Hey there fellow bloggers. Here I am again with a review of the latest Jane Eyre movie directed by Cary Fukunaga. First of all I’ve looked at other reviews of this movie who’ve said Jane Eyre was my favorite book and I’ve seen every adaption there is. I can’t claim that level of expertise but I have read the book and I saw the 2006 version with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens both of these I liked quite a lot. So I knew I had to see this film just so I could compare to the 2006 version to see if the story could have been done better. However this film seems like a pale ghost in comparison which was quite disappointing.
The plot of Jane Eyre is quite simple girl has crappy life. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy has dark secret past. Girl leaves boy. Girl goes back to boy and they live happily ever after and this film doesn’t mess with that premise and hits the majority of plot points that the novel has. This is actually a bit disappointing, the film doesn’t do anything new with the plot when I first heard that the film was starting at the point where Jane is found by Mr Rivers. I thought great, they’re going to tell the story in a different way. But they didn’t do anything interesting with it. Jane just flashbacks the story as she’s staying at rivers’ house and this really takes a lot of drive out of the narrative because we keep cutting back to her with the rivers and to be honest that wasn’t the most exciting moment of the book. It takes a lot of energy out of the narrative to have to cut back to Jane having an awkward dinner conversation with the Rivers. It also doesn’t help that because this film is only 90 minutes so they had to cut a lot from the novel, to the point where the film seems almost skeletal. This is especially apparent with the ending, this film doesn't end it stops abruptly. I remember, my sister going to me "Is that it?." Unfortunately that was it and
The direction of this film was quite disappointing to. Now I’d never heard of Cary Fukunaga before this movie but apparently he’s an award wining director. This was why I was disappointing that this film wasn’t that visually interesting. Now don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of visually interesting shots and the costumes and locations were very good but so was the 2006 version which was made for television. On the whole the film felt very washed out and dull. Also another funny flaw with the directing I found was the scene where Mr Mason played by Harry Lloyd has been injured by his sister and Jane is looking after him except, she gets up and goes to listen at the tapestry. Now i’m sure this scene was meant to be creepy but all I was thinking was what’s Mr Mason doing right now. “Come back, I’m bleeding, I’m in incredible pain.” I don’t know it just seems a bit silly to me to get up and leave your patient after such a grievous wound. I don’t know maybe the wound wasn’t that bad and she was trying to protect him but I don’t know it just came across like she had a very short attention span.
Now the couple, let’s start with Jane both of them. Firstly young Jane played by Amelia Clarkson. Now then the bit with child Jane as far as I know has never been cut out of an adaptation because despite this seemingly being a love story, it’s also a rocky type movie in that we see someone down and out realize their true potential. So the bits with child Jane are really important to get right this is where we emphasize with Jane and become invested in her story. We want her to do well. We want her to escape. Which is why I don’t understand why they got an actress who was just so wooden, she didn’t seem like a child. She seemed like a robot and I couldn’t bring myself to care about her which is a big failing because it takes a lot of the driving force out of the movie. Now grown up Jane who’s played by Mia Wasikowska and I feel a little bad criticizing her performance because she’s not in the best of positions. She’s got to make up for the flaws of young Jane and make me care but mostly she doesn’t. She gives such a low key and passionless performance throughout this film that it’s hard to understand why anyone would fall in love with her. She just plays it so bland that it made me pine for Ruth Wilson. I will be fair that at various points of the film. There is a faint glimmer of a spark that made me fall in love with the character of Jane Eyre. But these moments are few and far between and it doesn’t carry the movie.
Now the Mr Rochester played by Michael Fassbender and I’ll admit when I heard that he was playing Rochester I was pumped. But largely he didn’t deliver now then he was a lot better than Mia Wasikowska but then again that might be because he was consistently showing signs of life and he played the rough, dark side of Rochester quite well but not the charming lovable side, he reminded me of Edward Cullen always moping about how dark and dangerous he is. What a prima dona. This is especially frustrating because I saw him in X men First class and there he had that charming roguishness needed for this part. Finally the chemistry between Jane and Mr Rochester which was severely lacking throughout this film, there was only one moment where I felt any heat and that was after the wedding. But the rest of the film I didn’t get the feeling of two people falling in love just two people being polite to each other. Considering this is meant to be a love story, it really drags down the movie.
I feel I should give a shout out to some of the other actors in this movie but only two really stood out for me. One Judi Dench who plays Miss Fairfax, I had to comment on this performance just because it’s Judi Dench. To be honest I’m kind of surprised she accepted this role. Now the film took great pains to expand her character to make it worth her effort and she does have some good moments. My personal favorite being her standing on the staircase as she watches Jane and Mr Rochester. But the problem is with Mrs Fairfax is she’s not an important character. They tried to mould her into a mother figure for Jane and it just doesn’t work.The other part is Sally Hawkins played by Mrs Reed. It’s a huge testament to her that she stood out after being on screen for 2 minutes tops but she does really well playing the strained Mrs Reed. It’s restrained but she lets you see the subtle cracks behind her mask of her propriety. To be honest it’s a real shame that her part got cut down so much to the point where she really just serves to move the plot but she did manage to shine for her few brief scenes and i was grateful for that.
To conclude this film is boring, it does occasionally show flickers of promise but they quickly subside and leave you with a bore of a film where you don’t care about Jane, you don't care about the love story and after that there’s nothing left. So if you’re a fan of Jane Eyre watch the 2006 version, the acting is better, the story is more developed and the character development feels more organic. For me it’s the definitive adaptation.
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