Jane is inexhaustible

Reviews of Jane Eyre 2011 which opens today in the UK:

The Times:

This latest Jane Eyre is a gorgeous swoon of a movie, all high Gothic melodrama, just as Charlotte Brontë would have wanted. Mr Rochester’s Thornfield Hall is pervaded by a slanting light from Vermeer and a churning tension. (...)
The film ramps up the underlying horror while tightly focusing on the near-schizophrenic passion between Wasikowska’s Jane Eyre and Fassbender’s Edward Rochester. Never have fireside chats left an audience in such a feverish state of anticipation and disarray. Flying off his black, rearing horse in the spectral forest, Fassbender is mesmerising from the start: a lean, mean presence, younger than the traditional Rochester, and all the better for it.  (...)
His is a much more physical performance than your regular Rochester, doing away with the ambiguity in the book, and making clear his obsession with Jane and anger at his circumstances as he storms around in his topboots and britches shooting — and even gardening. Brontë once complained that Jane Austen prudishly failed to write about “what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through”, and it’s certainly all out in the open here. Wasikowska, recently seen in Alice in Wonderland, is also a revelation, managing to be jolie-laide despite the symmetry of her features, and bring an intellectual seriousness, innocence and wit to the role: “I’ve simply no wish to talk nonsense,” she snaps, when Rochester gets a bit forward. When, eventually, Jane smiles, your relief is palpable. Brontë imagined “a heroine as plain and small as myself, and Wasikowska is occasionally filmed from a cruel angle, but it cannot hide her pre-Raphaelite elegance. Her performance as Jane shows just what a good education can do for a girl, and portrays her more as a feminist than a victim: “I wish a woman could have action in her life like a man.” (...)
Fukunaga’s exteriors are grand cloudscapes and unforgiving rocky outcrops. The physical presence of each place hangs heavily, from the dripping green stone walls of Lowood School to the Hammer horror of Thornfield Hall. Inside, the Farrow & Ball-style palette is murky, lit by fire and candle. Jane is in mousy colours, while scenes with the rich Mrs Reed, played against type by Hawkins, look like her dresses came from Winterhalter paintings, and Imogen Poots is got up like a Cecil Beaton sketch as Blanche Ingram. And then there’s the quietly omnipresent, omniscient housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, a warm, often dryly comic turn by Dench. Jamie Bell is St John Rivers, evincing rather sweet brotherly love when Jane turns up frozen on his doorstep. But it’s Fassbender who gives us the Rochester we’ve always desired, in both senses. (Kate Muir)

Norwich Evening News:

This is an historical drama which feels like it is being lived rather than recreated. All in all this is very superior package: marvellously played, lovely music and beautiful to look at.
Yet though Jane Eyre may be a fabulous film, it may not necessarily be a fabulous film of Jane Eyre.
Fans of the book should appreciate the way a selection of its pages have been realised, but afterwards I was checking the internet because I emerged with only hints and suspicions about what it was really about.
I was enthralled by the telling, but not the tale.

Herald (Ireland):

Wasikowska's Jane is vulnerable and wary after a life of rejection and lack of love, but beneath there's a steely resolve and determination to follow her heart. Her delight when Rochester displays a growing, if oddly begrudging, affection for her is tempered by the sage advice offered by housekeeper Mrs Fairfax (Judi Dench) that all may not be what it seems at Thornfield Hall.
The Yorkshire landscape looks bleak but beautiful and Fassbender does a fine job as Rochester but this is Wasikowska's film all the way. A classic story, impeccably told. What's not to enjoy? (George Byrne)

Di-Ve:

It’s been a while since I read the book, but it feels faithful, and definitely has the same feel of doom and disaster awaiting which I always felt the book had in droves. The movie does play up the romance more than the book, but the darkness still comes through. I found it very entertaining despite the darkness, and I also really enjoyed the views of the wet and windswept moors so representative of the mood. A worthy addition to the plethora of Jane Eyre adaptations. (Ann De Marco)

London Evening Standard:

The style is fluent and low-key, shot mostly in available light. This makes for a muted tone - the interiors are sinisterly dark and shadowy, the exteriors grey and misty without ever being over-rhetorical.
Fukunaga has an excellent sense of people acting powerfully on each other while remaining within themselves, together but alone, trying to belong, which has transferred naturally from his gang thriller. Where he fails to rise to the occasion, though, is in the climactic set pieces - the revelation of raving Bertha Mason, the reunion of the lovers - which continue at pretty much the same level as every other scene. (...)
has made herself pale and severe (if not actually ugly), supremely self-disciplined. Yet however much she curbs herself you know just what is surging inside, how unbreakable is her spirit.
Perhaps she's the best Jane Eyre on film, for Wasikowska manages to be both a specific character and completely archetypal, just as Jane is in the novel - that deranged, overwhelming and, it now seems, inexhaustible creation.  (David Sexton)

Female First:

This may be tale with more versions than one can count, but few hold up as admirably as this. A costume drama unlike most costume dramas, Jane Eyre is defiantly one to watch. She may say she's "small, plain and little", but Jane Eyre's anything but that. (Cameron Smith)

The Mirror:

Raising up an embarrassed and uncultured hand, may I admit to approaching Jane Eyre from a position of ignorance, having never read the book and never having seen any of the 20-odd big-screen adaptations.
But surely Charlotte Brontë's bestknown novel was more exciting than this film that, while pretty and wellacted, is a right old slog. (...)
It's not that you can't buy Jane and Rochester as a couple, it's just that you don't really care. (David Edwards)

Liverpool Echo:

Elegantly adapted for the screen by Moira Buffini, Jane Eyre condenses the source novel into two hours of yearning and regret.

Metro London:

While the story is inevitably condensed, this stays relatively true to the novel’s austere atmosphere. But with its flawed hero and buttoned-up heroine, Jane Eyre can be a hard story to engage with and director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s restrained tone rarely communicates a sense of passion or heartbreak. (Anna Smith)

Clothes On Film:

Jane Eyre’s primary failing as a feature can be traced to the first twenty minutes. Deviating from Charlotte Brontë’s original text, screenwriter Moira Buffini employs a choppy flashback structure that affects the late arrival of Rochester into the film. Fukunaga then all but abandons the idea in favour of linear storytelling, which is actually a far more comfortable narrative fit. (...)
Jane Eyre is not a perfect adaptation, though with literary purists to satisfy and new audiences to excite, maybe such a concept does not exist. What it does exceptionally well is tell a chaste, yet inescapably sexy love story with depth and passion. (Chris Laverty)

Irish Times:

High priests of the Brontë Sect will find a few tinkerings in Cary Fukunaga’s impressive take on Jane Eyre . But, for the most part, working from an economic script by Moira Buffini, he stays fairly close to the well-remembered story. (...)
Played solidly – if not transcendently – by Wasikowska, Jane emerges as a frustrated soul bursting to assert herself. Dialled down a few notches on the intensity register, the central semi-love affair seems more comprehensible than is usually the case.
And yet. Something has also been lost. One yearns for a little bit more sturm und drang (quite literally) from the film. The most famous, most melodramatic scene in the story – do we really need to be this coy? – has rarely passed in such perfunctory fashion.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you need to get out of the attic more often. (Donald Clarke)

The Independent:

I have heard people complaining that we've had too many versions of Jane Eyre on screen and TV. Does this mean that they've seen them all and that our Eyre supply is now full? I prefer to think of it as the gift that keeps on giving: you can enjoy the 1944 Hollywood version, starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, without any danger of mistaking it for "definitive". There's richness and complexity enough in Charlotte Brontë's novel to attract film-makers and filmgoers for another 100 years. Some works of art are inexhaustible, and this is proving one of them.

This latest version brings no dramatic new angle or ideological emphasis to the story, just precision of design, nuance of mood, and excellent casting. And weather – lots of bleak, damp, frozen-to-the-bone weather. We get a dose of it straightaway as the camera trails a young woman fleeing across moorland under skies the colour of slate, through blinding curtains of rain. (Anthony Quinn)

Heatworld:

A gorgeously gothic love story with a brilliantly talented cast, confirming director Fukunaga as one to watch. 4/5

More reviews: Associated Content,  Culture Witch, Centrefolds and Empty Screens, The Film Cynic, Connector.tv, The Squeee, Kristine Cuer, Reel Reviews, Femtalk,

BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat interviews Mia Wasikowska:

I hear the proper English accent so much more so it's easier to do that.
"The Yorkshire accent we don't hear as much around the world so it was more of a challenge to learn it."
The actress worked with a language coach while rehearsing for the role.
"I had a great dialogue coach. And I tried to listen to the accent as much as I could when I wasn't working."
"I thought it was important for [the character] to have that to echo back to where she's from and not be so finely polished."

Time Out London also interviews Mia:

Jane Eyre is a character with a lot of baggage – so many adaptations, so many devoted readers. Why did you want to play her?
‘What struck me most was that she is just 18 years old – the same age I was when I read the book. In my mind, I’d always thought of her as older for some reason – maybe because I was a teenager. She is such an incredible character, with such a strong sense of self and self-worth. She’s not going to compromise for anybody, which I think is really brave, really strong. And rare, even now.’ (...)
How does being in costume work? Does it help to get you into character?
‘The corsets are incredibly painful.But they are useful, too, because the physical repression mirrors the mental and emotional repression that women faced. It’s incredible that women had to wear them. They’re so cruel. And the perfect metaphor: women were caged. You can’t take in a full breath properly. You can’t really raise your voice because it’s got a grip on your diaphragm. So it’s a real pain in the ass!’ (Cath Clarke)

QG Magazine interviews Michael Fassbender:

Your character in Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester, has been played by some giants, including Orson Welles in 1943. How nervous were you? 
Sure, you feel pressure because of the people but also you know just the novel alone is an amazing piece of work that you want to do justice to. I like that fear with me when I enter most jobs. If I don't have that fear then I'm complacent, I'm in a comfort zone, so I want to be there. I want to continue learning as much as I can. Fear is a healthy thing - it keeps you disciplined. You have to make sure you've done your homework.
Was there any of the previous versions you particularly liked? 
I got something out of watching all of them - different elements here and there. I actually really liked the recent TV one with Toby Stephens and Ruth Wilson. I never got round to reading the book in my teenage years but I  remember my Mum and sister passionately discussing it. Around 2005 I was auditioning for The Wide Sargasso Sea, so I visited the book then, and then revisited before we went to production. (Oliver Franklin)

The London Evening Standard interviews Jamie Bell:

I'd read the book in school but I've never really been a huge fan of period drama. It's over-saturation from living in England. But then I heard that Cary Fukunaga was going to be directing and was interested to see his take on it. His perspective of the time and what it was like to be a woman shows what it felt like and not just what it looked like, which I love. (Lucy Hunter Johnston)

Sky News has a video interview with Fassbender and Metro also talks with the actor.

The Periscope Post summarises the critical response to the film. BBC News Derby has a video talking about the shooting at Haddon Hall.  More websites presenting the film: Paisley Daily Express, Different Scene, Associated Press, Big Pond, iVillage...

The Huffington Post repeats an idea that has been explored before. That Austen adaptations were perfect for our pre-crisis world and the Brontës are the ones for our shattered world:

This year, after a decade of Jane Austen adaptations, cinema has turned to the Brontës. Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are coming to the big screen.
There'll be no sparkling socials and bitchy asides over a turn around the rose garden. These Brontë girls do the suffocating misery of poverty and doomed love in a blasted landscape.
Austen was perfect for the world we inhabited before the word 'crisis' was inserted into nearly every news headline. Her heroines faced adversity in love, but it all works out in the end. (...)

The Brontës don't offer any such assurance that the world spins the right way. Yes, Jane Eyre marries Mr Rochester. But it's a blinded, broken man who becomes her husband. Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights only finds happiness buried six feet under - and Heathcliff with her.
Those watching Cary Fukunaga's faithful version of Jane Eyre will see cruelty, neglect and social exclusion.
In Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights - the first adaptation to cast a black Heathcliff - Top Withens is a world of racism and brutality.
Bronte heroines are dirty-fingernailed and as tough as the Yorkshire moors because life, as the sisters knew all too well, can be tragic and short. (...)
So aficionados of the 'bonnet and breeches' genre may not find these new films to their taste.
They don't offer what we want to hear.
They tell instead of a world where the good die young, lovers aren't necessarily reunited, and that there's always - always - a madwoman lurking in the bloody attic. (Emma Jones)

The Yorkshire Post talks about Blake Morrison's We Are Three Sisters:

Morrison’s play is well timed with the Brontës’ back in the limelight thanks to the BBC’s new film adaptation of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, but Kinsella feels their stage play offers a more realistic depiction of what life was like in the mid-19th century. “A lot of the film versions seem a bit glamorous, they’re very pristine. But Haworth would have been a pretty grim place and I think the play shows a grittier more realistic world,” she says. Hutchinson agrees. “The suffering, not only in their own family, but in the wider community must have been appalling, the death rate was terrible and the average age was about 25 years old, there were gravestones everywhere.”
“But they had to shut all that out and they deal with it in that typical Victorian way – you just carry on,” adds Di Martino.
The three actresses spent a lot of time researching the sisters, more so than if they were playing fictional characters. “We want to do them justice because they are great writers and characters from history so we have to make sure our portrait of them is accurate,” says Kinsella.
At the heart of the tale is the sibling rivalry that exists in all families which meant identifying each sister’s personality. “Emily didn’t have any friends, she was a loner who didn’t want people to know who she was,” says Di Martino. “Emily and Charlotte sparred more than any of the others,” says Kinsella.
“Charlotte could be a bit maternal and patronising, if I’m honest, but I don’t think she meant to be.” Anne, on the other hand, was the “romantic” one they all agree. “I’m the light relief in the play,” says Hutchinson, laughing.

The Telegraph & Argus complains about the state of some of the footpaths in Bradford County:

Keighley Ramblers secretary Alex Gardner said: “For most people going out for a local walk, a major factor in deciding where to go is the condition of the paths. That’s why places like Bingley St Ives and the Brontë Moors are so popular – the paths are well-signposted, clear of obstructions and easy to follow.
“If more paths were in as good a condition as that from Haworth to Top Withens, for example, I’m sure people would use them.”

Fastco Design thinks that Jane Eyre and Avatar are basically the same:

For instance, one wouldn’t normally draw comparisons between Jane Eyre and Avatar, but the two actually share the same trope. You know the one: “boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.”  (Belinda Lanks)

The Baltimore Sun remembers 9/11 stories. Kirsten Dize (14 then) says:

I remember taking to my favorite defense mechanism: a book. When the coverage overwhelmed me I left the house, sat in the front yard under a tree and devoured Jane Eyre.

On The Elm, we read about a student trip to the Lake District in England:

Romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Brontës come to life as students visit the very landscapes that inspired their writings and the very houses in which they resided.“During the many hikes, we were able to take in some amazing landscapes while also appreciating some of the great literature that was inspired in the very same locations we visited. During our daily lessons, Dr. Gillin would ask us to think about the works we had read by Wordsworth and the Brontës and to try to understand them in relation to the sites we were viewing,” said [Erin] McAuliffe. (Aubrey Hastings)

 Abigail's Ateliers uploads a picture of a Wycoller Hall photo session.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References