Jane Eyre: more and more reviews

Jane Eyre reviews:

Positive

Th film is the critic's pick in the San Antonio Current:

Befitting [Cary Fukunaga's] background as a cinematographer, this Jane Eyre is above all a visual experience: artfully composed, framed, lit, and shot. (Steven G. Kellman)

Mostly positive

The Baltimore City Paper:

It would have been better for Fukunaga to leave out some of the earlier horror-movie tropes rather than open with them and fail to live up to their promise, because these early chills add little to this movie’s enchantment.
Instead, gorgeous scenery, masterful performances, and Brontë’s language make this Jane positively enthralling. Cinematographer Adriano Goldman masterfully plays with light and dark, creating a visually sumptuous backdrop for Jane’s travails. But it is Wasikowska’s performance that makes the movie. (Anna Ditkoff)

Just one thing, the reviewer says:

Despite the recent zombie-, sea monster-, and androidification of many classic books, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has proven immune, perhaps because it already has something in it that goes bump in the night.

Not really... Jane Slayre, for instance.

The Valley Advocate:

It's refreshing to see a young director—Fukunaga is just 33—take on the classics. Especially so after his success with Sin Nombre, a festival hit about modern gang warfare and illegal immigration; too many directors these days seem to pick a genre and stick with it come hell or high water. Or perhaps Fukunaga saw a link in these tales of estrangement and violence that a less historically inclined director might have overlooked; whatever his motivations, it's always nice to have another voice in the chorus. (Jack Brown)

VeryAware gives it 3.5 stars out of 5:

Jane Eyre was good but unfortunately not great. I really wanted to like it more than I did. The two leads are the best thing about it. Wasikowska brings a quiet intensity to her role as our heroine. We root for her as she is bullied, beaten, and marginalized and yet still triumphantly soldiers on. Fassbender plays the iconically tragic Rochester with all the wit, ferocity, and torment you could hope for. He will charm you in the same way he does Eyre, and you can’t help but feel the electricity between the two. However, the love story (adapted by Moira Buffini) feels a bit rushed. It’s like one fireside chat and suddenly they are in love. Plus most of the scenes without the two of them together just aren’t as engaging, which makes it feel long and slow. Not a lot happens. [...]
Jane Eyre is mainly worth seeing for what the outstanding lead actors do for a familiar story. It’s well-crafted, but the low-key approach to everything outside of the love story makes the two hours drag. Like Jane herself, we spend most of our time waiting for Rochester to show up so the two of them can be together. (Courtney)

Mostly negative

The American Spectator has a thoughtful review of thye film which concludes with the following:

Charlotte Brontë herself could hardly deny that the story was essentially the love story of Jane and Rochester, but much of the interest of her novel today lies in the social and economic, moral and intellectual circumstances out of which that story arose and which made it possible. About these things not just this film but all films these days are very nearly clueless. That's what makes me a bit more regretful for what is lost than appreciative of all that is gained from this very beautiful Jane Eyre. (James Bowman)

Negative

Mike Sragow Gets Reel - a Baltimore Sun blog - misses Timothy Dalton:

The blah new "Jane Eyre" is pulling them in to the Senator. But at the end of the first Friday night show I actually heard the sound of one-and-a-half hands clapping: someone started to applaud, then reconsidered. [...]
But the fragmented structure fails to let many scenes come to a boil or even simmer. Soon, the overly clipped bits of Brontë, the uninspired use of available lighting in the dreariest weather and circumstances, and the anti-theatrical flatness of most of the staging wears you out. The only thing that plays like a house afire is Thornfield Hall, and, alas, I mean that literally.
Wasikowska, at this stage, may be an actor who requires a strong director or ensemble to draw her out and focus her. (She was at her best on "In Treatment" trading charged glances with Gabriel Byrne.) She doesn't get much help from Fassbender, as Rochester, who neither seethes with tortured ardor nor turns the character's daunting air of command into an expressive style. [...]
That rarely-discussed actor Timothy Dalton does both in the 1983 BBC version of the novel (available on DVD). He's got dash, intellectual heft and fervor. At the end, with his face scarred and body mutilated in a way that's true to Bronte, he evinces a robust poignancy.

An article on AssociatedContent gives it 5 stars. The movie is also reviewed by The Movie Fight, Cyclone Movies, The Hazards of Suicide, Cinephile, The Schminternet, Kevin P. Dincher, Show Me Your Hits (who also mentions reading Villette) and Book Harbinger.

The Sabotage Times comments on the British TV series Campus:

In stark comparison to the bonkers world inhabited by Jonty and his staff, an element which never lacks credibility is the chemistry between kleptomanic womaniser Matt and the reluctant Imogen. While their conversation may not stretch further than “I bet one of the Brontës had decent norks” their comic timing and performances are so sharp that their relationship plays out like a genuine love story, which no doubt will keep viewers hooked. (Rob Clyne)

The Roar - a high school journal - reviews April Lindner's Jane. Crazy Phan's Reviews takes a look at several Jane Eyre adaptations and Easy Retirement posts about Polly Teale's Brontë in Oxford.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV