Cary Fukunaga on directing Jane Eyre

Cary Fukunaga speaks to Movieline about his forthcoming take on Jane Eyre and says very interesting things indeed:

There’s not anything inherently fresh and vital about doing a remake, but Cary Fukunaga’s upcoming take on Jane Eyre may buck that trend. The 32-year-old director of the art house smash Sin Nombre is regarded as one of Hollywood’s most promising new talents, and he’s lined up two other up-and-comers to star in his adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel: Alice in Wonderland heroine Mia Wasikowska, and Michael Fassbender of Inglourious Basterds and Fish Tank. This weekend, Fukunaga spoke to Movieline about what he’s got planned for the film.
“I’d known there was a Jane Eyre script out there for a couple of years, and it was one of my favorite movies as a kid,” Fukunaga told me, referring to the 1944 Robert Stevenson-directed version. “When [Sin Nombre] came out in the UK, I took advantage of that to meet with the BBC, and it turned out that there was no director that was attached anymore and the script happened to be amazing.”
Is he daunted by remaking one of his favorite films? Not quite, Fukunaga said. “The Orson Welles-Joan Fontaine version was of an era. You wouldn’t make a film like that anymore. I’m a stickler for raw authenticity, so I’ve spent a lot of time rereading the book and trying to feel out what Charlotte Brontë was feeling when she was writing it. That sort of spookiness that plagues the entire story…there’s been something like 24 adaptations, and it’s very rare that you see those sorts of darker sides. They treat it like it’s just a period romance, and I think it’s much more than that.”
It’s also a very different kind of story from Sin Nombre, an illegal immigrant drama that Fukunaga filmed in Mexico with unknown actors. For a young director still establishing his visual sensibility, Fukunaga admitted that he’ll be expanding his repertoire quite a bit with Eyre.
“It’s a little more thought out,” he said. “On Sin Nombre, [cinematographer] Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can’t really block a scene in a traditional way. On this film, we’re working with such pros that can work and hit their mark, so we’re coming up with some interesting ways to shoot the film. It’s all about tension and creating that sense of horror underneath.”
Among those pros is a supporting cast that includes Dame Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins. I asked Fukunaga how it feels to work with actors who aren’t merely trained, but among the most lauded in their field.
“It’s a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who’s made more films than I’ll ever make in my lifetime.” He laughed. “We don’t start rehearsals until next week, so ask me again then and I can tell you with more authority.”
Jane Eyre begins shooting at the end of the month. (Kyle Buchanan)

Everything sounds really well, but we are particularly pleased about the fact that he's grasped that Jane Eyre is 'much more' than a 'period romance'.

Another take on Jane Eyre is Polly Teale's, whose play is currently on stage at Perth. The Times reviews the production and gives it 3 out of 5 stars:

What a great tale Jane Eyre is. How many storytelling archetypes did Charlotte Brontë create in one unputdownable novel, from mad women in the attic to cruel schools to houses burning down at critical moments, not to mention the climactic “Reader, I married him.”
Which is why, in what is in many ways an admirably ambitious production, mixing dance and circus skills with music and a set that provides a final coup de theatre it would be a shame to give away, it is a pity that the one ingredient that is a bit muddy is the storytelling.
You never actually get the “Reader, I married him” line in Polly Teale’s 15-year-old adaptation, originally for Shared Experience, which is the one the director Ian Grieve has chosen. Unlike the novel, Jane does not have the opportunity to address the audience directly. What she does have is an alter ego, played by a dancer who represents the sensual, ecstatic side of her nature, the one she has had to suppress to get her through all the vicissitudes of her upbringing.
That performer, Vanessa Cook in this case, also portrays the mad woman in the attic, Mr Rochester’s first wife Bertha, who comes from the warm, passionate West Indies. The double-up reinforces the other side of Jane, which is only set free in the denouement.
This is a dynamite idea, both psychologically and theatrically, but Grieve, although following the shape of the original Shared Experience production quite closely to begin with, doesn’t quite set it up clearly enough. The canter through Jane’s formative years feels rushed and it is not until after Jane has arrived at Thornfield Manor that things start to clear up.
That is partly down to a commanding performance from Tom McGovern as Rochester who takes charge in a way that Kath Duggan as Jane, more experienced as a dancer than an actor, is not quite able to do.
Still, there are many pluses here, not least the ingenious live musical score from Jon Beales and Iain Johnstone.
Box office: 01738 621031, to March 20 (Robert Dawson-Scott)

The Haringey Independent has an article on Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell, who now has a blue plaque in her honour, and makes use of a strange kind of plural:

"Perhaps despite its popularity, her Gothic novels did not stand the test of time in the same way softer novels from the Jane Austens and Emily Brontes have done. (...)" (Elizabeth Pears)

We confess to not having read anything by Charlotte Ridell but we find it really, really hard to believe that her novels were 'harder' than those by the Emily Brontës (to continue with the strange plural. They couldn't have picked two more unique sort of writers to use as examples if they had tried).

As for blogs, Book-a-rama has bought a beautiful edition of Jane Eyre, Life is Short. Read Fast reviews the novel and I Hate Everything wonders, 'why is Jane Eyre so awful?' (of course we beg to disagree!). Mindful of Home is trying to decide who she likes best: Charlotte Brontë or Jane Austen. On Flickr, cobbybrook has uploaded a painting of East Riddlesden Hall, Wuthering Heights in the latest screen adaptation.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Victorian Era