My name is Eyre... Jane Eyre

Tiny Mix Tapes reviews Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights:

From the obsessive security guard of Red Road to the foul-mouthed waif of Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold's films are emotionally and visually charged explorations of their female leads' psyches. Her new film is somewhat of a departure in content and form, but it retains the strength of vision I respect in her work. Although its provenance is obvious, Arnold's Wuthering Heights is an exhilaratingly sensual retelling of Emily Brontë's classic novel. Her shamanic visuals find cruelty and beauty in the wildness of the moors as much as in the frantic love between Catherine and Heathcliff. The film is heavy with nature, a rich, erotic, and rotting world that seems to consume its young lovers. The performances are stark and blunt, with a surprising heat drawn from the economy of words. Most entrancing for me was the orchestra of sounds that fill this world. The lashing rain, creaking hinges, panting horses, and windy moors are expertly used to narrative effect. This film won't be for everyone, but it will find fans among those who enjoyed the rapturous rhythm of Malick's Tree Of Life. (Susanna Locascio)

Kaya Scodelario speaks about the film on BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat:

She plays the lead as Catherine from the classic Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights, opposite a black actor, newcomer James Howson who plays Heathcliff.
Scodelario says: "A lot of people were expecting it to be some huge deal and it's not and that's the way it should be. It's just a film, it's a casting, it's true to the book and works well." [...]
"I never thought I was the right look for it, I thought you had to be very posh and very blonde and sort of perfect and I didn't think that was me." [...]
Scodelario says: "Andrea is one of the coolest directors in the world and if she likes you she likes you. So respect to her for taking the risk, hopefully it pays off."

Hollywwod.com has reposted the trailer and thinks that,

Where Emily Brontë's prose was lifeless and colorless, the movie actually seems to be spirited (albeit somberly so). (Michael Arbeiter)

Lifeless and colourless prose? Well, we seriously beg to differ.

While MovieLine considers the trailer 'impressionistic':

A visceral sense of nature comes through; if ever a trailer used the sound of wind well, it’s this one. But between that, the dim natural lighting, and the flashes of poetic visual imagery (not to mention the near-square 1.37:1 aspect ratio) it’ll be a tough teaser to crack for most audiences, even the ones familiar with the novel. (Jen Yamato)

Shockya writes about it too.

RIA Novosti discusses Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre, the fabled young heroine of the 1847 classic, doesn't have much except a charity school education and her own innate wits, tenacity and commonsense. Yet as a poor orphan governess serving in a ghostly Victorian manor she dreams of reaching out for much more than her social status and physical “plainness and obscurity” entail. Regardless of society's conventions, she longs for “a power of vision which might overpass that limit.”
I first read, or rather, devoured, Jane Eyre when I was twelve, in Russian and then, as soon as I could, in English. Since then, I've reread this novel nearly every year, each time finding new inspiration. While a teenager, I was taken by the plot's romantic twists — Jane Eyre falling in love with the manor's noble master and after having surpassed all impossible social barriers and other obstacles of sorts, finding absolute bliss. As I got older, I began to appreciate the book's other aspects, such as the central character's remarkable strength and wholeness, sanity and wisdom.
Scholars, in fact, call this novel one of world literature's first feminist texts. I am not sure if Jane Eyre was indeed a feminist, but she did sport some qualities that late 20th century women’s rights activists would have totally embraced. She was restless yet objective, outspoken and fiercely independent. She resisted the lavish gifts her wealthy fiancé would try showering her with and she wanted to keep working as a governess after marrying just to be economically free. She also openly expressed views that were rather radical for her time. [...]
Still, this 21st century woman definitely boasts what Jane Eyre-likes 160 years ago longed for. Why then she's more exasperated than fulfilled? If Charlotte Brontë's character were living today, during times of limitless opportunities for women, what path would she choose? That of a complacent housewife? Or of a successful professional ignoring society's conventions that a woman should settle down and have a family? Or would she, too, strive to have it all, and be a juggler, just perhaps a more efficient one?
I somehow believe today's Jane Eyre wouldn't necessarily have it all. But she'd certainly have it her way. She'd play it fair but stand and, if necessary, fight for what she believed in. Negotiate more flexible work hours and a decent maternity leave, set priorities straight, compete but not fear to lose or let go of things when more important stuff (such as a relationship or health matters) is at stake. [...]
Jane Eyre was as much feminine as she was a feminist. She just kept doing what she wanted, and challenging what was expected of her. (Svetlana Kolchik)

The Sydney Morning Herald decides to be oh so shallow about the novel though:

The whole idea that women can ogle male bodies, and desire them, publicly, is a notion that’s only recently crawled out of the deep pool of lusty carnal history.
Thus, women don’t have a history of entertaining courtesans in private dining rooms with friends to fall back on, hence, crude behaviour. And there’s also the fact women are generally pretty darn excited that Carrie and the gals made it OK to do what we probably always wanted to do, even before the Brontë sisters wrote out the sex fantasies of the weaker sex in all their broody, animal glory. (Katherine Feeney)

The Illawarra Mercury explains part of what's behind those sorts of statements:

A lecturer in English literature at the University of Wollongong recently bemoaned the inability of his students to recognise, let alone understand, the biblical phrases that pepper classic authors, such as Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, the Brontë sisters and TS Eliot, or non-Western writers such as Allende and Marquez. (Reverend Sandy Grant)

Wired Science publishes an excerpt from the book The Dyslexic Advantage:

It wasn’t until her freshman year of high school that she finally read well enough to appreciate the actual words in the books she read. “The first novel that I recall truly enjoying and loving for its language as well as its incident was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens…. The other novel…was Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre…. I think it took me a year to consume these two books. It might have taken two years. [I]t was a slow go.”

What's On Stage reviews Blake Morrison's play We Are Three Sisters giving it 3 stars:

Morrison, a far from inspired Broadsides cast and the company’s famously ebullient director Barrie Rutter, have created an evening that doesn’t draw one in to the action closely enough for anything to matter very much. And at two-and-three-quarter hours long, it is a very demanding sit. (Alan Hulme)

The New Zealand Herald has an article on hyperemesis gravidarum and mentions that Charlotte Brontë 'likely died from it'.

The Huffington Post jokes:

Next week, we look at the return of Danielle Craig playing the ever-appealing Jane Bond, and we talk about the film version of James Eyre - the story of the young orphan tutor James and his imperious older mistress Miss Rochester with a dark secret in the attic. (Kate Harrad)

On the blogosphere, Wuthering Heights is discussed by brb reading, mentedesocupada (in Portuguese). My Other Book Is a Tolstoy writes about the importance of closing lines, mentioning Wuthering Heights. Judging Covers gives 5 stars to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Categories: Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Wuthering Heights