With a little help from the BAFTAs

The Oxford Student hasn't liked the new Jane Eyre at all:

The first problem is the structure. This is Fukanaga’s (sic) only major deviation from the novel with the story starting with Jane running away from Rochester and collapsing on the moors. Once being taken in by the clergyman St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) their conversation about from where she came allows the film to revert to the chronology. Once you’ve got past the fact that Billy Elliot has become a softly spoken, pious reverend with mutton chops, the structural innovation doesn’t seem offensive at all. Not particularly needed, but it doesn’t detract either. The problem is when the film approaches the end. As most of the St. John episode has been inter-cut with the recollections of her past, Jane’s inevitable returns to Rochester comes only about 15 minutes after leaving him. The structure makes her painful isolation seem much shorter than it should be.
Of course Fukanaga  (sic) is not the only one to blame. It doesn’t help that the quality of acting is so poor, odd considering that selling the idea of a part in Jane Eyre to any decent actor doesn’t seem like the hardest thing to do. (Carey Mulligan as Jane…please?) Mia Wasikowska, although looking the part, balancing beauty and plainness, forgets how to act whilst concentrating on her Yorkshire accent. Her body language and pained resignation is wonderful, but if you were just listening to her, you’d be forgiven for thinking yourself at a school play.
Michael Fassbender as Rochester takes the brooding, Byronic qualities far too seriously so any lightness in Rochester’s character is completely neglected, rendering him unlovable rather than smoulderingly alluring as he’s meant to be. Also Fukanaga’s  (sic) failure to properly articulate his past unluck in love helps to kill off any necessary sympathy left after Fassbender’s efforts. Strong performances are however given by Sally Hawkins and Craig Roberts as the contemptible Reeds, interestingly reprising their mother-son relationship from Ayoade’s Submarine. Dench is, of course, flawless.
The third main problem, and probably the chief one, as it contradicts Fukanaga’s attempt to make a faithful adaptation, is the screenplay. Whilst cutting down books for film is always difficult, Moira Buffini’s script forgoes some of the most brilliant, and most cinematic parts of the book. For example Jane’s sight of the mad Bertha tearing her wedding veil in the dead of night is, in the book, told to Rochester the next morning. As a critical scene for both the Gothic feel of the novel and also Rochester’s deception of Jane (he tells her that there was no such woman) it seems odd that Fukanaga and Buffini chose not to include this small, powerful flashback in this long flashback of a film.
Indeed almost all the characteristically dark, Brontë-esque undertones of the book are disregarded, homogenising it. Bertha’s threat is not really present and the enigmatic, mysterious Grace Poole as the suspected threat, does not even exist. Even when Bertha appears, her wildness is not terrifying in the slightest, and her origins are never properly explained. Compare Valentina Cervi’s short portrayal of a no more than bitchy Bertha to Claudia Coulter’s feral and harrowing depiction in the infinitely better 2006 miniseries. (Abbas Panjwani)

Mouth London on the other hand gives it 4 stars.

Thompson on Hollywood thinks Jane Eyre needs a little help for the Academy Awards:

Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender in Jane Eyre, which could also use a lift from the BAFTAs. (Anne Thompson)

Sarah Todd from the Yorkshire Post saw the film last weekend:

There was a trip to the cinema to see Jane Eyre (I’m on the lookout now for a poster of Mr Rochester on his black stallion for the tack room). . .

SBS Film takes a (brief) look at this year's other Brontë film, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights:

Andrea Arnold’s latest, Wuthering Heights, is a wonderful interpretation of Emily Brontë’s Gothic novel that strips the romance of the story away, leaving us with a brooding, elemental and brutal tale of a powerful animal attraction, all set against the howling wind and driving rain of the Yorkshire Moors. In Wuthering Heights, for my money, Andrea Arnold once again proves she’s one of the bravest and most interesting directors working today. (Brennan Wrenn)

The Guardian reports that tickets for the film in the London Film Festival are already sold out.

It turns out that according to the Baltimore City Paper the President of the University of Maryland is quite a Brontëite:

CP: Is there a genre of book that’s a guilty pleasure for you?
FH: I love 19th-century British literature. Thackeray and Dickens and I love the Brontë sisters. I enjoy the pace of that period. I enjoy thinking about someone who gets a letter and waits days before opening it. It’s unimaginable now. (Andrea Appleton)

Flavorwire lists '10 Famous Children’s Authors Who Also Wrote Books for Adults'. R.L. Stine's Superstitious is described as follows:

It follows a grad student whose marriage to a very — yes — superstitious professor is followed by a string of murders. From there, the plot seems to devolve into a mashup of Rosemary’s Baby and Jane Eyre. (Judy Berman)

The Texas Faith Blog from The Dallas Morning News thinks that having a spouse who suffers from Alzheimer's is 'the modern version of Jane Eyre'.

Everything Express, The Great Smokies Review and The Ramblings of a Blogging Film Addict review Jane Eyre 2011. Flickr user rhart44 has been to see Haddon Hall, where this film and some previous ones were filmed.

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