Current status:
87
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 39
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 5
Cary Fukunaga directs a fiery and elegant adaptation, while Mia Wasikowska delivers possibly the best portrayal of the title character ever.
AUDIENCE
77
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 11,204
A few websites comment on the
good box office results the film has had despite its limited release:
Los Angeles Times Company Town and
Hollywood News,
The Washington Post Celebritology,
Latino Review,
Neon Tommy,
Time Magazine, etc.
Michael Sragow Gets Reel - a Baltimore Sun blog - complains about the promotional strategy:
My question is: Why must audiences in Baltimore and other cities smaller than New York and Los Angeles wait for weeks to see this movie? Except for Oscar season, does "platforming" a picture in Manhattan and L.A. really build up anticipation for it around the country, or merely squander the publicity garnered by national coverage and rave reviews? (By the way, Oscar season really closed this past weekend, when the box-office take of "The King's Speech" plummeted.) Too many "boutique" companies like Focus seem to be operating in a movie-going world that evaporated 40 years ago. Let's hope their fusty strategies don't work against the national success of 'Jane Eyre.'
The
Simsbury Patch suggests 'texting the babysitter' for when the film opens locally on March 18.
NewsNet5 includes it among three other films to 'ward off winter's chill'.
More reviews:
Positive
The Daily Californian:
Much of the credit for creating a truly multi-faceted "Jane Eyre" belongs to the performances of Mia Wasikowska and a cast of up-and-comers. With only a look into the camera, the expression on the young actress' face reveals the nature of every conversation and incident without a word being said. The performances of Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell bring out the diametric views of marriage, love and masculinity as they vie for Jane's affection.
Fukunaga's ability to balance the sequence of events helps shift the tone of "Jane Eyre." Unlike the more traditional novels that came out of 19th century England, Bronte's story mixes genres. "I knew I was taking on a story that is a period film and a romance with elements of horror," said the director. "Walking the line among these tones would be difficult, because it's easier to default to one or the other. I wanted to maintain consistency in the style of telling the story."
Fortunately, Fukunaga ensures that the darker aspects of the story don't take a backseat. Instead, they function as a welcome departure from the cumbersome Victorian language and talking heads that dominate whole scenes. "The original novel featured many spooky elements, from early Victorian gothic atmospheres to outright spiritual presences," he said. "I liked the imagery and was excited by the idea of pushing that side of the story further than in previous adaptations - not full-blown horror, but a definite vibe." (Jawad Qadir)
The Criterion Cast (B+):
In clumsy hands, Jane Eyre could have been easily shadowed and played off popular genre-lit tones like Twilight or New Moon and even given in to trendy posh works like Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood. Thankfully this Jane Eyre is not any of those things. It’s a strong entry into the cannon as well as a strong second entry of a budding filmmaker. This film is a display of emotion, performance, wit and beauty. (Rudie Obias)
Tony Medley from The Tolucan Times (10/10):
Director Cary Joji Fukunaga takes a fine script by Moira Buffini, translating Chalotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, atmospheric cinematography by Adriano Goldman, and music by Dario Marianelli, and locates the story in the gothic house, Thornfield, at Haddan Hall [sic] in Derbyshire. Haddan Hall is one of the oldest houses in England. The original corner dates to the 11th Century.
But it wasn’t just Haddan Hall that makes the Derbyshire location spectacular. The countryside, with its craggy rocks and bracken, provides the opportunity for vast shots of forbidding landscapes, especially when Jane is running away.
What really makes this film work is the heartbreakingly emotional acting by Wasikowska and Fassbender. Intentionally made to look plain, Wasikowska exhibits Jane’s feisty spirit and compassionate, forgiving heart, in portraying the 19th-Century woman who overcame a horrible upbringing with very little love to still make her life worth living, even if it’s just as a governess.
We Rate Stuff (7 out of 7 - Fantastic):
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. (Marco Duran)
Mostly negative
Film School Rejects gives it a C- after its reviewer admits that he doesn't 'like period romance films'.
It’s as dry as a rice cake and every bit as dull. The cinematography is wholly uninteresting and often relies on heavy-handed and deliberate imagery. If that shot of the crossroads were any more obvious, there would have been a sign posting the mileage to Decisionburgh and North Waffling. Though admittedly the natural landscapes lend themselves to a few nice shots. The plot moves with the impressive briskness of a tortoise towing a Volvo and the majority of the first act is little more than a reminder that Victorian nobility were among the slimiest, most orphan-hating bastards in history.
The relief we get from this parade of tedium and cruelty is the promise of a classic love story. The problem is, as much as I appreciate the performances of both Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, I don’t buy their relationship one iota. He does nothing to suggest that he’s interested in her and then openly professes his love for her completely out of left field. Funny, I’m not sure parading another woman around in front of Jane and then chastising her for ignoring you while you’re ignoring her actually qualifies as being in love with her. And yet somehow this love is reciprocated? It’s forced and unconvincing and its middling near-stoicism still manages to amount to the film’s most dynamic emotionality. (Brian Salisbury)
RedEye Chicago has a Q&A with Mia Wasikowska:
Compared to “Alice in Wonderland,” were your corsets for “Jane Eyre” more or less comfortable?
They were so much less comfortable. I didn’t realize how wimpy my corset was on “Alice” until they locked me into this one. And it’s really an incredible repression. You really get a sense of the repression that people were under in that time. Not only does it squish you in [the torso area] but then you can’t really bend over and you can’t really reach up and you can’t really eat and you can’t really breathe. It’s a real pain.
What’s it like to have only a few movies under your belt and already be a corset expert?
It’s pretty cool, but I couldn’t complain around Judi [Dench]. ‘Cause she’s worn them her whole career and they don’t faze her at all, whereas I’m complaining away in the corner. (Matt Pais)
ScreenCrave interviews her too.
The entire film was very dark and grey, not only in terms of color but also in tone and feeling. How did that translate to how you create the character?
MW: Yeah, it was very bleak. When you’re in that environment, you really get a sense of the isolation and the distance between one estate and another. Also, as an 18-year-old living in a world where your main source of company is an 8-year-old girl or Mrs. Fairfax, I thought that was really interesting. In our world, we have so many ways we can escape with technology, like TV, Facebook, computers, text messaging and all that. For her, it was reality, every day.
Dime Wars also focuses on the corset aspect and
Female First tells the story of how Mia came to play
Jane Eyre.
Mia is also featured on
ShowbizSpy and in this week's issue of
Time Magazine ('Jane's Heir')
The San Francisco Examiner talks to Cary Fukunaga:
“My manager told me that your second movie is the most important,” he says. “When you do a classic, you can’t be blamed for bad writing — that’s on the author. And after six years in the ghettos of Latin America, I was happy to do something completely different. The idea of living in England for a few months was very attractive.”
Fukunaga admits he drew more inspiration from Robert Stevenson’s 1943 adaptation starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine than from Brontë’s novel. (Rossiter Drake)
The Huffington Post interviews the director as well:
The modernity of the present time, however, proved challenging. Even in the most remote British locations, Fukunaga found that he couldn't escape signs and symbols of the real world in recreating the period of his story.
"In Derbyshire, there was a big coal-burning electric plant that we had to erase digitally from some shots - along with cell towers and airplanes all over the place," he says. "Even the parts of Yorkshire and the moors that were more expansive had things we had to erase in post-production. Those were our special effects."
The other challenges of shooting a period film were more concrete: "The wardrobe was tough," he says. "Just to change a costume took an hour and a half. When you're on a tight schedule, that makes it extremely difficult to balance the time demands." (Marshall Fine)
The Los Angeles Daily News talks to both Mia Wasikowska and Cary Fukunaga:
Unlike the novels by another female novelist of the era - Jane Austen - Brontë's book is not "as obviously uplifting as `Pride and Prejudice' or `Sense and Sensibility,"' says Fukunaga. "It's much more ambiguous ... it's like `Gossip Girl' versus some sort of hard-core punk party or something," says the 33-year-old director.
"The Brontës (Charlotte and her writer sisters Emily and Anne) have a much darker vision of isolation" for women. [...]
"Her psychological state is the feeling of limited frontiers," says Fukunaga. But what makes Jane's plight even more lonely is that she has no support from family or friends. Even a sympathetic housekeeper at Thornfield (Judi Dench) is incapable of appreciating the young woman's frustration. In the novel, the women of the era are shown to not question their place - both the poor ones, who were afraid to try to move above their station, and the wealthy ones, who were trapped in the concept that they were only fit for marriage.
"(The Brontës) definitely saw women of a certain class to be flighty birds and not really aware of their limitations," says Fukunaga. (Rob Lowman)
The Hollywood Reporter talks to costume designer Michael O'Connor.
For the 16th feature-film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s beloved novel, which hits theaters March 11, director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and O’Connor had the same goal in mind: authenticity.
But shortly after starting production on his first major studio film (Focus Features), the director consulted with O’Connor about a not-so-minor fashion glitch. “The book was published in 1847 and takes place 10 years before that, but neither one of us liked the clothing of the 1830s,” Fukunaga says. “They’re not flattering dresses; women look like Valentine’s Day cards, with huge sleeves and triangular shoulders.”
The pair made the decision to take a slight departure from what Fukunaga calls “puff cake” gowns and instead draw inspiration from the 1840s when designing the characters’ wardrobes, creating more figure-flattering dresses.
In bringing to life this story of a woman of simple means who suffered a loveless upbringing, O’Connor wanted the material and pattern of Jane’s clothing to reflect her nature, something the voluminous pieces of the previous decade would not evoke: “For Jane’s wedding dress, I originally created two sketches — the much simpler design prevailed.”
He even designed era-appropriate undergarments (including stockings and corsets) for the actors, an important element for the director: “I wanted to have the freedom to shoot Jane in her points of undress. [Without] those elements, you lose that extra level of reality.” [...]
“We spent a lot of time on the [story’s] Lowood girls — there were 50 student uniforms made,” Fukunaga notes. “They had clogs with copper nails that turned turquoise once they weathered. You’ll never see it, but you can hear it.” In the two months leading up to filming in England’s Derbyshire and Yorkshire countrysides, O’Connor created 12 individual looks for Jane, including off-the-shoulder dresses of sturdier, less-refined textiles to reflect her social ranking, with bell-shaped skirts, narrow arms and tight bodices.
“My favorite is the plaid dress Jane wears when she comes to Thornfield,” Fukunaga adds. “It had a cape-shawl and a blue collar that looks like it’s dyed from indigo. There was something about the wooden interiors of that world and these midnight blues that worked well, especially the way it matched the moors.” (Leslie Bruce) (Picture source)
CasaSugar comments on the use of paisley in the movie.
Andrea's Music Blog has also seen the film.
Paul Kirsch,
I Luv Cinema and
The Love Junkie also recommend the film.
In Which Our Hero is not so keen on it.
YouTube user iwilder has a video review of it together with footage of the dress on display at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema.
Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV
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