Jane Eyre conquers the US

In our last post we talked about the new US tour of Polly Teale's adaptation of Jane Eyre by The Acting Company. This weekend, as it is widely known by the readers of BrontëBlog, the new production of Jane Eyre (2006, BBC) will be aired on PBS. The news are full of Jane Eyre articles and references:

The Philadelphia Daily News:

PBS' latest "Masterpiece Theatre" (9 p.m. Sunday and Jan. 28, Channel 12) is one of the liveliest I can remember seeing.

And possibly the most sensual.

Ruth Wilson is luminous as the plain-Jane governess who catches the eye, and the heart, of her employer, Mr. Rochester (Toby Stephens). And though the bones of Bronte's story remain, and even some of the dialogue, the pair's interactions, especially in the second night, might well have made the author blush, some 19th-century restrictions being thought perhaps unsuited to 21st-century audiences. (Not that any clothing comes off.) This is no "Reader, I married him" retelling, but a fresh romance born of a very old story. (Ellen Gray)

Justine Elias in The Phoenix insists in the 'sensuality' of the new adaptation and in Toby Stephens's charms :

There’s more to this story than doomy love talk and long walks across England by a governess in love with her rich, unavailable employer. Director Susanna White (Bleak House) and writer Sandy Welch (BBC America’s North and South) perceive so much humor, darkness, and eroticism that even those who’ve studied the book or seen any of the dozen or so TV and film adaptations will wonder how — or whether — the forthright Jane Eyre will get out from underneath her moral dilemma . . . Wait! She’s underneath him? Rochester is on top of Jane Eyre? Did that really happen? Which chapter was that in? In October, seven million BBC viewers tuned in to find out: how hot is this going to get?

Sahara-hot, if not Hell-hot. How thrilling and right to begin the tale of this castaway not with the same old recitation of the novel’s famous opening line (“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day”) but with 10-year-old Jane (Georgie Henley, Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) already on the march. Here’s a solitary figure, swathed in red silk, exploring desert dunes, her eye on the horizon. Our heroine, sitting “cross-legged like a Turk,” has dreamt herself into an illustrated book. Then Jane’s real life, with all its denials, intrudes — a moment that neatly explains why people gravitate to great fiction and drama. As Jane grows up, there’s no voiceover narration; instead, a subjective camera suggests her attitude toward the world. Ruth Wilson, who is just 24, makes a cool, watchful adult Jane — a mysterious beauty in the Emily Watson/Isabelle Huppert mode. (...)

And our hero? He looks old enough, as Brontë wrote, to be Jane’s father. But just barely. By the end of part one, Toby Stephens’s Rochester will have displaced Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice Darcy as the exemplar of screwed-up but fatally attractive leading men in period adaptations on TV. Go ahead, dismiss him as too handsome, too arch, too flirtatious right out of the gate: Stephens plays Rochester as though he’d been passed around an all-female congregation like a collection basket on Easter morning. To Jane’s straightforward assessment of her musical skills, he sneers, “That’s what they all say.” Bitter, yes. Sorry? No.

Michael S. Gant in Metroactive contributes with (another) title playing with Eyre: To Eyre is human (sic). He defends the 1944 Robert Stevenson's film as the best version of the novel. We would like to clarify something, once again. The best adaptation of a novel, Jane Eyre in this case, and the best film are two different things that regrettably are confused too often. The 1944 version is, in the humble opinion of this half of BrontëBlog, the best film among all the Jane Eyre adaptations, but it's not the best adaptation of the book.

The new BBC production gives us much more of Bronté's novel. Maybe too much. The opening scene of Jane's horrible boarding-school days drags. The real fun doesn't begin until Toby Stephens shows up with his lustily tousled hair and puffy shirt. The man knows how to brood. Young Ruth Wilson (Suburban Shootout), with a severe center part, slowly comes into her own as Jane. Demure and self-effacing, she burns with considerable inner fire. On the downside, after Jane leaves Thornfield, we must endure the bizarre sidebar about the stick-up-the-ass clergyman St. John (a.k.a. "Sinjin"), followed by a ridiculous inheritance-ex-machina moment.

And then there is Adele. I don't like to slag on child actors, but Cosima Littlewood delivers a French accent so grossly exaggerated that it sounds like a Monty Python skit.

ScrippNews talks about the feminist 'touch' of the new production:

It takes a while to warm up to Wilson's Jane, and that's not a bad thing; we are as curious about Jane as those around her must be, and although we sympathize with her, we must grow to like her. (...)

As Rochester, Toby Stephens, son of acting legends Maggie Smith and the late Robert Stephens, is a much handsomer, more humorous, less moody Rochester than we usually see. He is a desperate deceiver and seducer of Jane, whom he loves, even though the north wing of his castle, Thornfield Hall, hides an ominous secret that dooms any possible marriage. (...)

The director, Susanna White ("Bleak House"), and screenwriter, Sandy Welch ("Our Mutual Friend"), provide a feminine and feminist sensibility. Several examples: Jane is permitted to be portrayed as unattractive (unlike, say, when the gorgeous Joan Fontaine played the role); in one of the best scenes, Jane is instrumental in extinguishing the fire in Rochester's bedroom; and a madwoman who is key to the plot is shown to be victim as well as menace. (...) (Jim Heinrich)

David Wiegand in The San Francisco Chronicle highlights Sandy Welch's script and Ruth Wilson's performance:

The adaptation by Sandy Welch is patient, careful and respectful, not only in the area of Brontë's character development but also in its understanding of the thematic complexities of the novel. At every turn, the notion of duality in nature and human relationships is gently referenced, from the mirror images of family portraits that frame the entire story, to a pair of silly twin sisters who dress alike but in fact share nothing like the kind of bond Rochester and Jane share, able to know each other's thoughts despite being separated by miles and years.(...)

Most people know the story, yet it's a tribute to this production that even the most seemingly familiar plot elements surprise us, in large part because we are so lost in the truthfulness of the character development. I suppose one could think of Wilson as "plain," at least when compared with a classic Hollywood beauty like Fontaine, but, in fact, Wilson convinces us of Jane's lack of physical beauty largely through her performance, which is note-perfect from beginning to end.

Stephens, though, knocks the entire adaptation into another level of brilliance altogether with his portrayal of Rochester. For my money, Welles was far too dark and threatening to be a credible object of Jane's affection in the 1944 film. Stephens, who gets his acting chops from his late father, Robert, and his indomitable mom, Maggie Smith, plays Rochester as haunted, as opposed to haunting. At the same time, this is a man who feels love, who finds the young governess not only captivating but amusing as well. The corners of his mouth, though frozen for years, begin to turn upward, and one of the great joys of the film is watching this man's humanity reassert itself as he gives himself over to his feelings.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV