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Jane Eyre (2011)

Director: Cary Fukunaga

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9 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

With this new ‘Jane Eyre’, Irish leading man Michael Fassbender cements his natural flair for playing muscular, sexually domineering and morally tainted alpha males. His embittered, gentleman-seducer take on Edward Fairfax Rochester in this sumptuous adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s gothic bildungsroman is enough to give most viewers the vapours, and it dovetails nicely with his role as the poverty-line predator in Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’.

Yet, as much as director Cary ‘Sin Nombre’ Fukunaga’s camera is smitten by Fassbender’s lusty, mutton-chopped magnetism, it’s young Australian actress Mia Wasikowska who insouciantly tiptoes off with this film. She delivers a turn of impeccable authority and poise, her Jane is a padlocked closet of suppressed childhood trauma, sexual confusion and aggressive self-preservation. Unlike Fassbender, Wasikowska doesn’t have form as a leading lady: the depth, charisma and technical rigour here were largely absent from her headlining role in Tim Burton’s CG folly, ‘Alice in Wonderland’. But this marks a breakthrough performance, perhaps too subtle and careful to be lavished with silverware come awards season, but worthy of it.

The story opens with a petrified Jane making a mad dash from the dusky confines of Thornfield Manor and on to the misty moors. She finds sanctuary with Jamie Bell’s Puritan minister and begins to regale him with her ‘tale of woe’. Brought up with an iron fist then swiftly packed off to boarding school by an evil aunt (a nicely counter-cast Sally Hawkins), she is punished for her objections to the injustices meted out by the whip-wielding staff and receives a series of brutal lessons on the nature of mortality, hollowness of love and sublime indifference of God. Her eventual employment as governess of Thornfield, working underneath Judi Dench’s fusspot housekeeper, Mrs Fairfax, places virtuous and chaste Jane in the salacious sights of Mr Rochester.

Fukunaga’s eerily atmospheric adaptation keeps the corset strings tightly knotted while placing this fascinating chalk/cheese courtship against a backdrop of ritualistic Northern English decadence. Rochester, a man for whom money and charm has enabled him to fulfil his every whim, is blindsided by Jane, a woman haunted by her past who easily holds her own in the thrilling verbal duels the couple share.

Even when his accent falters, Fassbender’s performance is one of tragic Wellesian grandeur. But it’s Wasikowska’s vigorous, unflappable presence that supplies the film with its soul. Fukunaga’s movie is heavy on dialogue, but he adds visual texture in the framing of characters, dusty, naturalistic lighting and elegant shots of the decaying country stack. Unwilling to betray the source material, Fukunaga falls foul of pacing in a lumpen, overtly moralistic coda, but only because what came before felt so rhythmically assured, intellectually substantial and smoulderingly romantic. This is no plain Jane.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 2142: 8 - 14 Sept, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Mike said...

Posted on Sep 26 2011 08:10 Having struggled to read Wuthering Height many years ago, I wasn't sure I'd enjoy Jane Eyre. But I was very pleasantly surprised. Mia Wasikowska is a very convincing Jane. If you're thinking of seeing this one expect lots of stunning shots of windswept rainy moors, roaring fires in beautiful but draughty large houses, and angst over true love. Wear your best bonnet, and mind you don't snag your crinoline. Recommended. 4 stars.

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tonia said...

Posted on Sep 22 2011 14:38 This film was wonderfully engrossing and true to the spirit of the book. both my son and I really liked the mood, acting and gothic nature of the story. Fine film making and well worth seeing.

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Sophie said...

Posted on Sep 21 2011 09:03 must say my three friends and I didn't really think it to be a great film---wouldn't tell people to go to see it.ill appear on the site

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godfrey hamilton said...

Posted on Sep 20 2011 08:45 Tsk tsk Mr Jenkins; 'Judi' not 'Judy' Dench.

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scrumpyjack said...

Posted on Sep 19 2011 21:06 Totally delightful from start to finish. Christ, even Jamie Bell was good! Just ONE thing, can someone please tell me what the last two lines were? (Tears and sniffling....OK yes, mine! destracted) 7+/10

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seamstress said...

Posted on Sep 18 2011 19:06 Oh dear, "Mr. Rochesters's salacious sights"! Someboy's missed the point. Rochester is redeemed from his vacuus ,corroded life of easy sensual conquest and macho swagger by a simple, wise virgin uncontaminated by the world, who can reunite him with his true self and an enriched existence. Not at all trendy is it? Why don't some of you one-dimensional blokeys, saturated by wall-to-wall porn,go and read the book?

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John Cooper said...

Posted on Sep 14 2011 14:56 There's no doubt that the performances of Mia Wasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbender as Rochester are the highlights of this new adaptation,
and the subtext of their emotional and sexual attraction is subtly and sensitively realized in their scenes together.
However the fim as a whole lacks cinematic
panache, and whilst the relentless naturalism captures
the atmosphere of the dour Derbyshire ( not Yorkshire i noted!)
moors, the film, as a whole, lacks power. That said,
however, I must say that I prefered the adaptation to the
overrated Shared Experience theatrical one I saw at Trafalgar Studios. This is was flashily visual, but
completely unbelievable , with Rochester supposedly falling for a feminist Jane with the accent of a Geordie fish-wife. In Fukunaga's film, Wasikowska's Jane,
though played with a slight accent, achieves the quiet integrity and delicate sensitivity of Charlotte Bronte's heroine. This film is worth seeing for the scene just after the fire, where Jane and Rochester come near to kissing . . .it's exquisitely played and represents the best of what this film has to offer.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Sep 09 2011 22:54 Michael Fassbender is an ideal Rochester and his scenes andf passion for Jane are 'erectly' potent. As a piece of film-making, though, this often seems a bit bungled and powerless. The story is very badly and baldly established. Judi Dench is wasted. It's hopeless at communicating time passing so that the film just wanders. The screenplay has one good idea which is starting with Jane's escape from Thornfield and introduces us first to Rivers and his sisters. But the the bulk of the book is represented only very crudely. Jane's life at her Aunt's is represented by 2 short scenes and at Lowwood by only 1. In the famous scene wherre jane is locked in the Red Room, Jane appears to knock herself out by banging her head on the door. Her relationship with Helen Burns consists of being given a piece of bread by her; Helen then dies. Magnificent Rochester, good 'plain' Jane but a clumsy adaptation of the book.

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veryhappyfilmgoer said...

Posted on Sep 09 2011 18:35 Wonderful!

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