Jane Eyre...what??

This past Saturday, I felt so grown-up! I woke up early and made french toast for breakfast and then proceeded to get ready for the day to go see the new Jane Eyre movie by myself at an early bird special. While I was on the school shuttle, I bumped into a good friend I hadn't seen in awhile and convinced her to ditch what she had been planning to do to come watch the movie with me instead. Huzzah! She did and afterward we enjoyed an extremely delicious three course lunch at Cafe Deluxe in Bethesda...great success! But before that, we of course ran through the crazy rain to go watch Jane Eyre. And how was it? Well, we should look at a few other things before tackling that question.

Exhibit A

As far as Netflix shows me, these are the 1934, 1944, 1973, 1983, 1996, 1997, 2006, and 2011 film adaptations of Charlotte Brontë's classic novel Jane Eyre. For comparisons sake, there have only been five adaptations of the arguably more popular Pride and Prejudice. Anyways, I myself have seen four of the eight adaptations and have been more often disappointed than completely happy with the films. Which leads me to...

Exhibit B

THE PLOT

 

It's long and for some it's a tedious book to get through, so how do movie-makers consolidate all that story into a short 2 hour film? Well, since some of the versions are mini-series, they obviously aren't able to do it with great success, which is probably why they keep making new versions. But of course, you also need audience interest to keep trying for money reasons. So along those lines, while I was watching the newest version, it suddenly occurred to me that Jane Eyre is actually a very dark, dramatic story rather than just being another story of love and life as with many Jane Austen novels. Therefore, I think there's a certain appeal to a period piece movie that isn't all sunshine and happiness, but actually kinda creepy.

It's probably for this reason that Charlotte's sister Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights has also been able to reach success and become a classic novel as well. Personally, I find Wuthering Heights extremely overdone and annoying to get through with all the issues that Heathcliff and Cathy seem to have in the story, but hey that's just me... Anyways, I always assumed most people also felt the same way I did about Emily's work, but then it occurred to me that there's probably a whole group of people out in the world that love Wuthering Heights as well as a group who feel the same way about Jane Eyre as I feel about Wuthering Heights. So, some people like the dark and twisty stories and some don't and to what it extent, it always varies. Which finally leads me to, what did I actually think of this year's version of Jane Eyre?

Oh so many mixed feelings... Well, I definitely think this landed farther on the side of good than bad for sure, but it still wasn't a great film. My cons for the film include that once again it just doesn't do the plot complete justice. I actually really enjoyed the inter-splicing of past and present moments in Jane's life, but when the story is mainly focused on her time at Thornfield with Mr. Rochester, it just feels choppy and without any sort of flow to connect all the key moments they showed. It felt more like it was giving me a summary of what happened than actually just showing me what happened. I also missed seeing a better depiction of Jane's childhood life at Norwood and her friendship with Helen Burns. However, the pros of this film definitely made me very happy, especially the casting for the two leads Jane and Mr. Rochester. Even though the actual progression in the film didn't suggest a growing relationship, the acting and chemistry between the two made me believe it. It was also nice to see for the first time a blonde Jane Eyre versus a brunette. Michael Fassbender as Rochester was also a great choice because despite the dark character of Rochester, you still need someone who can make you believe that a person like Jane would actually want to marry him. I also really loved the different settings and the great cinematography of Thornfield and the countryside of England. Overall, I would say I'm happy with the film, but only because there are so few other good ones because in reality, the film isn't able to be great due to its choppy presentation...like I said, a lot of mixed feelings.

P.S. I'll try to write my next post not about a movie...