Jane Eyre 2011 enters into its third weekend (IV) or Branwell in The Kinks

A few more reviews of Jane Eyre 2011:


Positive:

New American:

The film is expertly crafted, and does justice to Brontë’s work. The expert cinematography draws the viewer into the isolated nature of 19th-century English country life, and develops the characters in a way that causes empathy with them. The set design and costuming serve also to develop the story, and the casting couldn’t be better, including the pleasant surprise of finding Dame Judi Dench portraying Rochester’s housekeeper. (Kelly Holt)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Director Cary Fukunaga's flashback-filled screen adaptation of "Jane Eyre" does Charlotte Brontë proud. He wrings every ounce of passion, fury and pain out of the Gothic romance tale. Mia Wasikowska in the title role masters the screen actor's magic trick of transfixing our attention while seemingly doing nothing. This "Jane Eyre" is unapologetic melodrama shot through with inspiration.

Killer Movie Reviews:

This is the finest filmed version of Jane Eyre to date. It doesn’t matter if the audience knows how the story will end, it is the emotional journey is thrilling, abetted by direction by Cary Fukunaga that homes in on the complex inner lives of the character. It’s true to the gothic spirit of the book with its startling and emotionally compelling Jane. From the sharp and jarring sound of Jane’s head being slammed against a window frame by her cousin when she’s a child, to the freezing mud of a north country moor as Jane faces the very real possibility of freezing to death, this is a Victorian age stripped of its romanticism. In its stead is passion. (Andrea Chase)

Beliefnet: (B+)

And it is that relationship, all smolder and repressed passion, that answers the question. The Eyre/Rochester romance has inspired happy sighs for 160 years and in these days, when so little is repressed that no one makes time for smolder, it still delivers. (Nell Minow)

Also The Jane Austen Film Club, Steak's Views, Reader's Well, steph's online diary and Joy in Being Broken.


Mostly Positive:


Review Saint Louis: (B-)

In the end, Jane Eyre is a fine picture that will likely mesmerize fans of the genre.  The film is a technical marvel and Fukunaga continues to solidify himself as one of the strongest young directors working today.  His cast is wonderful and while the film didn’t resonate with me like it will with its target demographic I still quite enjoyed the show. (Zac Oldenburg)

Also Cinemaholic Movie Reviews.

Negative:

The New York Review of Books:

The new film version of Jane Eyre isn’t all bad, but it’s all wrong. The story, despite a confusing flashback structure, is coherent. The dialogue is satisfying. The look is convincing. What’s lacking is Jane Eyre itself—Charlotte Brontë’s feverish inner world of anguish and fury. Instead, everything is pallid and sedate. (...)
Wasikowska is talented, certainly, but she’s yet to show that she can create a character; what she does instead is be herself: serious, sensitive, occasionally breaking out her lovely smile. She’s nowhere near intense enough for this iconic 19th-century emotional extravaganza that’s thrilled generations of young women (and men). As Jane she gamely goes through the paces, but no sparks fly—certainly not the crucial ones with Rochester. (Robert Gottlieb)

Another negative review on The Kenyan Girl.

The New Jersey Courier-Post talks with Mia Wasikowska and Cary Fukunaga about Jane Eyre 2011:

"I liked the idea of bringing out a darker side, and also a younger side," says the actress. "Jane was 18 (in the book). I think I was 20 when I did the role. So I was already two years older. She's really a teenager. She is a teenager like any other teenager now."
To prepare, Wasikowska pored over visual references "to form an image of Jane in my head." She studied photographs and drawings of the time, hoping to understand how "for example, people physically held themselves." (Amy Longsdorf)

Another Jane Eyre 2011 giveaway. From The Trades:

To commemorate this release, The-Trades is giving away one full-sized double-sided theatrical poster, along with a Vintage Classics copy of the novel -- including a bookmark bearing the image of Wasikowska as Jane.

Deadline: March 31 (US-only).

Detroit Performing Arts Examiner talks about the film and Haddon Hall. The movie is also featured in The Wichita Eagle and i, write, riot.
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The Observer reviews the Capuchin Classics edition of Agnes Grey:

Brontë depicts in detail the isolation inherent in a governess's life, as an educated – but by necessity not too educated – woman trapped in an awkward halfway world between the classes. The governess is not a servant, but nor is she on the same social level as her employers, the very fact of her needing to take a job underlining that division.
Over the course of the novel Agnes serves time with two families: the Bloomfields and the Murrays. The Bloomfield children are hateful creatures, so spoiled and disobedient that Agnes has at times to restrain them physically. The Murrays are a notch up on the social scale and both children somewhat older, but they bring their own particular challenges: one sister is preening, manipulative and deeply self-involved, while the other is prone to playing with a horsewhip and cursing like a stableboy.
Agnes's character takes a backseat to those of her charges and when her voice does come through its prim, righteous tone can grate. But this seems fitting given that the governess was expected to be almost invisible, that her existence was often a source of discomfort to her employers and their set. People literally fail to see Agnes: doors are shut upon her and she takes pains not to walk beside anyone on the way to church to avoid unpleasant silences.
Salvation comes in the form of a man; not a tempestuous Rochester figure but the safe, kind curate Mr Weston, the only one to look at Agnes and see not a governess but a woman. (Natasha Tripney)

The Independent interviews Dave Davies (The Kinks), who makes an interesting reference to Branwell:

It seems somehow curious that a man of Dave Davies' abilities should have to carry the same burden shouldered by Fred Dickens, Fanny Mendelssohn and Branwell Brontë. It's undeniable that, since the break up of the Kinks, his career hasn't exactly kept pace with that of his brother, who has sustained his reputation as one of the most distinguished British songwriters ever, and in 2004 was awarded the CBE for "services to music". (Robert Chalmers)

The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch reviews the HBO remake of Mildred Pierce:

Actually, though, it's not her inability to resist men that derails Mildred. The insurmountable problem is her daughter Veda (first Morgan Turner, then Evan Rachel Wood). Mildred thinks Veda is special. So does Veda, a little snot who at age 11 flounces around in a silk robe and talks like a character out of an Emily Bronte novel as she orders everyone around. (Gail Pennington)

We read in the Daily Express that the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove was quite impressed by what he saw in the US:

He was amazed that to escape from the poverty of their everyday life the New York pupils had discovered the delights of Charlotte Brontë and a host of classic authors. (...)
“In the Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science in Washington DC a group of primary age ­children in the middle of an engineering project stopped to tell me of their favourite novels, from sci‑fi and Dickens to Charlotte Brontë.”  (Hilary Douglas)

The Brontës' pen names are always handy when it comes to gender discrimination. In the New Straits Times (Malaysia):

The Brontë sisters adopted the names Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell to replace Anne, Charlotte and Emily. Brother Branwell didn't need to, but then he didn't write anything worthwhile. Jane Austen and George Eliot (really Mary Ann Evans) resorted to the same ploy. (Paddy Bowie)

Deccan Chronicle interviews author Aneesha Capur:

Q Who is your favourite literary character?
Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from my childhood; Jane Eyre for her independence in 19th Century England, Anil Tissera in Anil’s Ghost for her bravery in war-torn Sri Lanka. (...)
Q Which book did you want never to end?
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys for its hauntingly beautiful reimagining of the story of Rochester’s first wife… I didn’t want it to end since I knew what would happen (which was tragic) from Jane Eyre.

A Brontë reference in an article about night shifts in the Napa Valley Register:

Out of doors, the night scenery takes a different shape. The field at the end of Craig’s street is like a scene ripped from “Wuthering Heights,” with barn owls hooting and trees silhouetted against the sky.  (Victoria Rossi)

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday continues the Taliban-like integrist crusade against Jonathan Holloway adaptation's of Wuthering Heights that will be aired tonight on BBC Radio 3:

It is quite important that this dramatisation fails and is seen to fail, and that it receives a large number of complaints when it is aired. If they can get away with Wuthering ****ing Heights, it won’t be long before we have David ****ing Copperfield, (...) For goodness sake, we already have Martin Amis if you want this sort of stuff.

We don't know if the dramatisation will fail or not. You know, before saying things like that you should listen to it beforehand.

Sunday Salon discusses Rochester as a Byronic hero (The Gray Willow seems to be a fan); Literary Relish is reading Jane Eyre and A Reader's Nook has just finished it; My Way or the Pie Way? and Voyage Livresque (in French) review Wuthering Heights; Along Came a Story... compiles several clips of Jane Eyre adaptations; Teens Know Best! reviews April Lindner's Jane; La Professora d'inglese (in Italian and English) reviews Kay Woodward's Jane Airhead; alita.reads chooses a soundtrack for Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë; Les Soeurs Brontë (in French) finds interesting similarities between the Brontës and the sisters of Constantin Hansen; charlotteBermond has uploaded to YouTube a brief clip of the Reza Hammadi choreography "Les Soeurs Brontë".

Categories: Agnes Grey, Books, Dance, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights