You know, I always pick out the conditions of the movie I'm seeing. Popcorn films demand a large audience to see it with. For scary movies and blockbuster pics, I just have to bring a friend because the shared experience just enhances the viewing. We scream together, laugh, joke around and the audience whoops and cheers. My all-time favorite movie watching experience was the premiere of The Dark Knight three years back, when the audience collectively gasped, cheered, and groaned. Oh, it was excellent.
But for smaller intimate movies, I always prefer to go alone. I don't need my friend's pithy comments or shared ennui or whatever. I'm utterly absorbed alone, and it's a blissful state. So when I settled down to an advance screening of "Jane Eyre" this evening with a friend (she was the one who got me the ticket so I owe it to her), I blanched when I saw thirty middle-school girls followed by a gi-fucking-gantic group of rowdy, baseball-cap wearing, hoodie-donning teenagers behind them. "Oh noooooooo," I moaned, sinking lower into my seat. "I can't handle this. I really fucking can't. Why are they here? Why the fuck do they even want to see Jane Eyre? Don't they want to see like, "Drive Angry" or something?"
To make a long story short, it was simultaneously the best and worst movie-watching experience of my life. Half the time I was pulled into the shared collective experience of popcorn movies; during funny moments the entire theater cracked up; at Jane and Rochester's first kiss, someone blubbered "YOU GO, GIRL" and my friend and I both cried with laughter as the rest of the theater burst into much hearty whooping and applause. Those spontaneous moments, the shared bursts of emotions, were the best.
The downside, and boy was it bad; the smartasses who kept trying to drop lame quips during the movie, the girls next to us who kept howling at the people behind us to shut the fuck up, the catcalls and occasional idiotic reactions, and worst of all, A FUCKING CRYING BABY THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE MOVIE. I whispered to my friend, "who the FUCK brings a baby to the MOVIE THEATER?" And its caretaker didn't even make an effort to carry it out. So it wailed and wailed incessantly throughout the movie causing someone more than once to mutter, "I'm going to kill that baby". I wanted to correct them: Babies cry. Their caretakers, on the other hand, should know better than to take it to a movie instead of TAKING CARE OF IT.
So I was emotionally distraught the entire movie. During poignant or dramatic scenes, I'd be trying to cry in peace and then someone would make a wiseass catcall, or I'd be engrossed in a good moment and then the baby would start crying again, and I just wanted to rip my hair out. Then I would start laughing again and then crying and then getting pissed again. I was practically babbling by the time we left.
THAT ASIDE. THE MOVIE. Did I mention that these annoying teenagers were for the most part, fixated? I was dreading walkouts and groans, but they never happened. Shrieking baby aside, everyone seemed to really enjoy it. More on that later.
Overall, I thought the director, Cary Fukunaga did a great job of "updating" the movie (there's more suspense, visual flair, modern, tight pacing) and capturing the spirit of the book at the same time, and that's all you can ask of an adaptation, really. The style is quite impeccable, and the content, well, there's only so much of JE's nuances and themes you can cram into two hours. If only it could have been a miniseries. I noticed that some of the scenes from the trailer were cut; waiting for a "extended feature" DVD, perhaps?
Anyways, anyways, the ACTORS. Well, Mia Wasikowska was good, not great. In some scenes Mia would do too much and in others she'd do too little. She has a preternatural calm and maturity that suits her for Jane, but some of the traits other characters claimed to see in her ("ambition" "vivacity") were a bit lacking. She was clearly an intelligent, thoughtful, feeling person, but I'm not so sure she had the same spark and spirit of fire that I imagined in Jane, or even seen in a sketch of Charlotte Bronte. She has the requisite chemistry with Fassbender's Rochester, which is the most important thing, but I'm not sure the movie managed to capture Jane's allure - her full-bodied uniqueness and unearthly spirit; it tells that more than it shows.
Portrait of Charlotte Bronte, circa 1850
Still, the movie sincerely attempted to capture the book's spirit, which is all I can ask for - I understand that a perfect adaptation is impossible. It simply can't be done because how you imagine the characters and scenes is drawn so vividly in your mind, and it's just unfair to expect that your personal version would be translated exactly to screen. All you can ask for is that they tried their hardest to re-create the spirit, the tone, and the themes. The 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley is a wonderful movie, but it really is an adaptation and not a re-creation, because it deliberately made a different story. It was sad and romantic, not satirical or bitingly self-aware and because of that, I can't love it. It just isn't the book.
But Jane Eyre really does capture that odd spell of the book. The beauty of the cinematography reminded me of 2005's Pride and Prejudice, but this world is so far removed from Austen's - all its otherworldliness. The score was very "Memoirs of a Geisha" - melancholy and eerily beautiful.
Okay, I just *really* enjoyed Fassbender's Rochester. Truth to be told, I've never been able to handle any of the past incarnations of Rochester. They always feel so cartoonish. They're glaring and brooding! They're dark, harsh and statuesque! I just can't buy it. Usually the actors are so involved in scrunching their eyebrows and strutting around in their broody sarcastic Byronic walk doing broody Byronic things that they completely forget to include some of his more human qualities - like tenderness and mischief, which is what Jane notices in spite of himself, just as he notices her inner warmth and vivacity in spite of her own hardy facade.
Fassbender's Rochester isn't as harsh or arrogant as previously portrayed, and I preferred this credible human version a lot more. He's not so tall or statuesque either, but makes up for it with his physical charisma - I thought he nailed the restless, furtive energy of the character. I wish some of the climatic scenes with him and Jane had a more explosive quality to them, but overall, the drama is much easier on the eyes. I didn't cringe, which is a first. I'm a very cringe-y person. Did I mention that he is unbelievably fucking HOT in this? Just really, really, so. Maybe that's why I like him in this so much. Hmm...........
Jamie Bell was great, too. It's just completely different from anything else he's done, and he just carries St. John's kind but mannerly and ill-guided priggishness with ease. There really isn't enough of him in the movie to have a full characterization, to be honest - again, they left quite an awful lot out, but the pacing is so tightly controlled and Bronte's characterization is still vivid enough that the aforementioned teens that sat behind me were hilariously responsive to Jane and Rochester's actions, at times calling out instructions or critiques ("say yes!" "You fool!" etc.).
Companies and the Academy and whoever else panicking over the state of the "hip teen" nowadays, take note. I just sat with a bunch of freaking high schoolers/middle schoolers who, yes, may have catcalled and occasionally snickered at a couple admittedly cheesy scenes and were even a bit bored at times, but for the most part to my great surprise, were seriously invested in the movie and its characters. And that's because it was a damn well-made movie. The characters, though hailing from the 19th century, were strong and engrossing because human drama never changes in its ability to pull us in, and there was enough hooky suspense to lure us in as well. Afterwards, I heard kids say, "that was GREAT" in complete surprise, as if they didn't expect it to be interesting at all, probably because they've become acclimated to bad movies with shallow characterization and shoddy execution that attempt to pull in young audiences by mishmashes of hyper shiny loud things in their faces, because they're not supposed to have enough attention span to engage otherwise.
Well newsflash; a bunch of supposedly ADHD teens sat through JANE FREAKING EYRE and most of them, as far as I can tell, truly, truly enjoyed it. Take that, slimeball corporate movie studios and older generation naysayers.
And props to Cary Fukunaga and everyone else involved. If I ever meet Michael Fassbender one day I'm going to have to thank him for doing such wonderful justice to Mr. Rochester. The perfect Jane, however (by far the more difficult and impossible character to get right of the two, IMO), is still out there though, I think.
That aside, this is the first adaptation of Jane Eyre I've been able to tolerate, and certainly the first one where I've really appreciated. I don't know if I love it yet - I'll have to wait over time and multiple re-watchings - but I'm just pretty gratified all the same.
P.S. Oh, and I finally get it. I finally get the Fassbender thing. Before, I wasn't even remotely attracted to him, not even in the most dashing pictures or drool-worthy clips. I just shrugged. But um, I get it now. He really is sex personified.
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