Jane Eyre 2011 enters into its second weekend (III)

Jane Eyre's box office results are discussed on BoxOffice Mojo:

Much further down the chart, Jane Eyre opened to $253,105 at just four locations for an outstanding per-theater average of $63,276. The Mia Wasikowska-Michael Fassbender drama is set to expand to 26 theaters this weekend. (Ray Subers)

And Variety:

Focus Features' "Jane Eyre," which has the highest per-screen average ($45,721) so far this year for a traditional theatrical release (Kevin Smith's "Red State" earned more with its premium-priced single screening on March 5), expands from four locations to 26. (Andrew Stewart)

A few more reviews:

Positive

Chicago Reader (3 stars)

The new version of Jane Eyre is far and away the best I've seen, thanks largely to the skilled young actress Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right). As Jane, she seems to have internalized the young woman's peculiar mix of willfulness and watchfulness, defiance and modesty, that enables her to survive as a lower-class woman in Victorian England without sacrificing her soul. (J.R. Jones)

MacLeans:

I know what you’re thinking. Who needs another adaptation of Jane Eyre? (...)  But what’s astounding about this seamless production—directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and written by Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe)—is that it feels definitive. The filmmakers have employed a flashback structure to rejig the narrative, but aside from that, the rendering feels wholly authentic. It also feels bold and fresh without dubious overlays of modern hindsight. Shot in wide-screen 35 mm., the visuals have a rich cinematic lustre. But what really makes this Jane Eyre sing is the strength of the performances, and the dynamic chemistry between the two leads, who are separated by a dangerous age difference. (Brian D. Johnson)

NBC Bay Area:

Rarely before has a director seemed so eager to explore the darkness lurking in the subtext of Charlotte Brontë’s already grim early-Victorian novel, but Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) dives right in, with an adaptation that is stylishly shot and, thanks in part to impassioned performances by Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, deeply moving. (Rossiter Drake)

n:zone magazine (3,5 stars out of 4):

Superb use of locations, including craggy, windswept cliffsides that teem with a life of their own and dark corners of landmark Haddon Hall, doubling as Thornfield, are prominent characters. Fukunaga works overtime to deliver a picture that adeptly balances tones both romantic and frightening, and Wasikowska and Fassbender depict the agony of an impossible love with very free emotions. Wasikowska expertly delivers a Jane with reserves of self-respect and a clear sense of her worth in the world. (Lee Shoquist)

MacGuffin (A-)

The production design feels lived-in and realistic. Gothic tales of this kind tend towards high melodrama, so it’s welcome that the film is subdued and subtle in presenting this somber story. Jane and Rochester love big, they feel big, but the film makes us believe them. It’s not sappy, just right. Highly recommended. (Edward Davidson)

And JFC Movies, Back of the Head and Motion for a Five Minutes Unmoderated Caucus.

Mostly Positive:

Wildcat:

What makes this film brilliant is its subtly and delicate progression, which avoids it from becoming dull. Jane, played by Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right), matures exquisitely, realizing that it is worth sacrificing her independence to be with the man she loves. Rochester, played by Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds, 300), has a dangerously volatile temper, and it is unclear what he really wants out of Jane; but he plays his character’s moodiness well.
Although they each develop their characters, their supposed romance lacked complete believability. But all in all, the film is genuinely worth seeing. (Deanne Siegel)

San Diego Union-Tribune:

While the film has its moments of haunting suspense, Fukunaga doesn’t overwhelm it with the heavy gothic overtones you might remember from versions past, particularly the 1943 adaptation starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. Instead, Fukunaga’s Thornfield is eerily pleasing in the light of day, awash in muted, slightly foggy pastel hues and accented by Dario Marianelli’s lovely violin-centric score. As night rolls in, the candlelight feels both romantic and constraining, while the house creaks and groans and eerie cries float down from the mysterious room above.
While Moira Buffini’s screenplay gives us some nicely fleshed out characters, including the gossipy Mrs. Fairfax and Jane’s kindly benefactor St. John Rivers (“Billy Elliot’s” Jamie Bell, all grown up), it skimps out on the reveal of Rochester’s dark secret. Most of us may know who or what lurks in Thornfield’s hidden caverns, but its underlying significance — and the potential for a fright — is entirely anti-climactic.
Still, the “Jane Eyre” of 2011 is a gratifying sojourn into literary film that is both faithful to its source and enticing to its audience.  (Alison Gang)

Now Toronto:

This latest adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel about the eponymous orphan-turned-governess occasionally gets bogged down by clunky dialogue, but director Cary Fukunaga knows how to lay on the atmosphere and has found a superb actor for the lead. (...)
Apart from Wasikowska, though, the biggest star is Adriano Goldman, whose cinematography captures the look and feel of each of the settings, especially Rochester’s imposing home, with its creepy, creaking staircases and candlelit scenes worthy of a La Tour canvas. (Glenn Sumi)

And Spinning Splatters.


Mostly negative:

Crosswalk (and a discussion of Christian elements in the film):

Jane Eyre’s most potent moments are in its dialogue, carried over from Brontë’s novel. Religion is an important element in the film, but it comes to the fore only later in the film. Because of the fractured timeline, Jane’s embrace of the scriptural truths she utters toward the end of the story don’t feel as organic as they might have had the story been told in a sequential manner. But what’s left in this new adaptation are several mentions of timeless truths and moral principles.
This version of Jane Eyre will challenge viewers who think they’re getting a more modern spin on a traditional story, and may disappoint devotees of the novel who expect to see a clearer development of Jane’s moral compass. (Christian Hamaker)

 EastBay Express:

The banked fire behind Wasikowska's eyes somehow doesn't blaze with frustrated desire — it's up to us to read into her gaze all the emotion she suppresses — and yet it's perfectly in character for a young woman on a serious mission. In the meantime, 33-year-old Fukunaga, a native of Oakland, performs his own mission: a quantum leap from tense, topical actioners to sedate prestige productions. (Kelly Vance)

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The Telegraph tries to find a reason to why Jane Eyre 2011 opens in September in the UK:

So now we know what the big British film hit of the coming year is likely to be. Jane Eyre, the new adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, opened to massive numbers in New York and LA this weekend.
Admittedly it only played in four cinemas, but the per-screen average was astronomical: over $45,000, the year’s highest to date.
The hugely talented Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) plays the titular governess, while Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) is the intimidating Mr Rochester. British acting staples (Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins) dominate the supporting cast, and the film was shot in Derbyshire.
Given that it’s shaping up as a big hit Stateside, why is Universal delaying its release here till September 9? Maybe because there are precedents for Universal films in a comparable vein: Atonement and Pride and Prejudice both performed strongly after September openings. (David Gritten)

Kids In Mind makes an exhaustive (and/or paranoid) analysis of the sex/nudity (4 out of 10), violence and gore (5 out of 10) and profanity (2 out 10) in Jane Eyre 2011.

The Boston Herald talks with Mia Wasikowska:

“Before I read the book and saw the films, for some reason Jane had lived in my mind as an adult. And when I read the book, I realized she’s (a teenager) and she’s really young,” Wasikowska said of the orphan-turned-governess. “She was dealing with things that are beyond what is expected of people now, especially young people now. That was something that really struck me.” (...)
“I think the whole reason why she is such a great character is that she avoids being victimized. It doesn’t mean that she’s not hurt or that things don’t upset her, but she doesn’t let herself be a victim,” the actress said. (Tenley Woodman)

HitFix also publishes a video interview with Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska as does the San Jose Mercury News. The director explains some of the things that were finally cut from the final film:

Putting his stamp on the masterpiece turned out to be quite tricky. For instance, Fukunaga originally shot a lot of delightfully creepy footage of flies (à la "The Amityville Horror") that ended up getting the ax. He wanted to underscore the terror of the story. After all, the ominous Thornfield Manor houses many a dark mystery, including the cackling of a mad creature who seems to dwell in its very walls.
"When you tour these great English houses in the north country, there are always thousands of dead flies, so I wanted to include that element of death and decay when Jane is wandering around the house and she encounters portraits of people long turned to dust," says the director. "But the deeper you get into the script, the harder it is to walk that line between romance and horror because, if you go more into that horror realm, you start to lose the momentum of the love story, which is what people react to. So you end up cutting back on the horror elements.
"By the end of the day, there were no more flies."
Ever mindful of the social context of literature, he also wanted to highlight the racial climate of the period by casting a black man as Rochester's valet and showing the character's interracial family life (Fukunaga is the son of a Japanese-American father and a Swedish-American mother) but again stuck to his sense of discipline.
"I'm always interested in politics and history, and I really wanted to show the colonial reach of the empire at that time and how the British shaped the world, even in terms of what's happening today geopolitically. It's great as texture, but it has nothing to do with the force of the narrative," he says ruefully, "so it had to go." (Karen D'Souza)

n:zone magazine has another interview:

I was very intrigued by the presence of Thornfield in the film, which functions more like a character than a location. It occurred to me that you did something just as memorable with the train in Sin Nombre, which similarly is always present and seems to live and breathe.
CF: The sets are hopefully always a character, and the place is integral to the story to shape and inform the experiences of the characters in that place. The trains in Sin Nombre were like the animals they would ride on the back of; Thornfield is like the animal that Jane is inside of. My next movie, I don’t know what animal that will be. But the world needs to be alive. We are not doing the films in limbo.
MW: The locations and places we were shooting were so important in terms of understanding what it would be like to live at that time; the real sense of isolation and living in these places that have had so much history. In Haddon Hall, the floors are all curved in from a thousand years of human traffic and people walking. You really do feel like those places have a life of their own.

Another interview with the actress can be read on The Patriot Ledger.

Lou Gaul (Calkins Media Film Critic) is a bit confused concerning Jane Eyre:

"Jane Eyre," with Mia Wasikowska ("The Kids Are All Right") and Michael Fassbender ("Centurion") in a PG-13 romantic drama based on Charlotte Brontë's novel about a governess on an isolated island. Cary Fukunaga ("Sin Nombre") directed.

Jane Crusoe meets Rochester Friday?

Film Metro has free tickets for screenings of the film in Novi, MI (March 24), Sacramento, CA (March 24), Madison, WI (March 29) and Milwaukee, WI (March 29).

Mia Wasikowska Source has added some new stills to its Jane Eyre gallery (like the one illustrating this post).

More mentions on Screeching Weasel; CBN; El Nuevo Herald (in Spanish); The Times (in an article about Jamie Bell); Moncinéma (Cyberpress Canada) (in French); O the World we live in, Eccentric Booksense, Les Petits Plaisirs. 

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV