Verbal Sparring

As usual, reviews of Jane Eyre 2011:

The Hindu (where we also can find information about previous versions):

As for the 2011 version, Buffini creates a properly dramatic beginning for the film with Jane's flight from a place of personal safety but moral danger, across the bleak moors, to an unknown future. Most of the story unfolds as flashbacks that allow for some smart cinematic ellipses. (...)

Wasikowska is a great Jane for our times — moral but not saintly; not egoistic, but not servile either; and possessing a tremendous ability to reinvent herself and grow. Though she suffers, she is never a victim; and rises to be a woman who is greater than the sum of her experiences. Fassbender is a cleverly-conceived Rochester with just the right touch of Byronic gloom — not so over-the-top that he would seem to belong to another era of filmmaking.

Yet, paradoxically, one criticism of the film is to wish for more smoulder overall. The 2011-version plays it very straight, and for the most part that works very well, but a soupcon more of the Gothic would have gone down rather well in this revisited classic. (Parvathi Nayar)

Real Movie News:

Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska are stunning and with good support from Jamie Bell and Dame Judy Dench, this is a must watch for all Brontë and period drama fans. (Jamie Kelwick)

The Sunday Times Cinema listing:

Jane Eyre PG/12A, 120 mins *** This new version of Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), begins two thirds of the way through the story, as Jane (Mia Wasikowska) takes flight across a storm-lashed moor. It’s the standard plot, just not in the standard order. Plain Jane and the pained Rochester (Michael Fassbender) still engage in the seduction of verbal sparring. She is a young woman of character and conviction, and Wasikowska does her justice. Unfortunately, Fassbender brings nothing new to Rochester: he broods and he has outbursts of bad temper, but he doesn't make us sympathise with his plight. This is a wonderfully atmospheric Jane Eyre, but dramatically it’s a bit thin, considering the twists and turns in the plot.

Indiewire informs that Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights has been screened at the Special Presentations at the 8th Reykjavik International Film Festival. The Independent doesn't forget that the film will also be present at the upcoming London Film Festival.

Sophie Hillan, author of May, Lou and Cass: Jane Austen’s Nieces in Ireland, presents her book in The Sunday Express:

What she would have thought then of Anna’s cousins, Marianne, Louisa and Cassandra Knight (May, Lou and Cass) living out their lives in Ireland, through famine, bitter land wars and political upheaval, is anyone’s guess. They remain there, buried in almost forgotten graves.

She might have been more surprised still to discover that they would live out the plots of her novels and find themselves in situations which only Trollope, Thackeray or the Brontë sisters would have tackled in a novel.

A Day in the Life didn't enjoy Jane Eyre 1996;  Read It Ribbit posts about the original novel and unastanzatuttaperse (in Italian) reviews it on YouTube. A Cupcake and a Latte reviews April Lindner's Jane.

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