“Reader, I married himself”

The Bucks Herald reviews Jane Eyre 2011:

It seems that Hollywood just can’t stop remaking classics – with variable success – but this new rendition of Charlotte Brontë’s Gothic tale of love and heartbreak is a cut above any of the 20+ versions that have gone before. [...]
The cinematography of director Cary ‘Sin Nombre’ Fukunaga is excellent throughout – the film builds up delicious undercurrents of menace aand makes effective use of the staples of the Gothic novel from dark storms and large daunting houses to suspected peril and deep, smouldering looks passed between characters.
In a cinema year that has been low on highbrow quality romances Jane Eyre is a welcome visual and emotional cinematic ravishing of the soul. (Matt Adcock)

The Belfast Telegraph focuses mainly on Rochester. The reviews comes with a pun Eyre-air in the title and the writer's opinion that Jane Eyre is apparently 'the greatest chick-flick of them all'.

Michael Fassbender’s Edward Fairfax Rochester is so good that Charlotte Brontë herself would surely approve.
He plays the world-weary master to absolute perfection and the chemistry between the two is so apparent from the outset that you would swear sparks were flying. In fact in their parting scene, on the night of the fire, as their bosoms heave against each other and their lips almost touch, the anticipation is so great that every woman in the cinema around me literally groaned out loud and gripped their velvet banquettes.
So girls, go and see it and I promise you won’t be disappointed. [...]
Just one word of advice though — take gals or gay friends but leave the hubby at home. Unless he’s both brutish and Byronesque and/or in possession of tight breeches and riding boots, you’ll offend him with your drooling. (Frances Burscough)

As usual, we wish people would stop saying that it's a women's book, particularly in articles claiming how neither this new film nor the original novel are feminist at all such as this one from the Guardian:

Women have been fascinated by Jane Eyre since the book was published in 1847, but it's only in our own era that it's come to be viewed as "a feminist tract" or even "the first major feminist novel". Charlotte Brontë is considered as "one of the foremothers of the contemporary women's movement" by some, yet cinema, which has hijacked her heroine at least 18 times, has always had other ideas. [...]
Brontë's book was applauded for shattering the female stereotypes of early Victorian literature. Then, women tended to be presented as either angels or monsters; today's cinema has extended the range to include action hero, killer and ditz. Buffini and Fukunaga successfully sidestep all of these, but the protagonist they create hardly emerges as a role model for conventional feminists.
Though Mia Wasikowska's Jane has plenty of direct experience of the excesses of the patriarchy, she shows no desire to get it toppled. In this respect the film follows Brontë at the expense of current pieties. In spite of the myth that has come to surround her work, "there is not a hint in the book of any desire for political, legal, educational, or even intellectual equality between the sexes", remarked Brontë scholar R B Martin in 1966.
This film's Jane refuses to lay claim to a share in the collective victimhood to which male oppression ought to have entitled her. Indeed, she implies that to do so would be to let herself down. Michael Fassbender's Rochester assumes that any governess will have catalogued the abuses that have brought her so low in life. Jane could have listed plenty, but when he asks her to do so she tells him: "I have no tale of woe."
Worse, she feels no obligation to take a place in the public sphere. Today's feminists may target the boardroom, parliament or pulpit, but this Jane seeks only a swain. Worse still, she's drawn to a bad boy rather than a house-trained new man, just like the most reprehensible of fictional maids. Rochester isn't just the kind of bloke who seems unlikely to wash nappies or do his share of the washing up. He locks up his wife in the attic for years, before trying to lure an innocent into bigamy. And Wasikowska's Jane finds all of this forgivable.
Not only are identity politics beyond her ken; womanhood itself isn't her primary characteristic. This is how Wasikowska sees the film: "It's about a young girl who's trying to find connection in love in a very isolated world, so it's something that everybody, I think, can identify with, girls and boys of all ages."
Once again, that reflects the book, rather than current gender correctness. Martin goes on: "Miss Brontë asks only for the simple – or is it the most complex? – recognition that the same heart and the same spirit animate both men and women." Both Janes are essentially human beings rather than females.
For feminists, this film is therefore a rebuke rather than a rallying cry. So, it reminds us, is the text on which it's based. Nonetheless, perhaps Buffini and Fukunaga have performed at least one act of female liberation. They may have helped free one of the most memorable of all fictional women from a misplaced and deceptive construal. (David Cox)

Sky News Australia quotes Michael Fassbender as comparing Jane Eyre to the Twilight saga. He also goes for the 'it's for women' mindset:

Asked why he thinks brooding male characters are so popular, Michael - who stars as Mr. Rochester in a new 'Jane Eyre' movie adaptation - said: "When you're reading Jane Eyre he's like 'Sit down, sit down sit down.' These women seemed to enjoy the torture of the relationships but in this story there is the redemption at the end.
"I've said before, maybe I'm wrong, the films like the 'Twilight Saga' have the same sort of structure, like a love that can never exist, women seem to go crazy for these sorts of things."

Handbag has also interviewed him.

The UK Press Association has talked to Mia Wasikowska:

Mia Wasikowska has admitted that she was surprised by how cold the Derbyshire moors were during the filming of Jane Eyre.
The Alice In Wonderland actress has the lead role in the new film adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel.
"It was so cold, I think I got hypothermia on the second day of shooting but I'm a winter creature, so I liked it," the Australian said.
Mia, a former ballerina who made the switch to acting at 15, struggled to get used to the restrictive costumes.
"They transform you," she said.
"They allow so little room for movement, you instantly understand that awful repression and restriction of the age. I don't know how women did it. It's so cruel and unnatural."

The Telegraph says what a new film adaptation of a book often means and takes a (quite funny) language detour from there:

The release of the new film of Jane Eyre will presumably encourage more people to try Charlotte Brontë’s novel. For a modern reader, one of the novel’s bonus pleasures lies in noting the fascinating words that have fallen out of fashion since publication in 1847. Few authors – or anyone else – would now use “deglutition” rather than “swallowing”, “bethought myself” rather than “decided”, “colloquise” rather than “talk”, “emulous” rather than “eager”.
Of course, language is perpetually evolving. Today, it seems, “lay” is replacing “lie” (a mother will tell her child to lay down); “presently” is viewed as a fancy synonym for “currently”; “exaggerate” is often heard with the prefix “over-”, as if “exaggerate” did not already denote excess. “You”, meanwhile, is losing ground to “yourself”. While my wife and I were dining out recently, the waitress asked, “Is everything all right for yourselves?” Myself thanked herself and said ourselves were delighted.
Then again, this last trend may not be new: in Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester tells Jane that “there is not another being in the world has the same pure love for me as yourself”. With all due deference to this magnificent romantic hero, I can’t help thinking such a usage makes him sound like a Glaswegian footballer. Still, at least Jane got it right. I doubt her most famous line would be so widely quoted had she written, “Reader, I married himself.” (Michael Deacon)

It could have been better - 'Reader, myself married himself'.

The Atlantic mentions tuberculosis and of course there go the Brontës too (always forgetting that Charlotte didn't die from TB but in all likelihood of hyperemesis gravidarum).

World Book Night recently asked 'readers to nominate the 10 books they most love to read, give and share'. The results show that Jane Eyre is number 4 and Wuthering Heights is number 8.

A film a day keep reality at bay, Culch, Movie Film Reviews, Linnea Christina, Njutbara Ting (both in Swedish), We're not critics, we just like movies!! and The Graduate Times review Jane Eyre 2011. Junyingkirk posts about Jane Eyre.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV