![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cary Fukunaga's "Jane Eyre"
Jun. 13th, 2012 10:14 pmI'm sure I'm the last one to have anything to say about this, but
THE NEW JANE EYRE
is bloody beautiful, to start, much like the newest Pride and Prejudice. Only less warmly lovely. The differences reflect the differences in tone, just as it should. A harsher, more glaringly lit beauty, with deeper shadows.
Not too on-the-nose Gothic, but as much as is necessary to be true to the storyline...
Another young director, trying to produce an artsy film, and succeeding pretty well, by getting the resources for doing a big book-to-film project, it seems. I've seen parts of several adaptations, so in a way I had to notice the craft, the way it went together. But for a story I know so well, the storytelling completely sucked me in.
Oh, can I tell you? The way they decided to script this movie is BRILLIANT.
Like a modern Gothic, we have an opening that's really in the middle of the story, that slowly shows the background which the older form of novel would find necessary to set landscape, social context. It also brings in sweeping color, and emotional tone, right from the start.
The casting is likewise clever. One of the stumbling blocks for Jane is the "little and plain" descriptor. And yet we have to believe she's captivating. Mia Wasikowska is a kind of pretty that would probably have decimated the Season of bachelors for other girls, and so we can watch her, but she doesn't have the "I'm beautiful" awareness of a more trendy beauty. She has the capability to be odd and fey. I never questioned either her silences or her outbursts. Which is kind of amazing. It's a range a little hard to follow on the page, honestly.
And Michael Fassbender is chilly, manipulative, and yet heated on a physical level where he sells a man who hates himself, and yet is willing to go to all lengths to provide himself a happiness. The contrast and yet connection between them is something he creates so well (as Rochester is supposed to) and his manic-depressive range makes sense of things the way Mia's acting does for Jane.
It's not a seamless film, there was no way around the awkwardness of arriving back at a point we'd previously seen at the beginning, in chronology, but it was an artfully arranged one.
The weird interlude at the Rivers' is one that feels so abrupt and far from the rest of the narrative--and the movie plays this into a bridge that while still a little weird, is thematically apt.
I think this is fundamentally why I'm so thrilled with this movie. It made me believe in the story again, feel the power and emotion of it, which some of the awkwardness and realities of it had stripped down. The deftness shown here in making Jane Eyre a real film, standing on its own, just makes me nerd out about stories all over again.
(also this bonnet is *gorgeous*--the way they chose to do period with this was just enough it felt a little alien to the usual BBC Regency, since it's NOT, and just that step further into a different world)
The exact moment they chose to end it was just right. It left out a part that some may feel important to the book's story, but essentially didn't matter to this version. It's bold, and I thought, "Yes, good job."
THE NEW JANE EYRE
is bloody beautiful, to start, much like the newest Pride and Prejudice. Only less warmly lovely. The differences reflect the differences in tone, just as it should. A harsher, more glaringly lit beauty, with deeper shadows.
Not too on-the-nose Gothic, but as much as is necessary to be true to the storyline...
Another young director, trying to produce an artsy film, and succeeding pretty well, by getting the resources for doing a big book-to-film project, it seems. I've seen parts of several adaptations, so in a way I had to notice the craft, the way it went together. But for a story I know so well, the storytelling completely sucked me in.
Oh, can I tell you? The way they decided to script this movie is BRILLIANT.
Like a modern Gothic, we have an opening that's really in the middle of the story, that slowly shows the background which the older form of novel would find necessary to set landscape, social context. It also brings in sweeping color, and emotional tone, right from the start.
The casting is likewise clever. One of the stumbling blocks for Jane is the "little and plain" descriptor. And yet we have to believe she's captivating. Mia Wasikowska is a kind of pretty that would probably have decimated the Season of bachelors for other girls, and so we can watch her, but she doesn't have the "I'm beautiful" awareness of a more trendy beauty. She has the capability to be odd and fey. I never questioned either her silences or her outbursts. Which is kind of amazing. It's a range a little hard to follow on the page, honestly.
And Michael Fassbender is chilly, manipulative, and yet heated on a physical level where he sells a man who hates himself, and yet is willing to go to all lengths to provide himself a happiness. The contrast and yet connection between them is something he creates so well (as Rochester is supposed to) and his manic-depressive range makes sense of things the way Mia's acting does for Jane.
It's not a seamless film, there was no way around the awkwardness of arriving back at a point we'd previously seen at the beginning, in chronology, but it was an artfully arranged one.
The weird interlude at the Rivers' is one that feels so abrupt and far from the rest of the narrative--and the movie plays this into a bridge that while still a little weird, is thematically apt.
I think this is fundamentally why I'm so thrilled with this movie. It made me believe in the story again, feel the power and emotion of it, which some of the awkwardness and realities of it had stripped down. The deftness shown here in making Jane Eyre a real film, standing on its own, just makes me nerd out about stories all over again.
(also this bonnet is *gorgeous*--the way they chose to do period with this was just enough it felt a little alien to the usual BBC Regency, since it's NOT, and just that step further into a different world)
The exact moment they chose to end it was just right. It left out a part that some may feel important to the book's story, but essentially didn't matter to this version. It's bold, and I thought, "Yes, good job."
