The power of the Brontës has not dimmed at all

As the UK premiere date for Jane Eyre 2011 is coming near, the interviews, reviews and articles are everywhere. Nothing very new if you followed the US release, but still nice. BBC News asks why the Brontës are still on the spotlight:

This week, major film adaptations of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre will be in the spotlight, along with a play about the lives of the literary sisters.

After 160 years, the power of the Brontë sisters' ferocious imaginations has not dimmed at all. (...)
On Friday, Jane Eyre opens in UK cinemas, with the lead role filled by Mia Wasikowska. (...)
On the same night, a play about Emily, Charlotte and their younger sister Anne - author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - opens in Halifax before going on a national tour. (...)
These dramas join a lengthy list of artistic works that have been inspired by the sisters and their writing. Is there a reason why all three have come along now?
Jane Eyre director Cary Fukunaga suggests that current audiences may be drawn to gothic tales.
"People like darker types of stories, which is maybe why there's less Jane Austen films being made," he says.
"But also I think that it's a story that's going to be retold again and again, mainly because of the strength of the characters and the depiction of the characters."
For 21-year-old Wasikowska, the sisters have clearly not aged much. They are "awesome" and "so bad-ass", she says.
Jane Eyre is a timeless story, she believes. "If you take away the period setting and the costumes, the core of it is a young girl who's trying to find love and connection in a very isolated and dislocated world," she says.
"Boy or girl, I think it's identifiable to anyone of any generation."
Blake Morrison, who first had the idea for his play 10 years ago, says the current collision of Brontë projects is little more than coincidence. The sisters' works, he believes, are "in permanent revival".
"The Brontës are just perennially, habitually, forever interesting," he says. "Like any classic authors, they just keep hovering there and haunting us."
For Morrison, the true story is as compelling as the novels. (...) (Ian Youngs & Neil Smith)

Digital Spy has video interviews with Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska, iVillage has also a combined interview with both Mia and Cary;  This is Fake DIY reviews the film and gives it a 9 out of 10:

Newcomers to Jane Eyre must not be put off by the soppy, lovelorn trailers, for this is a grim story of survival and resilience, with a twist worthy of the darkest thriller. Inspiring and and heart-stoppingly passionate, Fukunaga's Eyre is utterly compelling - every shot is a work of art and Dario Marianelli's dramatic score compounds both the fiery passion and the dread. Fassbender solidifies his status as an electrifying leading man, but it's Wasikowska who is worthy of an Oscar nomination for her sensitive and finely tuned understanding of Jane - when her severeness falters, it's heartbreaking.
This is no stuffy corset drama, but a gripping nightmare over an astute study of 19th Century society. A better adaptation could not be imagined. (Becky Reed)

Another review, Glam UK:

This is a very elegant adaptation of Brontë’s rather gloomy tale. Even if period dramas aren’t normally your thing – I urge you to put your preconceived notions aside and this film is most definitely worth a trip to the cinema. (Lizzie Pyle)

More reviews: Movie Monger, The Lurking Librarian, topmovievault, Movie Magic, a guest post on The Squeee ...

The Guardian interviews Mia Wasikowska:

Even when she's completely silent, stories whisper over Wasikowska's face, which explains her latest casting as Jane Eyre, a woman whose inner monologue bubbles with wit and defiance. The film opens with Eyre's stricken flight from Thornfield Hall, after a betrayal by her great love, Rochester, and the camera focuses on Wasikowska's stripped-bare face as she runs across sodden woodland, down wet paths, and lies on a rock in the hammering rain. The scene could easily veer into parody – the sort of watery, weepy cape-and-bonnet moment French and Saunders might once have sent up. But Wasikowska never teeters into histrionics, she is always completely believable.
She started reading Charlotte Brontë's novel a couple of years ago, and was so enamoured that halfway through she called her agent, asking if any adaptations were knocking about. Two months later, she was sent a script. "I was just so struck by Jane's sense of self," she says. "She doesn't compromise herself for anybody. I have a really supportive family, but she hasn't had anyone cheering her on at all." The shoot was exhausting, six days a week in a corset, "quite physical a lot of the time, and very emotional, all the time. I don't sleep very well in general, but I would be falling asleep any 10 minutes I had. In the makeup chair, I'd be," she drops her head back dramatically, "while they were trying to fix up my eyebrows."  (...)
In the interests of observation, she has followed her mother into photography, with more prodigious success; a photo she took of Jane Eyre co-star Jamie Bell, and director Cary Fukunaga, the two suspended quirkily in mid-air, was a finalist in a national portrait prize in Australia this year. She's only really been taking photographs since her acting career took off, training her camera on those pointing back at her. Many of her photos are taken on film sets, she says, because: "it equals everything out. It's become my shield and my weapon. They're always poking measuring tapes in our faces, and cameras, so I just think: I'll do the same back." (Kira Cochrane)

Female First lists some of the actresses who played Jane Eyre in the screen: Joan Fontaine, Susannah York, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Samantha Morton, Ruth Wilson and Mia Wasikowska. Mia is considered as a "possibility" for the next Best Actress Oscar in The Hollywood Reporter. On the See Film Differently Facebook you can see pictures of the Jane Eyre gala screening at Haddon Hall.

The Guardian about Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights:

There is something of a buzz for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, whereas with Arnold's Wuthering Heights, no one knows quite what to expect. Arnold has made two acclaimed contemporary dramas, Red Road and Fish Tank, so there is a lot of interest in seeing her adapt Emily Brontë's classic novel. (Mark Brown)

And Variety:

The latest spin on Emily Bronte's oft-revisited "Wuthering Heights" marks a stark departure from the star-driven adaptations that have come before. Though Michael Fassbender was initially cast as Heathcliff, while Natalie Portman, Abbie Cornish and Gemma Arterton were all attached at one point to play Catherine, British helmer Andrea Arnold changed course after boarding the project.
A stickler for authenticity, Arnold (director of gritty indies "Red Road" and "Fish Tank," as well as an Oscar winner for her short film "Wasp") insisted on shooting in the story's setting of Yorkshire, eschewing the typical pleasantries of period romance, including prim costumes and a sweeping score. The story, of course, remains the same: A poor boy is taken in by the wealthy Earnshaw family, where he develops an intense and doomed relationship with his young foster sister.
For the central couple, Arnold cast newcomer -- and Yorkshire-born thesp -- James Howson opposite Kaya Scodelario, an actress on the rise in the U.K. for her roles in "Skins" and "Clash of the Titans." The film -- which was produced and financed by a patchwork of companies, including HanWay Films, Screen Yorkshire, U.K. Film Council, Ecosse Films, Film4, Free Range Films and Goldcrest Capital -- premieres at Venice before making its way to Toronto. (Shane Danielsen)

Blake Morrison, author of We Are Three Sisters is interviewed in Whatsonstage:

“We are three sisters...” – the words of Charlotte Bronte to her publisher George Smith, admitting the deception in the names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The same four words are also the title of a new play by Blake Morrison which is to be premiered by Northern Broadsides at the Viaduct Theatre, Halifax, on 9 September. Of course we are also reminded of the title of a classic play by Anton Chekhov and, in fact, We Are Three Sisters is a cunning construct: essentially the structure of Three Sisters, with Olga, Maria and Irina replaced by Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Chekhov certainly knew, and was interested in, the story of the Brontës and it is widely believed that they provided the initial inspiration, though not the detail, for the Russian play. (...)
Clearly Blake Morrison had done his research for the play. He was born and brought up near Haworth and once wrote a musical version of Wuthering Heights with Howard Goodall that never reached the stage because it coincided with Cliff Richard’s Heathcliff! But it’s only recently that he’s immersed himself in the novels, letters, biographies to the extent that he’s able to quote chapter and verse on the relationship between his play and life in Haworth parsonage.
The sisters broadly fit with the three in Chekhov’s play – Charlotte the older responsible one, Emily the romantic, the young Anne reflect well enough Olga, Maria and Irina – but he also identifies themes in common: work, love, a changing society. He half accepts my suggestion of isolation/the world outside (“I slightly resist the idea of Haworth being completely isolated, but there is a sense of them feeling the capital is where things happen”) and makes the point that the famous line “Moscow! Moscow! Moscow!” (turned into London, of course) is divided between the sisters, Emily expressing her distaste for the city.
The play is set fairly specifically in time in a period of maybe six months n 1848 when the novels have just come out, not long before Branwell dies, in the aftermath of his affair with a woman called Mrs Robinson: “a key period, with success and death not far ahead.”
Blake’s bold statement, “It really is the Brontës, broadly enacting the plot of Three Sisters”, inevitably brings problems and decisions. Many of the facts of the Brontes’ lives are known and they are not the same as the invented facts of the lives of the Prozorov family. So how to be true to both? Blake Morrison’s biggest innovation in terms of plot is the addition of a very short Act 4 to be inserted before Chekhov’s original final Act 4. In this Charlotte and Anne tell a furious Emily about their meeting with the publisher in London and its consequences.
Blake runs through a few of the changes he has made, all supported by what we know of the Brontës. The presence of soldiers, as in the Chekhov play, would not convince so they’ve been cut – and a key role transferred appropriately to a curate: “The love-sick General becomes the love-sick curate.” He has even found that Charlotte’s letters refer to a curate at Haworth (not Mr. Nicholls whom she married) as a tremendous flirt! At the end of the play, a duel would not fit, but Blake has used a perfectly believable tragedy for the Brontës (wait and see!), then ends the play, as does Chekhov, with a discussion on the meaning of life. (Ron Simpson)

Yorkshire Post publishes a profile on Green Hammerton, including Nun Monkton:

One of Nun Monkton’s most famous visitors was Anne Brontë who taught the children of the rector of Nun Monkton, while acting as governess to a family in nearby Little Ouseburn.

Edward Chitham (The Life of Anne Brontë) proposed this possibility based upon an entry in Mr Robinson's account book that seems to suggest that maybe Anne taught the Nun Monkton's parson's daughters, when, in the last months of her stay at Thorp Green, she only had one Robinson pupil.

The same newspaper interviews Stuart Duffy, football manager at Bradford Bulls:

Name your favourite Yorkshire book/author/artist/CD/performer
Can I be greedy and have a few? I like Alan Bennett’s plays. Wuthering Heights is a great book and again so obviously Yorkshire.

Bookslut reviews The Echo Chamber by Luke Williams:

In the main, the characters peopling her story include Mr. Rafferty, an aging "murderer," who, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, tries to revive his dying wife by creating mechanical parts for her, including a heart; her father, Rex, an imperialist "monster" who believes he has wrought positive change in the municipal development of Nigeria, but whose regression into an illness with schizoid symptoms leaves him cowering in corners of Evie's attic like Bertha, the madwoman in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre; Taiwo and Iffe, her Nigerian caretakers; and Ade, Iffe's son and Evie's lifelong friend. (Jaya Chatterjee)

A.V. Club reviews the latest episode of Inspector Lewis: Old, Unhappy, Far Off Things:

There is also Lakshmi Eyre (ugh to the obvious reference there), a lingerie company CEO[.] (...) There are, however, a number of literary references that do not seem to signify much. Besides Pilgrim’s Progress and Jane Eyre, the title is taken from a Wordsworth poem. (Hayden Childs)

According to Metro:

Gilly Cottage, Nr St Cleer
Fresh from the pages of Wuthering Heights, Gilly Cottage is a true phones-off, feet-up country escape. (Polly Humphris)

Sanctuary wants to see Wuthering Heights 2011 at the TIFF; the original book is reviewed by It Cultura (in Portuguese);  Love Romance Passion lists Heathcliff on a best anti-heroes top ten; Laura Foster's Book Blog reviews Jane Eyre; Reading with my Twin is posting about Villette; AVTonyLeeds posts a Haworth's Main Street slideshow on YouTube; The Squeee publishes her own review of Tara Bradley's Jane Eyre's Husband.

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