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"Always listen to Judi Dench!"
Apr. 19th, 2011 09:21 pmThe above quote is from my friend Emily. She and Liz and I went to see Jane Eyre on Sunday. I almost put that Jasper Fforde quote about Jane Eyre being FOR ALL TIME again, but I think I have used it enough.
Anyway, I will not review the plot of Jane Eyre, since hopefully you already know it, and if not, you should drop whatever you're doing and go read it. The first chapters are a little slow, as is the case with all books written before about World War One, but it picks up, I promise you. And then it is ALL SORTS of weird Gothic novel shit with secret marriages and mysterious strangers setting things on fire and even some hilariously convenient rich dead uncles. Also, don't keep reading; here there be spoilers.
This movie version stayed pretty true to the book, although being only movie-length it did have to shorten a few things--Jane only has one weird argument with St. John about marrying him and going to India instead of like nineteen, and they skipped over all the drama about Jane's wedding veil, and they left out the bit where she suddenly learns she is actually related to the Riverses (perhaps they felt a modern audience would only be able to believe so many mysteriously acquired relatives). Also, I was really hoping for a cheesy voiceover at the end with Jane's whole "Reader, I married him" speech, because it is so saccharine in text that I would have positively died having to hear it spoken out loud over tinkly piano music and footage of Jane and Rochester making eyes at each other in the English countryside. Alas, this did not happen.
However, many wonderful things were still included, including a fabulous, fabulous cast. Mia Wasikowska I had only seen as Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and I am pleased to report that she was an awesome Jane. (She is probably too pretty to be Jane, but they plained her up as well a possible, including with a clever hairdo that is basically one of those beautiful braided knots that passed for "simple" hair back then, except with the front locks twisted in such a way as to draw entirely too much attention to her ears, but without making it look like they'd given her ugly hair.) Michael Fassbender was such an excellently cranky and weird Mr. Rochester that you almost forgot that he is also far too attractive for the role. (They actually dealt with this issue similarly--Rochester has increasingly terrible facial hair as the movie progresses. It's highly amusing.) I particularly appreciated him as Rochester because, while many of us Americans know him best as The Guy Who Says "Then We Shall Fight In The Shade!" from 300 or Lieutenant Archie from Inglourious Basterds, to me he will always be first and foremost Azazeal, the broody eyeliner-wearing demon dude from Hex.
We spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out who was playing the Rivers sisters, because they both looked very, very familiar. We finally figured it out: one of them is Tamzin Merchant, who I know as Catherine Howard from The Tudors, Georgiana Darcy from the newer Pride and Prejudice, and the original casting for Danaerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. The other one is Holliday Grainger, who I had never seen before in my life until about three weeks ago, until I saw her as Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias and as some crazy Sidhe lady who enchants Arthur in an episode of Merlin. It was a shock seeing either of them in only semi-ridiculous costumes, since the Rivers sisters were sensible and not very wealthy, so they mostly just wore not-very-colorful plain dresses and their hair in beautiful braided knots that also kind of did unfortunate things to their ears. At any rate, it turns out they are both more than capable of playing normal characters with normal wardrobes, and though Mary and Diana are not the biggest parts in the story they are both very endearing.
None of these people were quite as awesome as Judi Dench, though, because nobody is ever as awesome as Judi Dench. Dame Judi played Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, and though I don't remember Mrs. Fairfax being a particularly favorite character of mine in the book, she was in the movie. She was just the right level of fussy to alleviate her from being generally a kind and sensible character to being a funny one, and as always, she can communicate volumes with very subtle facial expressions, which is especially important when you do a lot of stuffy Regency and Victorian era pieces. She also has excellent comic timing. I really don't know how to describe her performance, other than that she somehow changed Mrs. Fairfax from "the nice old housekeeper" into "the AWESOMEST HOUSEKEEPER EVER," through sheer force of being Judi Dench.
Now that I am done dithering about the cast, here are my brief thoughts on everything else about the movie: the framing device was ingenious, alleviating the aforementioned "slow beginning" problem without leaving out Jane's very important "tale of woe"; Thornfield Hall and the rest of the setting were freaking gorgeous in a damp Englandy gothic-novel sort of way; Little!Jane was so cute I could die and not at all stiff or awkward (I'm always extra impressed when you get a really good performance out of a child actor); visually the movie was spot-on--gorgeous, with a style that vacillates weirdly between being all dark and gothic and gritty and stuff, and being the usual lightly gorgeous, somewhat awkward style that characterizes all Regency movies. There is even the obligatory montage of "happy Regency country summer," which consists of lots of flowers, lots of sunshine, ladies painting, men smiling very broadly whilst wearing top hats, and tinkly piano music. This mishmash of visual styles all makes absolute sense depending on where in the story we are, and manages to come together as cohesively as Charlotte Bronte's original novel did (which was a pretty impressive piece of genre mashup, in its way). Most importantly, the movie absolutely did not play down Jane's whole restlessness thing, which is one of the key things that make Jane Eyre Jane Eyre instead of any other random Regency romance. There is a longstanding history of moviemakers leaving out the things that make all the best Regency romances more than just Regency romances (I'm looking at you, various harlequinized, unfunny adaptations of Jane Austen novels!), and so I am always afraid, when a new one comes out, that they will play it straight sappy. Luckily, this Jane Eyre is not harlequinized or sappy--it is very much Jane Eyre.
Anyway, I will not review the plot of Jane Eyre, since hopefully you already know it, and if not, you should drop whatever you're doing and go read it. The first chapters are a little slow, as is the case with all books written before about World War One, but it picks up, I promise you. And then it is ALL SORTS of weird Gothic novel shit with secret marriages and mysterious strangers setting things on fire and even some hilariously convenient rich dead uncles. Also, don't keep reading; here there be spoilers.
This movie version stayed pretty true to the book, although being only movie-length it did have to shorten a few things--Jane only has one weird argument with St. John about marrying him and going to India instead of like nineteen, and they skipped over all the drama about Jane's wedding veil, and they left out the bit where she suddenly learns she is actually related to the Riverses (perhaps they felt a modern audience would only be able to believe so many mysteriously acquired relatives). Also, I was really hoping for a cheesy voiceover at the end with Jane's whole "Reader, I married him" speech, because it is so saccharine in text that I would have positively died having to hear it spoken out loud over tinkly piano music and footage of Jane and Rochester making eyes at each other in the English countryside. Alas, this did not happen.
However, many wonderful things were still included, including a fabulous, fabulous cast. Mia Wasikowska I had only seen as Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and I am pleased to report that she was an awesome Jane. (She is probably too pretty to be Jane, but they plained her up as well a possible, including with a clever hairdo that is basically one of those beautiful braided knots that passed for "simple" hair back then, except with the front locks twisted in such a way as to draw entirely too much attention to her ears, but without making it look like they'd given her ugly hair.) Michael Fassbender was such an excellently cranky and weird Mr. Rochester that you almost forgot that he is also far too attractive for the role. (They actually dealt with this issue similarly--Rochester has increasingly terrible facial hair as the movie progresses. It's highly amusing.) I particularly appreciated him as Rochester because, while many of us Americans know him best as The Guy Who Says "Then We Shall Fight In The Shade!" from 300 or Lieutenant Archie from Inglourious Basterds, to me he will always be first and foremost Azazeal, the broody eyeliner-wearing demon dude from Hex.
We spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out who was playing the Rivers sisters, because they both looked very, very familiar. We finally figured it out: one of them is Tamzin Merchant, who I know as Catherine Howard from The Tudors, Georgiana Darcy from the newer Pride and Prejudice, and the original casting for Danaerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. The other one is Holliday Grainger, who I had never seen before in my life until about three weeks ago, until I saw her as Lucrezia Borgia in The Borgias and as some crazy Sidhe lady who enchants Arthur in an episode of Merlin. It was a shock seeing either of them in only semi-ridiculous costumes, since the Rivers sisters were sensible and not very wealthy, so they mostly just wore not-very-colorful plain dresses and their hair in beautiful braided knots that also kind of did unfortunate things to their ears. At any rate, it turns out they are both more than capable of playing normal characters with normal wardrobes, and though Mary and Diana are not the biggest parts in the story they are both very endearing.
None of these people were quite as awesome as Judi Dench, though, because nobody is ever as awesome as Judi Dench. Dame Judi played Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, and though I don't remember Mrs. Fairfax being a particularly favorite character of mine in the book, she was in the movie. She was just the right level of fussy to alleviate her from being generally a kind and sensible character to being a funny one, and as always, she can communicate volumes with very subtle facial expressions, which is especially important when you do a lot of stuffy Regency and Victorian era pieces. She also has excellent comic timing. I really don't know how to describe her performance, other than that she somehow changed Mrs. Fairfax from "the nice old housekeeper" into "the AWESOMEST HOUSEKEEPER EVER," through sheer force of being Judi Dench.
Now that I am done dithering about the cast, here are my brief thoughts on everything else about the movie: the framing device was ingenious, alleviating the aforementioned "slow beginning" problem without leaving out Jane's very important "tale of woe"; Thornfield Hall and the rest of the setting were freaking gorgeous in a damp Englandy gothic-novel sort of way; Little!Jane was so cute I could die and not at all stiff or awkward (I'm always extra impressed when you get a really good performance out of a child actor); visually the movie was spot-on--gorgeous, with a style that vacillates weirdly between being all dark and gothic and gritty and stuff, and being the usual lightly gorgeous, somewhat awkward style that characterizes all Regency movies. There is even the obligatory montage of "happy Regency country summer," which consists of lots of flowers, lots of sunshine, ladies painting, men smiling very broadly whilst wearing top hats, and tinkly piano music. This mishmash of visual styles all makes absolute sense depending on where in the story we are, and manages to come together as cohesively as Charlotte Bronte's original novel did (which was a pretty impressive piece of genre mashup, in its way). Most importantly, the movie absolutely did not play down Jane's whole restlessness thing, which is one of the key things that make Jane Eyre Jane Eyre instead of any other random Regency romance. There is a longstanding history of moviemakers leaving out the things that make all the best Regency romances more than just Regency romances (I'm looking at you, various harlequinized, unfunny adaptations of Jane Austen novels!), and so I am always afraid, when a new one comes out, that they will play it straight sappy. Luckily, this Jane Eyre is not harlequinized or sappy--it is very much Jane Eyre.
