Jane Eyre 2011. Day 2 ~ BrontëBlog

Current Status:
Box Office: According to IndieWire:

According to estimates, the film is on track to gross $182,317 from just 4 screens in New York and Los Angeles, averaging $45,579 - which is by far the best per theater average of 2011 (unless one counts Kevin Smith’s roadshow tour of “Red State”).
“‘Jane Eyre’‘s strong box office momentum continued from Friday to Saturday with a sizeable 53% increase from Friday to Saturday,” Focus Features said. “Strong matinee business in NY and LA helped to drive the large uptick in Saturday’s business; late matinee, prime and late shows continued to experience actual or close to sell out conditions in every theater… The combination of strong reviews, positive word-of-mouth (as indicated by increase from Fri to Sat), and audience demand for a quality movie choice in the marketplace (reflected in heavy advance ticket sales) helped to deliver great opening weekend box office results.”
Its best gross was at New York’s Lincoln Square, where the film took in $54,387. (Peter Knegt)

Rottentomatoes: 87 % Fresh
Reviews Counted: 38
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Fresh: 33 | Rotten: 5
Audience: 78 liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 10,341

Metacritic
Metascore: 78 out of 100
Generally favorable reviews based on 21 Critics

New York Times:
Average Reader Rating

4 rating, 43 votes

IMDB
169 IMDb users have given a weighted average vote of 7.3 / 10

Votes Percentage Rating

79 46.7% 10

18 10.7% 9

24 14.2% 8

11 6.5% 7

11 6.5% 6

6 3.6% 5

3 1.8% 4

1 0.6% 3

2 1.2% 2

14 8.3% 1

Arithmetic mean = 8.0. Median = 9

Some more reviews:

Positive

Parcbench (***½ out of 4 stars)
‘Jane Eyre’ Does the Unthinkable – It Makes the Classic Seem Fresh and Vital Again. (...)
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. (Greg Victor)

Cinema Verdict (9 out 10 stars)

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. (Marco Duran)

Hollywood Gossip:

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. (Jen)

And Looking Closer.

Mostly Positive

Filmygoss:

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. (...)
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.

The Scriptorium:

It would be too much to expect secularizing Britain to understand a woman who was neither slave or feminist, but merely Christian. As a result, Focus has made a film that does not challenge, but instead placates the core audience, if the reaction at the screening full of gracefully aging NPR-listening female English majors I observed, is any indication.
This a very good movie, well worth the time and is the best in a weak class, but it is a missed opportunity at being a great movie. As a result, it will become required AP English high school viewing with all the uncomfortable bits to the modern NEA-types hidden in the attic. (John Mark Reynolds)

Mostly Negative:

I've Had It With Hollywood:

This latest film incarnation alas, feels strangely airless. Many things are right. The mood is dark and gloomy, the costumes and decor feel authentic without calling too much attention to themselves. The music by Dario Marianelli is duly ravishing. The cinematography by Adriano Goldman is lovely. The rich and sparkling dialogues seem very faithful to the source. Everything is careful and correct. But, and I say this with great heaviness of heart, there is a lack of passion, a lack of madness, a lack of fire. Which is to say that, among other things, there is no chemistry between Jane (Mia Wasilowska) and Rochester (Michael Fassbender). Their individual characters feel too constrained, as if director Cary Fukunaga was afraid to let loose and risk going over the top. (Grande Enchilada)

And Splatter on Film.

Michael Fassbender Online uploads to YouTube interviews/B-rolls/Signage from the Jane Eyre premiere in New York. Check Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Cary Fukunaga, Rose Byrne, Alison Owen and Paul Trijbits.

There are still some new interviews to the cast and director of Jane Eyre 2011. Blast Magazine interviews Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska. The interview contains some interesting comments about the ending of the film and technical stuff:

BLAST: We were amazed by the film technically: you shoot a lot in candlelight and you make it look so natural. It’s so different from your first film – technically, were there big challenges for you?
CF: It’s only hard for the focus puller. This film is different in that, in the last film, I wanted to do more of photojournalism and everything was handheld, even if it wasn’t shaky handheld, which allowed a lot of freedom. If I didn’t like a shot, it’s really quick just to readjust it for the next take; where in this, the camera’s often locked off, there was much of a sort of ballet-like choreography to some of the camera moves, which require laying track and committing to a shot. When you’re putting time in and your schedule’s compressed, there’s much more pressure to get it right the first time.
In terms of the lighting and the candlelight and all that kind of stuff, it was just trying to be as naturalistic as possible and not trying to make things look overlit in a sort of ‘Hollywood movie’ kind of way. Just keep it raw and simple. (...)
BLAST: So the ending was happier, but in terms of the book, it could have been happier. Why did you choose to do that?
CF: I think it’s the equivalent, in cinematic language, of saying ‘Reader, I married him.’ It’s like a wink at the camera, and that’s just a different film. Every time I think that Charlotte addresses her audience in the book is like a departure – that was a unique sort of device at that time period, in terms of a literary device. But I think to be consistent in the film there has to be a consistent tone, especially over as short a period as two hours.
So what I wanted to do is end it in a way that, for the people who know what happens, it’s great, for people who don’t know what happens, there’s still this ‘what’s going to happen’ that shouldn’t be all buttoned-up and answered for them. It’s what makes the story live inside you after you’ve finished watching it. In a way, I think the weakest part of Charlotte’s book is the end, that last chapter, where she just say ‘Oh well, I’ve written 500 pages, I might as well sum this up.’ I was kind of disappointed in that part of the book, actually. (...)
BLAST: Does any of this shift over to you in your acting, the historical details?
MW:I also like to be as informed as I can because it’ll always help you out when you have a bank of knowledge that you can draw on. And then there were a lot of things that informed my experience and Jane’s character: the costumes and the corset and understanding that restriction and that repression, and then also the locations and just being in those castles and feeling the isolation of them and the loneliness and how distant one estate is from another. All of those things help. (...)
BLAST: What was behind your decision to go with the widescreen, the 1.85:1 frame size?
CF: It’s because I felt the story was really centered around the tête-à-tête between Rochester and Jane – it’s about their heads, not the rooms around them. And in 2.35, which would be the sort of kneejerk aspect ratio for historical films, you’d be missing so much more about what’s happening around them. (Molly J. Coombs)

MovieMuse quotes from a screening after-talk given by Cary and Mia:

A British gentleman “from Wisconsin” highlighted the use of regional accents in the film, which was a very conscious decision:
CF: In this particular case, I knew for most audiences beyond the UK that accents wouldn’t necessarily read but it was important for me in terms of the authenticity that you did get a sense of Jane’s accent. We definitely talked a lot about what region it would be and how broad it would be, broad being a more pronounced accent and therefore lower class or how refined it would be in terms of RP which is received pronunciation, which is the Queen’s English. For Rochester, being an Irishman, Fassbender came in very late with the accent part so he worked very hard for two weeks to get a very complicated mix of RP and regional at the same time which is not an easy thing to pull off actually when you’re in the midst of doing scenes. It’s a very difficult balance to pull off for any actor and it’s a very subtle thing that obviously only UK people will appreciate.
MW: We really liked the idea of Jane not being quite as refined and not being quite as polished. Her accent giving some echo to her past being not as polished and proper as others. We also justified that by saying she’d mainly be raised probably by Bessie, her nurse, who had a very strong Northern accent and then it would’ve been weened out of her during her time at Lowood and refined and polished a little bit more but still having a hint of an edge. (Read more) (Steven)

Another interview with Cary Fukunaga can be found on TrèsSugar.

Elle has an article (half serious, half fun) about what Jane Eyre can teach to modern women:

This weekend, an entirely new generation of women will learn about Jane Eyre—by way of heading to the multiplex to see some hot Gothic sexual tension thrown between Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender in Cary Fukinaga's new film adaptation. At first, it will be Fassbender's seductive gaze that will draw them in—and that's fine. Nothing wrong with hunkifying your life! But eventually, the calm, mousy qualities of Ms. Eyre will flow over this new generation like a babbling brook of cool Charlotte Brontë wisdom. Or at least I'd like to think so. (Read more) (Rachel Syme)

The Boston Globe has a list of several elements from the Charlotte Brontë novel that adaptors always retain:

The hell Q&A: On Jane’s first meeting with Mr. Brocklehurst, the fire-and-brimstone-breathing villain who manages the school she attends, he asks the little girl how she plans to avoid going to hell. Her answer is a reliable laugh line. “I must keep in good health, and not die,’’ she says.

Helen’s death, Battlements:, Governesses, Pilot the dog (Read more) (Laura Collins-Hughes)

And a list of the frequent changes made:

Take Mr. Rochester’s castle from the 1944 movie, and the tower where Bertha lives: They’re Hollywood inventions. Brontë calls Thornfield a three-story, battlement-topped mansion “of proportions not vast, though considerable; a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat.’’ But in cinematic tradition, it’s almost always an enormous, medieval stone pile.
Similarly, “Jane Eyre’’ on stage and screen tends to have principals significantly better looking than the homely specimens Brontë describes. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the 1983 TV miniseries, with a pre-Bond Timothy Dalton as Mr. Rochester. In the 1934 movie, starring Virginia Bruce and Colin Clive, Jane is an unabashedly glamorous and effervescent blonde, even as a child.
Made during the Depression, that version runs a scant 62 minutes. Nonetheless, it manages to introduce a whole new major character, a Thornfield servant named Sam Poole, whose necessity to the plot becomes clear at the end. Jane, in exile from Thornfield, is serving dinner to the poor at a mission when Sam, now unemployed, comes through the soup line and tells her of the fire.
Evolving social attitudes influence interpretations, too. In the book, Jane expresses sympathy for Bertha because her insanity is no fault of her own. But versions of “Jane Eyre’’ in other media make Bertha more human than Brontë did. She is often beautiful, and she is palpably in anguish. A stage version by the British theater company Shared Experience, which had its US premiere in 2000, exemplifies this: Once Jane arrives at Thornfield, Bertha is onstage throughout, her suffering unremitting and almost always unseen by the other characters.
Not even Blanche Ingram, the socially prominent but money-grubbing belle who Jane fears will marry Mr. Rochester, is universally scorned by adapters. The 2006 “Masterpiece Theatre’’ version dares to make her fairly sympathetic, the product of a vain and shallow mother and the victim of a man who is using her in order to inflame the jealousy of the woman he really loves.
But do adapters want their Jane to be united with long-lost relatives on the way to her happy ending? Frequently, that’s a strand of the story that falls away. The 2000 Broadway musical went so far as to have Jane inherit a colossal fortune not from an uncle she didn’t know she had but from the aunt who despised her — the one who, in Brontë’s telling, is nearly broke by the time she dies.
However faithful an adaptation — and the “Jane Eyre’’ award for fidelity surely would go to the BBC’s 1973 miniseries starring Sorcha Cusack and Michael Jayston, which makes its way through Brontë’s novel with near-religious devotion — it still can’t reproduce what’s in a reader’s head.
“There’s a desire to be respectful to the text. But that’s to the text, not to the fans,’’ said Fukunaga, who made his “Jane Eyre’’ from a screenplay by British playwright Moira Buffini. As he sees it, purists’ expectations can sometimes be unreasonable. “I’m gonna have to switch things in order to make it work on an emotional level,’’ he said, “and on a visual level.’’
Wasikowska, now with a pair of classic literary characters under her belt, likened the multitudinous reworkings of “Jane Eyre’’ to artists’ reinterpretations of the Mona Lisa, or playwrights’ dissimilar takes on the same subject in different eras.
“I think that’s cool,’’ she said, “because each film is like a little time capsule: a little study of the time.’’ (Read more) (Laura Collins-Hughes)

We have to say that we wholly agree with Mia Wasikowska on this. There's no need to look for the perfect Jane Eyre adaptation. Each Jane Eyre tells us something about how the novel was seen and perceived in a particular time and place.

Nevertheless, there are always people out there who are unable to appreciate Jane Eyre. We, at BrontëBlog, are very sorry for them. So young, so lost...

Who wants to see a Jane Eyre movie? (...) Maybe it’s just me but from all of my studies I feel like there was Shakespeare, and then British literature went back to the dark ages until the 20th century. Feel free to yell at me in the comments if you disagree. However, I think it’s kind of cool that this book is still relevant, even if I think it kind of sucks. (...)
If Jane Eyre was home fries at a diner, it’d be the stringy kind. You know, the kind where you feel like yeah it’s home fries, but not the kind you like to eat. I guess the only way to make Jane Eyre taste good is to add lots of ketchup. I’m not sure where I could go with this analogy. Maybe the ketchup you need to enjoy the new Jane Eyre film is psychedelic drugs? That might be a bad trip though. (Sam Deutsch on The Faster Times)