classic, for safety, unwilling to take chances.

The 2011 #JaneEyre immediately brought to mind previous adaptations like Jane Campion’s way underrated “Portrait of a Lady” and Alfonso Cuaron’s equally underrated “Great Expectations” (one of my favorite films of ALL TIME). Sure Cuaron’s film took place in 1998 NYC, but that was immaterial to the point of the adaptation. If anything, this was a more true adaptation that many prior, with the exception of locations – and certainly this was not a reinterpretations (like “Clueless” etc….). More importatly, Campion’s and Cuaron’s work celebrated the importance of the classics by realizing what was great about those works and using the power of film to amplify them.

Before there was Glee, there was the color green and a movie called "Great Expectations."

This 2011 #JaneEyre is something much more risky. Carey Fukanaga (whose last film was the awesome and not so tonally different “Sin Nombre”) has chosen his cast well. Mia W. is young. Michael Fassbender is old. Fukanaga does not shy away from the violence inherent in the story but does not overplay it either. He uses things that interest him, disconnection, secrets, and people on the run to create this new #JaneEyre that is something recognizable and which does not lose the connection to its heritage, but also something new.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:26 pm

http://www.taralive.com/2011/03/jane-eyre-film-review/

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Jane Eyre: Film Review
Admin Celebrity Relationship 2011-03-12

The latest film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte 1847 English novel Jane Eyre is a masterful retelling (and reimagining) of one of literature’s most enduring coming-of-age tales. Directed by Cary Fukunanga, the film avoids the obvious pitfall of being little more than a dainty costume drama that looks pretty enough but fails to engage the rich characters and plot mystery of the source material. Fukunanga has assembled a fine cadre of actors (including Judi Dench, Michael Fassbender, and Mia Wasikowska as the eponymous heroine) that bring the story to life in ways we haven’t seen before on the big or small screen: Jane is this time presented as a much fiercer creature than her past incarnations, and though she softens slightly as she approached womanhood, her inner steel remains intact.

On a completely separate aside, I should mention that Wasikowska is fast becoming the most engaging young actor from Down Under since, well, Cate Blanchett. There’s something about her ability to attract quality material that allows her to shine consistently, no matter the genre (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids are All Right) that has made legions of reviewers (including this one) anticipate whatever she will appear in next.

Judi Dench is her dependably remarkable self in the picture, cast as Lord Rochester’s housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax who acts as both gatekeeper and Fairy Godmother to the wayward Jane. And perhaps not surprisingly, Michael Fassbender dominates the proceedings in an unforgettably brilliant portrayal of Rochester who is at once commanding and cowardly, romantic and resentful. The chemistry between Fassbender and the much younger Wasikowska is something to behold: it almost borders on creepy at times but Fassbender plays Rochester in such a way that it becomes impossible for the audience to imagine Jane Eyre’s nubile heart belonging to anyone else. Credit should also go to the expert screenplay written by Moira Buffini.

For those of you who never read the original novel in high school or college, here’s a brief recap: Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised in abject misery by a wealthy aunt who refuses to grant Jane even the smallest kindness. She is shipped off to reform school where she is punished and beaten by austere mistresses who care nothing for the young girl’s broken heart. Eventually, she emerges as a soft spoken but resourceful individual who finds herself working as a governess in the manor of a wealthy lord and landowner named Rochester. He is taken by her quick wit and her guilelessness (calling her a “rare, unearthly thing”), eventually falling in love with the young woman despite the fact that he harbors a deep, dark secret that threatens to undo their entire romance.

Buffini adds elements of horror and suspense to the story in ways that were never intended by Bronte: Lord Rochester’s manor becomes a haven for fallen demons and screams in the night, leaving both Jane and the viewer puzzled as to what exactly transpires between the cold walls of his isolated home. But the heart and soul of the film are Jane’s quest to have her own heart and soul affirmed, a crusade that takes her from cruelty to kindness, from obscurity to understanding. A definite must-see.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:38 pm

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/movies/index.ssf/2011/03/jane_eyre_review_leading_mans_bland_performance_is_a_major_problem_in_a_new.html

'Jane Eyre' review: Leading man's bland performance is a major problem in a new
Published: Friday, March 11, 2011, 7:53 AM
Stephen Whitty/The Star-Ledger By Stephen Whitty/The Star-Ledger

Laurie Sparham Michael Fassbender, as Mr. Rochester, and Mia Wasikowska, as Jane Eyre, the two characters whose relationship is at the heart of "Jane Eyre."

‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ ” Ernest Hemingway once said with typical dogmatic vigor. (Really? All?)

To which you could add, with far less debate, that most of our modern, melodramatic romances come from one book by Charlotte Brontë called “Jane Eyre.”

There is another version out now, bringing the total number of film and TV adaptations close to 30. And it includes the elements that have enlivened stories from “Rebecca” to “Dark Shadows.”

The meek young woman. The old, dark house, crouching by a cliff. Secrets and strange noises at night and a handsome, Byronic master who stares into the fire. And the struggle, at the core, between this man and this maid — for respect, equality, trust.

That’s all here, along with a very good Mia Wasikowska (the daughter in “The Kids Are All Right” and the Alice in Tim Burton’s Wonderland). She makes a fine, contradictory Jane, both gravely composed and emotionally delicate.

But in many ways you measure a “Jane Eyre” by its Rochester, and by that scale, this version comes up a trifle short.
Movie Review

Jane Eyre (PG-13) Focus (120 min.) Directed by Cary Fukunaga. With Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender. Now playing in New York.
Rating note: The film contains sensuality and violence.
Stephen Whitty's Review: TWO AND A HALF STARS

It’s a difficult part to play well. William Hurt only got the cold superiority right; George C. Scott disappeared into the rage. The best were probably Timothy Dalton, in a BBC version, and Orson Welles, in a classic storm-and-thunder Hollywood one — they understood that mix of rudeness and magnetism and pain.

Michael Fassbender doesn’t.

He’s a good-looking actor and a talented chameleon (going, in a few years, from playing the starving Bobby Sands of “Hunger” to action heroes in “Inglourious Basterds” and “Centurion.”) But he’s safe here. Rochester’s self-loathing needs to be scarier, his passion more fiery. (What a great part this would have been for Clive Owen.)

Wasikowska is marvelous, though, and the story, like the grand houses it unfolds in, still has good bones. The nervous new governess, the mysterious employer, a misty background of uncertain parentage, long-lost benefactors and forgotten inheritances — there’s enough here to fuel a dozen other Gothic romances.

Unfortunately, the adaptation by Moira Buffini is a bit rocky. Some wonderful parts in the novel (like young Jane’s time at the orphanage) are crudely truncated; other, oft-omitted material (like Jane’s other suitor, the cold Mr. Rivers) is added without adding very much.

It is interesting to see director Cary Fukunaga’s use of a moving camera and subtly subdued colors; after the jumpy, energetic look of his completely different modern-immigration drama “Sin Nombre,” it’s a startling change, and evidence of a quickly developing talent.

But a new “Jane Eyre” needs more than a new Jane Eyre. It needs a formidable Rochester — and a fresh reason for being.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:39 pm

http://newsok.com/movie-review-jane-eyre-offers-fresh-take-on-classic-novel/article/3547268

Movie review: ‘Jane Eyre' offers fresh take on classic novel
Movie review: This stylish and impressive translation of the Charlotte Bronte classic “Jane Eyre,” starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell and Judi Dench and directed by Cary Fukunaga, should earn a prominent place on movie bookshelves.

Published: March 11, 2011

Any filmgoer looking askance at yet another adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's often-filmed 1847 novel “Jane Eyre” can rest assured that the new one by up-and-coming director Cary Fukunaga is a smart, worthy addition to the book's burgeoning, multimedia canon.

Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska embrace in a scene from director Cary Fukunaga's screen adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."
MOVIE REVIEW

“Jane Eyre”

PG-131:553 stars

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench.

(Some thematic elements including a nude image and brief violent content)

Since 1910, Bronte's sprawling, multithemed, five-stage tome has spawned 18 film versions, at least 10 TV adaptations, a radio drama, a two-act ballet, a stage musical, an opera, a symphonic interpretation, a graphic novel, numerous literary spinoffs, prequels and sequels and more.

So what's new to glean from this heavily worked literary artifact whose 38 chapters are chockablock with florid motifs and allusions (from romanticism to Gothic horror; from the Byronic hero to the madwoman in the attic) and whose five sections range through hefty matters of morality and religion, social class and gender relations, love and passion, independence and the search for home and family, as well as atonement and forgiveness?

In the fairly flinty but lovely performance by Mia Wasikowska (“Alice in Wonderland”) as Jane, in the cannily configured script by British playwright Moira Buffini (“Tamara Drewe”) and in the bold, richly visual direction of Fukunaga this film seems surprisingly fresh, more tough-minded and less melodramatic than previous versions.

Fukunaga, a film phenom who earned a Student Oscar at the University of California, Santa Cruz and launched his career strongly with the tough immigrant thriller “Sin Nombre,” seems an odd choice to helm this elaborate period piece. But it seems his fresh eyes and contemporary sensibilities serve the material well.

Unlike previous versions (notably the 1944 Orson Welles-Joan Fontaine film and the lush 1996 Franco Zeffirelli picture), this film radically shuffles the story's chronology and opens with a nifty framing device before condensing Jane's cruel Victorian childhood into concise flashbacks.

The movie opens with Jane fleeing Thornfield Hall and Rochester's dire secret into a sodden, storm-swept night on the desolate moors. After a shivering Jane is taken in by the pious clergyman St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell of “Billy Elliot” fame) and his kindly sisters (Holliday Grainger and Tamzin Merchant), we hark back to the chapters that brought her here.

There're scenes of the spirited young Jane (Amelia Clarkson) being brutally mistreated by her hateful aunt (Sally Hawkins) and priggish cousins. There's Jane being shipped off to the parochial Lowood charity school where she suffers the brimstone abuses of the zealous headmaster (Simon McBurney) and sees her gentle best friend (Fraya Parks) die of consumption.

There's a grown Jane who survives the rigors of Lowood, emerges as a beloved teacher and accepts a position at Thornfield Hall as tutor to the young French ward of the brooding Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender, too handsome by half). Judi Dench lends dramatic heft here as the kindly housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax.

The rest of the story unfolds in familiar fashion, with some spooky, well-placed shocks and dire Gothic flourishes and a proper but perhaps too-slow developing respect and ardor growing between Jane, all demure and noble, and Rochester, tortured and temperamental. But that slow-burning chemistry between Wasikowska and Fassbender does eventually ignite into full-blown passion, and its compelling glow finally manages to ensure this stylish and impressive translation of Bronte's classic a prominent place on movie bookshelves.

— Dennis King
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:41 pm

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/movie-review-jane-eyre-2011

Movie Review: Jane Eyre (2011)

Two wonderful performances stand out in this Gothic romance
By: Brad Brevet
Published: Friday, March 11th 2011 at 1:54 AM
Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre
Photo: Focus Features

Cold and isolated is the best way to describe director Cary Fukunaga's Gothic romance based on Charlotte Bronte's classic 19th century novel; a novel I've unfortunately never read. But despite my unfamiliarity with Bronte's prose, it's quite easy to recognize when screenwriter Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe) borrows straight from the book, just as it's easy to be impressed by those times when words aren't necessary to express what the characters are feeling thanks to a pair of standout performances.

Fukunaga's direction of Jane Eyre is the dark sister to Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice. Both are literary staples featuring strong female protagonists at their core and both feature actresses worthy of acclaim for their characterizations of those lead characters.

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"Jane Eyre" is a Focus Features release, directed by Cary Fukunaga and is rated PG-13 for some thematic elements including a nude image and brief violent content. The running time is 2 hours 1 minute

The cast includes Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins and Imogen Poots.


Browse our gallery of 29 stills from the movie
Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) stars as Jane, and brings to her character such a perfect balance of strength and timidity you can't help but fall under her spell. We first meet her fleeing across the countryside. Caught in a pounding rain storm she soon falls at the doorstep of the young pastor St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) who shows her a caring hand.

From here we get brief glimpses at her tumultuous childhood and her time at an all girls school as eight years quickly pass by. She begins work as a governess at Thornfield Hall where she cares for a young French girl and ultimately falls in love with her employer, Edward Fairfax Rochester (Michael Fassbender).

Fassbender and Wasikowska are perfect in the two lead roles. Their characters' lonely and isolated souls feed into the initially despairing story line. As Jane and Edward grow closer so does the audience to the story. There's a slow and steely build to this narrative and the words of Charlotte Bronte (or at least I am assuming they are words lifted directly from her novel) flow like silk as traded from Jane and Edward's lips to our ears.

Wasikowska's performance is strong and in control. As Jane she's required to stand tall in the presence of the initially fearsome Rochester. However, only fearsome to the audience it would seem as Jane holds her own and then some. Wasikowska's work here doesn't come across like a performance, but rather a fully developed character you don't have the slightest inkling to question, and Fassbender is with her every step of the way. There's something in the eyes of both actors. Twice one asks the other, "What, nothing to say?" and just as each offers a well-timed reply, their faces at each moment say just as much.

My earlier comparison to Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice goes deeper than the fact we're talking about two 19th Century novels. Like Wright, Fukunaga depends on composer Dario Marinelli for a quietly haunting score and even Judi Dench plays a part in both, here as Thornfield's reliable housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax.

Where Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice diverge is in the tone and nature of the story. Jane Eyre plays like an artistic ghost story, complete with a jump scare of its own and things that go bump in the night. Of course, there is nothing spectral about this story and to go too far with the claim it's a frightener would be disingenuous. Yet, there's definitely a menacing tone to certain corners of this story and Fukunaga isn't afraid of keeping those corners in view, even if they are only kept visible by the gentle lap of a candle's flame.

The film, however, is not without its faults. Most notably, the early pacing of the story. Jane's childhood years are told through flashback and while the story ultimately comes together quite well, the flashbacks seem ill-timed and, occasionally, abrupt. It's obvious the attempt to condense Bronte's story was the cause for this. Had the screenplay structure been developed any other way the story would have felt incredibly rushed. The fractured narrative allows for the stretching of the timeline without wasting actual running time. Yet, it still feels like a scene or two are missing around the time Jane leaves school to when she becomes governess at Thornfield.

I was also disappointed certain story lines, such as that of Jamie Bell's St. John Rivers, are so quickly forgotten and never again touched upon. This, again, seems to be due to the flashbacks and the goal of keeping the running time as close to two house as possible, but it would have been nice to get a little closure with regard to certain situations.

Everything said, Jane Eyre remains a film worth seeing. It's not as tightly bound as I would have liked, it has some bumps in the beginning and the end, but the middle-third is quite good and the performances are reason enough to give it a watch.

GRADE: B
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:42 pm

http://www.ocweekly.com/2011-03-10/film/jane-eyre-charlotte-bronte-mia-wasikowska-michael-fassbender/

'Jane Eyre' Is a Gothic Type
A new adaptation of the classic stresses the pursuit of independence.
A A A Comments (0) By KARINA LONGWORTH Thursday, Mar 10 2011

If Jane Eyre is not the greatest of the Great Books, with a permanent position on required-reading lists, it may be the most frequently filmed: At least 10 cinematic versions of the story have been made dating back to the dawn of the silent era—more, if you count made-for-TV adaptations and loose glosses such as Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With a Zombie.

Jane Eyre was directed by Cary Fukunaga; written by Moira Buffini, based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë; and stars Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Sally Hawkins and Jamie Bell. Rated PG-13. Click here for show times.

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Considering the glut of Jane Eyres available to anyone with a Netflix account, there may be no more compelling reason for this new version of the story—directed by Cary Fukunaga and starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender—than timing. In 1996, when Franco Zeffirelli had the last big-screen go at Charlotte Brontë's novel, the Merchant Ivory era of prestige period-pic catnip for Academy voters and AP English students was just past its peak; 15 years later, if there's anything hotter in Hollywood than dull British respectability, it's Gothic romances about teen girls.

The moment may be right to cash in on Jane Eyre's blend of girl-to-woman rites of passage, supernatural/psychological paranoia, tragic love and English accents, but Fukunaga's film is anything but trendy. Rather than Twilight-izing a classic tale—as Catherine Hardwicke appears to have done with Red Riding Hood, which also opens this week but wasn't screened in time for our deadline—Fukunaga has made his Jane Eyre an intimate, thoughtful epic, anchored by strong lead performances and the gorgeous, moody 100-shades-of-gray cinematography of Adriano Goldman.

Fukunaga (whose only previous feature is the 2009 Sundance Prize-winning Sin Nombre) fragments the narrative, introducing us to Jane (Wasikowska) as a young woman run ragged, fleeing an unspecified threat. She is taken in by young clergyman St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) and nursed back to health by his sisters; from there, Jane flashes back to her beginnings. Setting up Jane's tale as a mystery—what was she running from and why?—Fukunaga skips back and forth across years at the speed of memory. This lends an urgency to character-driven vignettes that demonstrate how Jane's identity has been shaped through hardships: the petty cruelty and eventual abandonment by her aunt (Sally Hawkins), Jane's guardian after her parents die; the cherished female friend who dies in her arms at charity school; and, finally, the loneliness of life as governess to Adele, a French orphan who lives in a spooky country house alone but for servants and occasional visits from her ostensible caretaker, the mysterious Mr. Rochester (Fassbender).

It's in the latter phase that Jane longingly states what Fukunaga and screenwriter Moira Buffini have isolated as one of the story's key themes: "I wish a woman could have action in her life, like a man." In her station, the best she can hope for is action through a man, so when Rochester begins calling her to join him for fireside chats, it upends Jane's world. Fukunaga never overplays Jane's sexual awakening, allowing it instead to become evident through her restless distraction. Even after a real romance with Rochester begins, Jane is ever conscious of the social strata and years that separate her and her beloved; their union feels "unreal," every moment of bliss tinged with paranoia. (The brilliantly evocative sound design deepens the sense of the unknown lurking in every scene, from wind through a chimney to thunder rumbling under a first kiss.)

Jane Eyre hits its glorious Gothic peak with Jane in flight from that romance—alone in a storm in a deserted field, the pain of having opened her heart only to have it broken twinned with literal sickness resulting from "exposure." Though she has hit rock bottom, it's this "action" that will ultimately lead Jane to what she's been looking for. Even as it romanticizes agony, Fukunaga's Jane Eyre plays as a correction to the Twilight series—in which a teenage girl idolizes mystically powerful boys—arguing that love, in its perfect state, is a meeting between equals. Using Brontë's text as the basis for an inquiry into free will versus servitude, Fukunaga mounts a subtly shaded yet emotionally devastating examination of what it really means to choose one's own way.

This review appeared in print as "Gothic Type: A new adaptation of Jane Eyre stresses the pursuit of independence."
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:43 pm

http://www.avclub.com/articles/jane-eyre,52983/

C+
Jane Eyre
by Tasha Robinson March 10, 2011

* Director: Cary Fukunaga
* Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench
* Rated: PG-13
* Running time: 115 minutes

The sad fact is, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre just doesn’t make for appealing cinema. The basic elements might sound like the stuff of sparky movie magic: a crumbling, windswept manor; an unsettling secret, two tragic pasts, and a forbidden love between a clever woman and a tempestuous, brooding man. But given that the woman is plain, the man is ugly, the love is largely forbidden because they come from slightly dissimilar social classes, and the actual romance is an unlikely, abrupt template for “first they hate each other, then they love each other” stories, Jane Eyre always seems to suffer in translation, usually from filmmakers who “improve” on the formula by making everything and everyone prettier, smoother, and more generic.

Cary Fukunaga’s capable but largely passion-free new adaptation doesn’t buck the tide. Alice In Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska dresses down for the title role and almost manages to pull off “plain,” but comes across as too timid and introverted to catch the eye of the fiery Rochester, whom Michael Fassbender plays as peevish at worst. Even the creepy, demanding St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) is only a minor obstacle in this adaptation: The pressure he puts on Jane to enter into a loveless marriage with him and head out on a fatal missionary journey amounts to a single weak pitch that she has little trouble shrugging off. This is a quiet, contemplative Jane Eyre, a childproofed one with all the pointed edges sanded off. It’s respectful of the source material, but apparently too much of a stately costume drama to have energy, drive, or a sense of danger.

Like nearly all versions of Jane Eyre, this one has its high points: vivid scenery, particularly in Jane’s opening-sequence flight across the moors; a suitably infuriating performance from Sally Hawkins as Jane’s vicious guardian, Mrs. Reed; the always-formidable Judi Dench as housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax; and a strong sense of the wearying injustice of Jane’s childhood and school days. But Wasikowska doesn’t seem much changed from her Alice role, and she trips through Jane’s adulthood as though it were a fantasia instead of a moody suspense story. And for its part, the film doesn’t contradict her with depth or solidity. It’s an acceptable enough version for those who think “literary classic” means “respectable and dull,” but there isn’t much left when you take the romanticism and the gothic darkness out of gothic romance.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:48 pm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704823004576192260285901344.html

MARCH 11, 2011

See Jane Blossom: An Enthralling 'Eyre'
Wasikowska earns Brontë points for passionate acting; 3-D 'Mars' was born under a bad planet

By JOE MORGENSTERN

Watch a clip from the film 'Jane Eyre.'

Soon after the fevered opening of this latest "Jane Eyre," the far-off figure of the heroine, unmoored on the moors, stands at a crossroads that is hardly more than a crosspaths—four corners faintly traced in one of the film's many understated yet transfixing vistas. Almost everything about Cary Fukunaga's version of the Charlotte Brontë romance is understated yet transfixing, mainly—although far from exclusively—because of Mia Wasikowska's presence in the title role. She embodies Jane's most endearing qualities—courage, passion, devotion, unadorned beauty—but not for a moment the moist poignance that many of the umpteen previous versions have inflicted on her. (Eighteen feature films, to be exact, and nine TV versions.) This Jane meets the world and everyone in it with a rock-solid sense of herself that can only be shaken by love.

Ms. Wasikowska works with economical purity within the novel's 19th-century English setting. Jane's personal power seems entirely her own, rather than some anachronistic notion of self-empowerment. That's particularly stirring in a crucial moment of self-assertion—"Am I a machine without feelings?" she begins—with Michael Fassbender's forbiddingly handsome Rochester. And it's all the more impressive in light of the young Australian star's charmingly modern portrayal of an American teenage daughter in "The Kids Are All Right."

But then the work of Mr. Fukunaga—who directed from a strong adaptation by Moira Buffini—is impressive too. He made his directorial debut two years ago with "Sin Nombre," a dramatically commanding and visually expansive account, in Spanish, of impoverished immigrants riding atop freight trains as they lumber through Mexico toward the U.S. border. That was a singular choice for the California-born son of a Swedish-American mother and a Japanese-American father, though maybe not such a strange one, given his rich family heritage. Choosing a remake of the oft-made Brontë classic did seem odd on the face of it, and more than a little worrisome for those of us who cherished "Sin Nombre" and wished him only the best. As it turns out, there was no need to worry. With these two productions, each distinct from the other though connected by impeccable craftsmanship, Mr. Fukunaga has arrived as a self-effacing master of his medium.

He and Ms. Buffini have heightened the drama of their source material in two ways, both successful. They've rearranged the narrative by starting with Jane's heartsick flight from Thornfield Hall, by spending useful time on her usually scanted encounter with St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) and his family, and by playing, as powerful flashbacks, her harsh childhood as an orphan as well as her time as a governess at Thornfield. The film also has somber fun with Thornfield as a haunted house of alarming sounds and squeaking timbers.

The heart of the story remains Jane's anguished love for Rochester, and that heart beats strongly, even though this "Jane Eyre" moves at a pace some may find slow: I found it perfectly measured. Mr. Fassbender's lord of the cursed manor is worthy of his governess's love, even though he's no match for the one played by Timothy Dalton when it comes to bottomless despair or towering rage, and though he can't, or wisely won't, touch the doomy self-regard that Orson Welles brought to the role. Instead of a black hole taking energy in, he's a pulsar pumping it out in the form of pain relieved, at least for a while, by wry humor and an openness to Jane's beauty. Judi Dench, as Rochester's housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, dispenses gentle humor unburdened by pain, though enriched by maturity and kindness. Will Hughes-Jones designed the production. Michael O'Connor did the marvelous costumes.

When I wrote about "Sin Nombre," which was shot with graphic grandeur by the Brazilian cinematographer Adriano Goldman, I called the use of 35mm film cameras instead of digital equipment a crucial aesthetic choice. That's equally true of "Jane Eyre," which was shot by Mr. Goldman with equal virtuosity, though in a very different visual style. His technique is painterly in its evocation of 19th century English artists. Beyond that, it's distinguished by an abundance of tonal variety: interiors that seem to take on the smell of weathered furniture; softly modeled closeups that cast Jane as a country madonna; candlelit scenes that recall the magical warmth of "Barry Lyndon."

To prove that I didn't embrace "Jane Eyre" uncritically, I'll note that pulses were taken in the 19th century by checking the wrist, not the carotid artery as shown here, and I'll register an objection to the use of surround sound to create squeaking timbers at the back of the theater. This lovely film surrounds us without it.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:49 pm

http://collider.com/jane-eyre-review/80044/

JANE EYRE Review
by Matt Goldberg Posted:March 11th, 2011 at 7:56 am

There’s a vast gulf between adapting a gothic period romance and connecting with a modern audience. Director Cary Fukunaga doesn’t give a damn about that gulf and his adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a lush, confident, and powerful film as a result. Fukunaga embraces the gothic atmosphere to create a haunting portrayal of a romance between a young woman who never loses her sense of self-worth despite the constant cruelty she receives and a man who has attempted to become aloof in order to hide a bizarre and horrifying secret. Anchored by tremendous performances from lead actors Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, Jane Eyre plays on its own terms and audiences who understand the game will be richly rewarded.

The story has a bit of a tough time finding its footing as we’re taken through an awkward framing device and then a flashback into the childhood of Jane Eyre (Wasikowska). An orphan who is hated by her aunt (Sally Hawkins), Jane is sent off to boarding school where she is treated cruelly by the staff and forced to stand upon “the pedestal of infamy.” She eventually graduates and becomes a governess at Thornfield, a castle belonging to the mysterious Mr. Rochester (Fassbender). Impressed by Jane’s confidence, wit, and self-reliance, Rocheter begins a flirtation with the “poor and obscure” young woman that crosses social class and their emotional defenses.

Once Fassbender enters the picture, the film clicks together beautifully. Pre-Rochester, Jane’s story is too Dickensian and watching her face the unwarranted cruelty of authority figures feels drab. But once the romance story comes into play, everything else in the film comes alive. The mysterious horror surrounding Thornfield feels more thematically relevant, and all of the technical elements blossom. The viewer no longer gets hung up on silly lines like Rochester’s declaration that he has “all of his limbs and features” because the world is so rapturous and vibrant. The cinematography is gorgeous, the score is haunting, and the costumes look traditional yet inspired.

While Fukunaga has crafted a stunning picture, a great deal of credit is due to Wasikowska and Fassbender. Their characters are the entry point into the entire picture and if we don’t care about them, then all of Fukunaga’s hard work is meaningless. I was disappointed that last year’s Alice in Wonderland didn’t showcase Wasikowska’s tremendous acting ability, which I had seen from her work on In Treatment. Jane Eyre finally provides that showcase and proves that if there’s a role out there for a serious young actress, Wasikowska must be considered. As for Fassbender, he continues to be one of my favorite actors working today and his meteoric rise over just a few years is well-deserved. Much like he did in 2009’s Fish Tank, he keeps you guessing to his character’s true motives while seducing you with his smoldering intensity.

Fukunaga has made a film that may be impenetrable to those who can only enjoy movies that are drenched in pop-culture and irony. He’s created a beautiful, intriguing gothic romance that eschews mainstream accessibility in favor of taking audiences into a world that’s rarely seen in Hollywood movies. It would be easy to be cynical and snide about Jane Eyre if there was anything less than total devotion from Fukunaga and his lead actors, but everyone has thrown themselves into this world so completely that it’s almost impossible not to follow.

Rating: B+
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:50 pm

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/archives/2011/03/11/jane_eyre_-_review/

Jane Eyre - Review

The moment you see Jane running through the Moors breathless you are sucked into her world. Jane Eyre is played by Mia Wasikowska, in another stellar performance (The Kids Are All Right,) proving she is one of the leading actresses of her generation. Jane Eyre’s story has been told on films many times and now we have a great version for the 21st century written by Moira Buffini and directed by Cary Joi Fukunaga.

Jane has no parents and is banished from her mean aunt’s house (played by Sally Hawkins) to a boarding school where they expect to rid her of any personality, sense of self or individuality. The school clearly failed. Jane is sent to be a governess to the ward of Edward Rochester in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. Mr. Rochester is played by the smoldering Michael Fassbender and as soon as he hits the screen with Mia’s Jane, the sparks begin to fly. Buffini’s script keeps Jane a pace with Rochester and you get sucked into their bizarre courtship.

When Jane fully comprehends and processes that it is she that Edward wants to be with and not the empty headed doll with expectations of marriage, my heart lept for all the plain Janes of the world who get their guy for their brains instead of their birthright or beauty.

Jane’s devastation at Rochester’s betrayal is heartbreaking and she flees him and the situation. But she cannot escape her feelings and after time does not heal her heart nor temper her feelings, she realizes she must return to see her beloved Rochester.

It doesn’t matter what time period it takes place in, a good love story with good acting, a good script and good directing is timeless. And this one definitely qualifies.
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Post by Admin Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:52 pm

http://www.buzzsugar.com/Jane-Eyre-Movie-Review-Starring-Mia-Wasikowska-Michael-Fassbender-14811005

Jane Eyre: Needs More Fire

by Lauren Bradshaw

Friday - 5:05AM

Multiple miniseries and movies have taken on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, so is another adaptation of the classic novel really necessary? Perhaps not, but director Cary Funkunaga's beautifully shot retelling is still a worthy addition to the previous versions of the tale. It stays loyal to Bronte's material while retaining the book's gothic soul.

Mia Wasikowska stars as the literary heroine, a governess at a sprawling but dreary estate called Thornfield Hall. The film begins when a distraught Jane flees Thornfield and is taken in by clergyman St. John Rivers (Jaime Bell). Though Jane won't tell John about her past or where she comes from, the audience sees all of it via flashbacks, beginning with Jane's difficult childhood under the watch of her cold-hearted aunt (Sally Hawkins). Fed up with Jane, the aunt sends her away to the strict Lowood charity school, where Jane grows up with little human connection. Once she's old enough, she lands the job at Thornfield under the aloof Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender) and mysterious events begin to occur in the house. It's a lot of ground for the film to cover, but by encapsulating Bronte's story, we get more insight into Jane, instead of focusing on her relationship with Mr. Rochester. The downside is that their romance could have benefited from the extra attention and development.

Find out why it's worth seeing after the jump.

Jane and Mr. Rochester's relationship gets off to a rocky start. Jane first meets him while walking through the Thornfield property; she spooks his horse, he falls, and the two have a brief interaction that's more abrupt than flirtatious. But Wasikowska and Fassbender's chemistry continues to have a difficult time getting off the ground as the film progresses. While they're excellent when verbally sparring — Jane's quick wit versus Rochester's harshness — the movie struggles to build the longing between them needed to get fully swept up in their melancholy love story.

Wasikowska embodies Jane with a mousy wig and bare face. As Jane, she's often quiet and pensive, but you can see the gears turning in her head as her feelings bubble beneath the surface. Fassbender on the other hand, isn't what you might expect from the Byronic Rochester; for one, he's much more handsome. Even so, Fassbender makes Rochester perfectly repellent and attractive at the same time. He's brash one minute, sympathetic the next, and dare I say, I found him more interesting than Jane. While the two actors together struggle to generate heat, Fassbender is often smoldering on his own.

Though Funkunaga could've played up the mystery of Thornfield more (Rochester's secret in the attic isn't nearly as intriguing as it should be), Bronte's gothic vibe is alive and well in the director's hands, and the scenery is gorgeously gloomy. As Jane plods through the sodden moors or stares out the window of Thornfield, you can feel her isolation and anguish. But I was left wishing that her romantic feelings and her happier moments were equally stirring.
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Post by Admin Sun Mar 13, 2011 5:50 pm

http://iluvcinema.com/2011/03/spoiler-alert-spoiler-alert-jane-eyre/

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! (Jane Eyre)
March 13th, 2011 | Author: iluvcinema

At the end of Jane Eyre, the house was burnt down by fire (set by Bertha) and Rochester ends up blind.

For me, this climatic “reveal” is about as shocking as the Titanic sinking at the end of Titanic. Yet somehow I found myself in an evening screening of Jane Eyre last night in NYC where upon the revelation that Thornfield Hall was destroyed by fire, the sold out audience let out a very audible and collective GASP. It took everything within my power not to let out a boisterous laughter. I was thinking, “really, did you NOT know what happened?”

Obviously, not everyone has read the source material by Charlotte Brontë – although for most people I know it was mandatory high school reading. The fact that the crowd demographic skewed older and likely from the UWS (Upper West Side), I assumed I was watching the movie with a semi-literate crowd. Maybe I am reading too much into this – maybe it is a credit to the movie that the spectacle of seeing a “great house” in fiery ruins really left an impact on the audience.

Realization and Revelation

But I digress; this is the first movie I have seen in the theater this year! Wow – I really cannot believe that. From early on I was really looking forward to seeing this adaptation, primarily because I am a fan of Michael Fassbender’s previous work and was curious to see how his portrayal of Edward Rochester would go over. In that I can say I was not surprised he did a very good job.

But for me the revelation was Mia Wasikowska – she was a FANTASTIC Jane. At the risk of sounding superfluous, I find it hard to express in words how much I liked her performance. She just seemed to embody an image of Jane Eyre that was defiant and at the same time vulnerable. It is delicate balance that can often teeter one way or another but she manages it gracefully.

The adapted screenplay by Moira Buffini was quite impressive as well. Her words were able to breathe life and make more tangible for our modern sensibilities the feelings and frustrations that we all imagined the characters must have experienced on the page. She was able to inject passions, romantic awakening and a real feeling of Jane/Rochester being 2 parts of 1 whole.

In previous adaptations, the central relationship does not feel too much like a matching of equals as much as coming across as slightly patriarchal on Rochester’s part. In this film, you see the growing attraction and fascination on Rochester’s part and Jane’s subtle, growing attraction to her employer. Again this is a credit to the writing and the actors.

Narrative Structure

The one part of the novel that always gave me pause was in the latter half (SPOILER ALERT) when Jane runs away and finds herself in the company of St. John Rivers and her sisters. While I understood its purpose in the novel, I found it a bit frivolous. I found reading it to be a bit tedious.

In the film, Cary Fukunaga decided to play with the placement of this in the narrative – I really liked the result. This part I will not give away and will leave it up to you to decide how you like it.

How Many is Too Many?

An article in The New York Times last week seemed to pose the question: do we need another Jane Eyre adaptation? My response is a resounding “yes.” I have seen quite a few of the Jane Eyre adaptations in my day, notably the 1944 Joan Fontaine/Orson Welles film and 2007 BBC Miniseries (Ruth Wilson/Toby Stephens). Personally I will never tire of seeing this story which while of a particular time, is timeless in the theme of longing for love in a barren landscape (credit due to D/P Adriano Goldman).

One activity I have created for myself when watching a film adaptation is to play the “clock watching” game – in this game I am challenge the filmmaker to capture the spirit and essence of the film in an allotted time. This is easy to do in a more literal miniseries where the filmmaker has the luxury of extra time to draw out more elements of the story. But in a feature film you really have to work hard at compressing the story and still being able to capture the spirit and essence of the author’s words. Director Cary Fukunaga more than surpassed my expectations in this regard. I left the cinema feeling well satisfied.
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Post by Admin Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:09 pm

http://www.parcbench.com/2011/03/13/jane-eyre-does-the-unthinkable-it-makes-the-classic-seem-fresh-and-vital-again/

‘Jane Eyre’ Does the Unthinkable – It Makes the Classic Seem Fresh and Vital Again
Written by Greg Victor in Entertainment, Movies, toparticles

Jane Eyre
***½ (out of 4 stars)
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench
Directed by: Cary Fukunaga,
Rated: PG-13 (a nude image and brief violent content.)

Jane Eyre is all about the past; it is about the walls that have been built up around secrets kept, and it is about society’s ability to prevent those walls from ever being torn down. When, upon meeting Jane for the first time, Rochester asks her, “What is your tale of woe?” – she proudly insists she does not have one.

For years, Hollywood has been intrigued by this story of a feircely independent girl who grows up to wear a bonnet as if it were a halo. Of all the classic 19th-century novels, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë has been the most frequently filmed. So far there have been at least 18 cinematic versions, starting with the 1910 silent film. I guess you could say that ‘To Eyre, is Hollywood.” And why not? It’s pretty strong source material. Given Hollywood’s infatuation with all things British and historical, it is surprising that this gorgeous film was released so early in the year; if it were a year-end holiday release, the film would receive more than a few Academy Award nominations.

So where does that put this latest cinematic adaptation? With so many versions out there, people no doubt have their favorite (I’ll take the 1973 BBC miniseries, starring Sorcha Cusack and Michael Jayston). But no matter which version you prefer, this one must be placed in the top tier. It is refreshing in its absence of gushing romanticism. The film reminds us of the true nature of the novel – that it is fundamentally a brooding, Gothic tale. This version emphasizes the story’s darker elements, adding a sense of horror that is slightly disturbing and very welcome.

For this latest version, screenwriter Moira Buffini and director, Cary Fukunaga, use a framing device that features a grown-up Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) fleeing in despair across the English moors. (Throughout the film this sense of running, running, and yet getting nowhere specific adds to the understanding of Jane’s place in the world). She is taken in by a missionary (Jamie Bell) and his two sisters and proceeds to recreate herself as a member of a makeshift family, replacing the traumatic one she left behind.

In flashback, we see Jane’s punishing childhood years overseen by a heartless aunt (Sally Hawkins). When she eventually becomes the governess at Thornfield Hall, Jane falls under the spell of the sullen and enigmatic Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender), the lord of the manor. Housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench) runs Thornfield Hall with a mixture of pride and disapproval of Rochester’s volatile erruptions. Dench gives her usual spot-on performance.

The casting of Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender creates a smolder that is more intellectual than physical. As such, it deepens the relationship into moments of unexpected ambiguity, which is quite satisfactory. The restraint of each actor’s emotional display demands that the audience pay attention that much more closely. Because the attraction between them simmers for so long, it makes the passion stand out even more when it occurs. As usual, Wasikowska shows that she is one of the contemporary cinema’s most intuitive actresses. In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland she hinted at this gift, but in Jane Eyre, the character’s spiritedness allow her to soar freely. It is an immensely clear performance that gathers sympathy while never overtly demanding it.

Visually, this Jane Eyre is much more muted than one might expect (especially after so many years of Merchant Ivory productions of literature’s classics). But strangely enough, the vast, marshy look of the film is where it finds its true beauty. Like Jane herself, it is a slightly foggy, complicated world, full of the unknown, and waiting to be accepted for what it is before it can be fully appreciated. For the record, I appreciated the frequent sweeping tracking shots that brought the film’s cinematography to just this side of melodrama. It went well with the score’s sweeping strings that also gave the film its stylistic center. After all, don’t Jane and Rochester deserve a touch of old-fashioned Hollywood? Especially when it’s their nineteenth time having their story told?
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Post by Admin Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:13 pm

http://www.filmygoss.com/reviews-2/jane-eyre-review/

Jane Eyre: Review
Reviews Mar 13, 2011

Opens: Friday, March 11 (Focus)
Production: Ruby Films, BBC Films
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins, Simon McBurney, Valentina Cervi, Amelia Clarkson, Freya Parks, Romy Settbon Moore
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Screenwriter: Moira Buffini, based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte
Producers: Alison Owen, Paul Trijbits
Executive producers: Christine Langan, Peter Hampden
Director of photography: Adriano Goldman
Production designer: Will Hughes-Jones
Costume designer: Michael O’Connor
Editor: Melanie Ann Oliver
Music: Dario Marianelli
PG-13 rating, 118 minutes





This moody, smartly handled adaptation is justifiably built around “The Kids Are All Right’s” Mia Wasikowska.

Between 1910 and 1996, 18 feature films based on Charlotte Bronte’s durable 1847 novel Jane Eyre were produced, or one less than every five years. Despite two TV versions in the interim, the 15-year gap since the most recent one had clearly become insupportable, so now the breach has been filled by this moody, smartly handled adaptation justifiably built around Mia Wasikowska, who broke through in last year’s rendition of the equally perennial Alice in Wonderland. Less melodramatic than most adaptations of this tough-minded story of an orphan girl’s arduous journey into womanhood in rural England, the Focus release should elicit particularly ardent reactions from student-aged females and looks poised for a reasonable commercial career on the multiplex great-books circuit.

Given the resilience and unwavering persistence exhibited by their respective heroines, the current film that Jane Eyre most closely resembles is True Grit, which can only work to the new picture’s benefit. Jane’s tenacity and refusal to allow a succession of venal, manipulative, small-minded adults to break her lie at the heart of story’s enduring appeal. Although her critical assessment of the religious hypocrisy of three key men in her life has essentially been jettisoned — important in that it so profoundly shapes her own religious attitudes — the strong spine of the character and the work itself remains sound and is manifest in every moment of Wasikowska’s strong performance.

On the heels of his impressive debut with the markedly contemporary Sin Nombre — a vivid depiction of Central American immigrants struggling across Mexico on their way to the U.S. — for director Cary Joji Fukunaga to abruptly turn to 19th century English lit costume fare might seem initially perplexing. But while set in very different times and places, the two stories are very close at their cores, having to do with surviving harsh environments, ill-intentioned individuals and ghastly deprivation on the road to finding a suitable home and a desirable life. They’re both descriptive of the determination to create something from nothing without compromising one’s integrity and sense of self-worth.

Prefacing the linear story with the grown Jane’s distressed flight from a grand house and eventual rescue by a parson (Jamie Bell) and his two sisters, scenarist Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe) boils down the heroine’s unfortunate early years to the bare minimum: her ouster from the lavish home of her hateful aunt (Sally Hawkins) and consignment to the Dickensian horrors of the Lowood charity school for girls, where her best friend dies in her arms.

Intriguingly, Fukunaga and his resourceful cinematographer Adriano Goldman visually constrict much of the initial action by tightly composing images of Jane with the use of curtains, door frames and so on, which intensely focuses attention on the characters’ faces and the way they regard and perceive one another.

The other visual hallmark is landscapes. With rugged and barren Derbyshire locations standing in for the Yorkshire settings, the sense of isolation, of there being no recourse from the world into which one was born, is strong, and the moderate graininess and desaturation of the images reinforce the feeling of forlorn harshness.

But in a living demonstration of the cliche that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Jane emerges from her trials with a good education and stringent moral values. She also has few prospects, which is why she happily accepts a position at Thornfield, the estate of the mysterious and mercurial Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender).

Crucially, the scenes of Jane and Rochester getting to know each other, with her becoming captivated by his powerful personality and with him increasingly appreciating her ability to cope with his quicksilver intellect and diabolical mood swings, are among the film’s best, well establishing a strong link between them. Gradually, as she tutors Rochester’s young French-speaking ward (Romy Settbon Moore) and is counseled by housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench), Jane becomes aware of what haunts Thornfield and what tortures the first man she has loved, leading to her abrupt departure and a new round of self-testing.

Unadorned to the point of physical ordinariness and with copper-colored hair generally pulled back severely, Wasikowska must convey everything about Jane from her posture, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice. The character’s obstinacy could have become wearisome, but Wasikowska provokes ever-growing admiration for a woman who has learned the virtue of patience but in the end will not submit to what she knows is not right. The proto-feminist aspect of the character has undoubtedly fed the popularity of the book over the years, but in a broader sense Jane is most impressive for how she never sinks to the levels of the limited and downright dreadful people who so often enjoy the upper hand over her.

However, a key aspect of Jane’s makeup, her religiosity, has been sacrificed, perhaps out of fear that modern audiences wouldn’t warm to the issue. Not apparent in the film is how Jane develops her own nondoctrinaire version of faith, largely in reaction to the false or misguided piety of Mr. Brocklehurst, the head of her severe school; St. John Rivers, the rural clergyman who takes a curdled fancy to her; and Rochester himself, whose previous relationships with women leave a great deal to be desired from a moral standpoint.

Fassbender cuts a more prosaic, realistic figure as the tormented, romantic Rochester than did the screen’s most celebrated performer of the role, Orson Welles, in the effective 1944 version opposite Joan Fontaine and directed by Robert Stevenson. The long, discursive dialogues he instigates in the novel are also boiled down to little more than quips here, but the actor brings power and an assertive presence to the role all the same. Supporting performances are more than serviceable.
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Post by Admin Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:14 pm

http://www.ocean10studios.com/jane-eyre-movie-review/

Jane Eyre: film review

Posted by admin on March 13, 2011 in Hot News

I’m generally against to regulating “Masterpiece Theater” as a approach to impersonate a unusual film subsequent from a classics. For one thing, many “Masterpiece Theater” productions are a lot improved than many movies. Still, a irreverent is not always misplaced. “Jane Eyre,” a latest cinematic instrumentation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, is like “Masterpiece Theater” but a masterpiece.

It lacks what it many needs – passion. Without it, this “Jane Eyre” is a lot closer to a intermediate fear film than a brooding square of deep-dish romanticism. we sojourn distant fonder of a 1944 chronicle starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, hammy as it is. (Less noted was a 1996 Franco Zeffirelli film. we did not see a 1983 miniseries, that during a really slightest contingency have congested a lot some-more of a novel onto a screen.)

For this latest incarnation, a screenwriter Moira Buffini and her director, Cary Fukunaga, have framed a Brontë novel utilizing a framing device featuring a grown-up Jane (Mia Wasikowska) journey in fear conflicting a English moors. She is taken in by a pleasantly companion (Jamie Bell) and his dual sisters and deduction to methodically reconstruct for herself a temporary family to reinstate a harrowing one she left behind.

In flashbacks that seem some-more Dickensian than Brontëan, we see Jane’s punishing childhood years overseen by a vicious aunt (Sally Hawkins) and heartless headmaster (Simon McBurney). When she is done governess during Thornfield Hall, that resembles Dracula’s castle, Jane falls underneath a spell of a puzzling Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender), a duke of a manor, for whom a word “sullen” is inadequate. Rochester is not a kind of man we entice over to liven adult a party.

Brooding can, of course, be romantic, even sexy. It can also, as here, be blah. we don’t consider this is Fassbender’s fault, exactly. He is an actor who can be energetic even in repose. In “Hunger,” he played an IRA restrained on a craving strike and it was one of a many earthy performances I’ve ever seen. My theory is that Fukunaga straitened Fassbender’s energies to fit a slight proportions of Gothic melodrama. Perhaps he feared that a some-more generous opening competence seem too contemporaneous. Or something.

At a conflicting impassioned is Wasikowska’s Jane, who is as tamped down as Rochester is morose. She’s still a best thing in a movie. As she demonstrated final year in films as manifold as “The Kids Are All Right” and “Alice in Wonderland,” Wasikowska is a marvelously discerning actress, and she does conduct to communicate Jane’s extreme spiritedness. (Jane falls only brief of being an central feminist precursor, that is substantially all for a best. Not all from a past needs to be brought into a present.)

I wish a filmmakers had devoted us to feel a approach by a story rather than perplexing to wow us with a restless measure and unhinged camera flourishes conflicting darkling landscapes. When we wrote progressing that this “Jane Eyre” lacked passion, we should have competent that statement. It has passion all right – in a stylistics. Those unhappy adore birds Jane and Rochester are no compare for a tracking shots and stroke violins. Grade: C+ (Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements including a bare picture and brief aroused content.)
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Post by Admin Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:29 pm

http://www.cinemaverdict.com/2011/03/13/cinema-verdict-review-jane-eyre/

Cinema Verdict Review: Jane Eyre

Marco Duran | 13 March 2011 | Reviews

Never Jane Eyre
OPENING: 03/11/2010
STUDIO: Focus Features
RUN TIME:115 min
ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Return to Thornfield.

Opening Statement
Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel has endured as a mainstay on many reading lists and has only been gaining in popularity. Since 1910, it has surprisingly produced 18 different film versions, not to mention 8 more adaptations for television. Over the years people, including my wife, have been eagerly awaiting a definitive version. This newest adaptation is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga who is best known so far for his breakthrough debut, Sin Nombre. Hearing that makes one unsure if he is the right fit for such a project that is not only a period piece, but also an epic and beloved tale. However, upon further inspection, similarities arise. Both stories explore what it means to have a family, or lack thereof, while dealing with loss and the search for a better life. So in that respect, maybe Cary was perfectly suited after all to showcase this beautiful story.

Facts of the Case
The novel, to which the film holds a firm but playful grasp, begins with Jane as a child who is orphaned and raised by her cruel aunt. She is sent away to Lowood, a boarding school where life continues to be harsh and strict. Her only consolation is another girl with whom she becomes best friends. Unfortunately, this too does not last, and when Jane is old enough to leave, she strikes off on her own to become a governess at Thornfield Hall. Here, her life improves significantly and she soon meets the master of this manor, Edward Rochester. Dark and impassioned, he becomes intrigued by Jane, and against formalities requests her presence often. Jane privately falls in love with him, all the while believing there is no chance he would ever return the affection. At this isolated and imposing estate, Jane soon learns there is more than meets the eye, and when she discovers Rochester’s closely guarded secret, her life is turned upside down, and she flees into the unknown. She finally ends up at the house of the family Rivers, where the three siblings take her in and find her a job. Years go by as she desperately tries to forget Rochester but her longing heart cannot be quieted. Over the mysterious moor, she hears him calling her name and driven by her inextinguishable love, she searches him out.

The Evidence
Since the story of Jane Eyre has been around long enough to be in the public domain, I credit the screenwriter, Moira Buffini, with infusing this old story with so much freshness and life. The basic story of where she came from and who she becomes is necessary to set a foundation, but it’s not where the excitement comes from. The real story begins when Jane, played by Mia Wasikowska from the new Alice in Wonderland, gets to Thornfield and ultimately meets Rochester, who is masterfully played by Michael Fassbender (from Inglourious Basterds and coming soon in X-Men: First Class). While this story has various themes, it has love at its core, and it’s too easy for a romantic drama that spans so much time to get carried away with the grandeur of an epic (i.e. The English Patient). Yet Buffini knew exactly what to keep from the book and what to edit down, keeping the story from becoming convoluted or stagnant. In a stroke of brilliance, Buffini starts the film in the middle when Jane flees Thornfield. We then see her bleak childhood as a series of flashbacks instead of a melancholy first act. This also allows the viewer the chance to know all the characters up front, including and especially the Rivers siblings who come in at the third act, when an audience doesn’t necessarily want to meet new people. With this vivid new beginning, you first see the tension and fear that Jane exhibits as she runs, and after seeing the situation second time around in the movie, you can feel it with her.

Surprisingly this movie is very reminiscent of another classic tale, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Those of you familiar with this best picture winner will have a bit of a spoiler for Jane Eyre, but here goes anyway. Both movies feature a young woman who is supposedly plain and ordinary, and therefore doesn’t think anyone could ever love her. Along comes a dashing, experienced older man who is bored with vapid, beautiful women and cannot resist this young creature with an otherworldly presence about her. Both stories have their version of an obstacle in a sinister secret that threatens their fragile relationship. Interestingly, both estates contain this threat, leaving only one possible ending if the two soulmates can ever be together. Where Jane Eyre differs is the focus, this title character has a future (with or without Rochester), while Rebecca’s title character is in the past. We know the strength of Jane because of our journey through her life, so we are more invested in her character.

The location that was chosen for the film couldn’t have been more perfect. There was once a private house in that specific area of Derbyshire in England that is thought to have inspired Bronte in writing about Thornfield, and the filmmakers were able to take advantage of the natural yet impressive surrounding landscapes. All of the atmosphere worked easily into Cary’s idea of bringing out a gothic tone in the film. The novel describes the ominous and haunting look of Thornfield and they were able to capture all the mystery that the manor was shrouded in.

There was an interesting supporting role of Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper of Thornfield, played by Judi Dench. Normally we are accustomed to seeing her in dominant roles of power or control, whether playing M from the James Bond series or the queen of England. So, to see her in a position where she was being ordered about is contrary to what we know of her. I’m not sure if this was faulty casting or if the filmmakers were trying to bring a sense of dignity to the role of the Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper who was alluded to being a distant relative to Rochester. Either way it was odd at first, but still a pleasure to watch.

After seeing Michael Fassbender in Hunger and Centurion, I knew he could magnificently carry a film. Now it seems he has cemented a place to stay, and is definitely the upcoming actor to watch. The scenes he had with Mia, and specifically the dialogue involved, were so poignant since there were only few moments the two had to convey their emotion. Mia in her own right played the “manic pixie dream girl” well as the inspiration to lift Rochester out of the depths and into the light.

Closing Statement
My wife loved this film immensely, and if you couldn’t tell, while I am not its target audience, I loved it too. The care taken over each aspect, each shot, each detail made it easy to fall for. It was vivid, beautiful and complex, like the story and even Jane herself. Such tales can be trite and over told, and it has been so long since we’ve seen romance on the screen. It takes us going back to the classics to remember what we’ve forgotten, the power that comes with love. In the end, you understand the need that both characters had for each other, and the only home they longed for was fulfilled in one another.

The Verdict

9/10
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http://thegloriousninth.blogspot.com/2011/03/short-review-jane-eyre-2011.html

Thursday, March 10, 2011
Review: "Jane Eyre" (2011)

I had a chance to see Cary Fukunaga's "Jane Eyre" last night and it was lovely - eloquent, intelligent, spooky. Charlotte Brontë's century-and-a-half old classic, which is a poignant love story with a touch of Gothic mystery, has been endlessly and needlessly adapted, yet the filmmakers and the wonderful cast headlined by the two young up-and-comers breathe new life to what could have a been a deliberate, dawdling exercise.
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The casting of Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender just made too much sense to falter on screen and thankfully they're both up to the task. The former, delicate, firm, devastating and the latter a towering Mr. Rochester - both unwaveringly boorish and mysteriously charming. (Of course, Mr. Fassbender knows all about courting young English ladies, as he did so ambiguously in Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank").
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Director Cary Fukunaga (who debuted two years ago with the stark, moving immigration tale, "Sin Nombre") has publicly stated that he intended to embrace the spookier elements of Brontë's novel, but his bigger contribution (in collaboration with Moira Buffini's adaptation) is the seamless, time-shifting narrative, which is deftly applied and rarely settles into a predictable groove.
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And the technical aspects are all first-class, from Adriano Goldman's naturally-lit interiors to Dario Marianelli's subtle, ascending score to Fukunaga's unfussy, carefully measured injections of weight, "Jane Eyre" is both classical enough to please Brontë fans and curious enough to attract new ones. [B+]
Posted by Chase Kahn at 10:36 AM
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