‘Jane Eyre’ Review: Jane’s Got the Right (Gothic) Stuff

Photo courtesy of Focus Features

There’s one glaring problem with Cary Fukunaga’s film adaptation of the brooding Charlotte Brontë classic Jane Eyre: Mr. Rochester is hot. This may seem a superficial thing to pick on, but it’s actually necessary story-wise for Mr. Rochester to not be all that and a sexy bag of potato chips. In the film, Rochester’s detrimental good looks, the unknowing fault of Irish actor Michael Fassbender’s face, make it seem all too easy that Jane fall for him, an ease at odds with the many hardships of Brontë’s heroine.

And our heroine, the ultimate plain Jane, is uncharacteristically a looker as well. The film does what it can to dull out its Jane, played by rising newcomer Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland), draping her in dark, dreary dresses and pulling her mousy brown hair into intricate Princess Leia-like buns, but the attempted dowdiness can’t hide Wasikowska’s flawless pale complexion and romantic bone structure.

Thankfully, the movie downplays the pair’s prettiness by serving up a large helping of moody Gothic drama. Brontë has always been a Jane Austen for emo chicks, replacing dances and courtship with things that go bump in the night, and the film revels in the source material’s inherent gloominess, a murky world of muted colors, misty moors, mysterious sounds, and mutton chop sideburns. The film starts at Jane’s rock bottom: she is sobbing, rain-soaked and hooded in black, trekking alone through rough terrain in the middle of a storm. Yes, it’s über melodramatic, but Jane Eyre isn’t your happy-go-lucky Victorian romance, Jane herself isn’t your happy-go-lucky Victorian lead, and the film rightly doesn’t treat either as such.

“All governesses have a tale of woe,” Rochester tells Jane on their first meeting. “What’s yours?” Interweaving scenes from the present and the past, the film quickly details Jane’s childhood struggles: her life as a young orphan, tormented at the hands of her cousins, treated like a servant by her hateful aunt (an icy Sally Hawkins), cast off to a Dickensian girls’ school where she undergoes even more abuse and ridicule, and then weighed down even further by the loss of her best friend. In short, Jane Eyre’s upbringing makes Lizzie Bennet’s look like a cakewalk. Young Jane (Amelia Clarkson) is willful and passionate, desperate for freedom, and Wasikowska plays adult Jane with a nice well-worn wisdom behind her honest, steady gaze, a result of all she’s endured, all the hard lessons learned.

Photo courtesy of Focus Features

The film zips along to Jane’s post as governess of Thornfield Hall, where she’s hired to teach the young French ward of its wealthy proprietor. Enter the surly, sarcastic (and yes, damn it, sexy) Mr. Edward Rochester. Almost immediately, the sparks start flying. In Brontë’s novel, the couple has a slow-burning attraction, but Fukunaga’s film trades that slow burn for a scene or two of flirty, teasing banter, and then bam! They’re passionately in love with each other. The coupling is a bit quick for comfort, lacking the novel’s romantic tension and pent-up desire, but there’s a nice chemistry and repartee between the leads that makes it believable.

As with any fiction-to-film adaptation, the swift script, penned by Moira Buffini, condenses much of Brontë’s work to fit the film’s two-hour screen time, but Brontë buffs can rest assured that the film hits all of the narrative and thematic notes of the novel. There’s the spooky, supernatural undertones (see Jane walking through the creepy, creaky Thornfield mansion in the dark of night, candlestick trembling in hand), the Victorian romance, the hierarchal class distinctions (at one of Rochester’s dinner parties, no one dares speak to the lowly governess), the novel’s religious and moral qualities. However, all of these aspects are merely touched upon, and the swiftness and sometimes choppiness of Buffini’s script leaves the story and its characters at the risk of feeling undeveloped.

Ultimately, shrewd performances from the actors save the film. Fassbender’s Rochester is not nearly as primal as the Rochesters of yore, but he brings a vitality to the role that feels decidedly modern, injecting his take on the Byronic hero with a good dose of snappy snark. The supporting cast is an impressive one, powered by Hawkins, the always welcome Judi Dench as Thornfield’s head housemaid Mrs. Fairfax, and a grown-up Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) as Jane’s clergyman cousin, Mr. Rivers.

But the standout is Wasikowska, who carries the film with an almost effortless grace. Her Jane is self-contained, politely stoic, betrayed only by a slight widening of the eyes or hard swallow of her elegant throat, but despite the necessary guardedness she draws you in and makes Jane’s every plight ring true. The actress never plays Jane as meek, a damsel in distress in need of rescue. Instead, she brings a contemporary freshness to the classic role, some Gothic girl-power, fleshing Brontë’s heroine out with a sprightly wit and a strong sense of self.

The latest Jane Eyre doesn’t add anything relatively new or unexpected to the Brontëan canon, but it’s a handsomely melancholy adaptation of the Gothic classic, strengthened by solid performances from its cast, particularly its lead: B+

About Chree Izzo

Chree Izzo (COM/CAS '11) loves pop culture more than Snookie loves tanned juiceheads, which is saying something.

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