(Originally posted on Facebook.)
This is the third
Jane Eyre I've seen, and the only one that is a movie, not a serial. Watching this one reminds me why, all these years later,
Jane Eyre is enjoying such popularity. You've got the independent heroine making her way in an unfriendly world, beset by moodily magnificent men who want to marry her, with a constant backdrop of windy moors and possibly haunted mansions. If that sounds silly, it's because
Jane Eyre is silly. It's a silly melodrama and the romantic lead is frankly unbelievable
and a man of low moral fibre.
It took Charlotte Bronte a lot of work to make
Jane Eyre, in spite of itself, a great book. The problem with adapting it to film is that you've got to shoehorn some poor man into tight breeches and ask him not to look too silly saying Rochester's lines. (TIMOTHY DALTON: Am I handsome, Jane? JANE: Not at all, sir. VIEWERS: Oooo-
kay).
This
Jane Eyre also has to work hard to be a Serious Drama...but not too hard, because then it might lose the steampunk vampire romance novel crowd (and this movie certainly has an eye fixed on them). The result is something not entirely faithful to the book—but a superbly-made movie.
There were a lot of things to like about this particular
Jane Eyre. Obviously the theatrical-film format had to result in a lot of material being left out and streamlined, but this is handled very well by opening the movie with Jane's flight from Rochester and then showing brief flashbacks to her childhood before diving more thoroughly into her time at Thornfield. This keeps the plot moving along nicely, although certain things get left out—they don't explain how Jane lost her valise and her time at Lowood is left very sketchy, with none of the gradual improvement that in the book eventually made it a less grim place, no kind Miss Temple, and no explanation that Jane became a teacher there.
The movie is perfectly sumptuous to look at. Neither of the main characters could really be called plain (although they
did try with Jane). The costuming is wonderful. From a clothing point of view, it's all about the bonnet at the end. The picture up on the screen is really lovely: the camera drinks in as much picturesque scenery as it can, including a wonderful red sky at one point and a beautiful sepia shot with Jane silhouetted against a window. You could freeze-frame a number of shots and hang them on your wall with no questions asked.
In the book, Jane unexpectedly finds some living relatives with whom to share her life. People have pointed out how unlikely this is, and funnily enough the movie leaves that out altogether—the characters still show up, but this time Jane adopts them as relatives, rather than recognising them as truly her cousins. Cute move on the scriptwriters' part!
The acting is good, especially Rochester. This is the third
Jane Eyre I have seen and it is the first in which I did not have the urge to laugh at him. Dalton, for instance, was
hilarious, while I just felt sorry for Stephens in the 2006 miniseries. Here, scriptwriters and the actor conspire to produce a Mr Rochester you don't want to send to bed without dessert for being sulky. I was amazed—I couldn't believe it could be done. And the rest of the acting is just as good.
The script is likewise extremely good. It can be hard to tell without a copy of the book by your side, but if I am correct much of the dialogue was rewritten to speed up the pace or flesh out the characters. Normally this is somewhat obvious, but with only one or two missteps the scriptwriters have smoothed over seams in the story with authentic-sounding dialogue. There is a speech of Jane's, not entirely from the book, probably inserted to make her seem like a proto-feminist heroine; but because it is couched in the right language, I could almost imagine Jane really saying it:
I wish a woman could have action in her life, like a man. It agitates me to pain that the skyline over there is ever our limit. I long sometimes for a power of vision that would overpass it. If I could behold all I imagine... I've never seen a city, never spoken with men and I fear my whole life will pass...
Other elements that have been invented and added include a speech given by little Adele on or near Jane's first day:
Sophie told me there is a woman who walks the halls of this house by night. I have never seen her, but people say she has hair black as ebony, white skin like the moon, and eyes like sapphires. She can also walk through walls. They say she comes to suck your blood. (slurp)
Yes, this is the up-to-date
Jane Eyre, deftly modernised so that you would hardly notice it unless very familiar with the book. Just a touch more edgy. Just a touch more frightening and moody. And it works. It works. But is that a good thing?
Charlotte Bronte's book had something that made it worthwhile after all: a rock-solid moral foundation. In
Jane Eyre there are good Christians, misguided Christians, and thorough-going hypocrites, but while the book castigiates hypocrisy and criticises denseness, it emphatically promotes true piety. It isn't perfect; Mr Rochester is too much of a cad and his repentance comes too late, after too much fun and games and burning passion (and houses) to make the book really positively edifying. However, in the book at least even Mr Rochester is required to deliver an edifying speech at the happy ending:
“Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.”
I am sorry to say that none of this has ever made its way into any of the three
Jane Eyre adaptations I've seen, including this one, which may be the least satisfactory, because the most abbreviated, of all. You see, unless Rochester repents, Jane actually doesn't gain anything from her flight. Everything may now become legal; but she is just a mistress with a ring, and Rochester is still a rank opportunist now taking advantage of the fact that Jane's morals now allow her to do what they forbade her doing before.
A lot of things were left out of this particular
Jane Eyre: specifically, most of the moral fibre that drives Jane's actions-- “self-respect” is her stated reason for leaving Thornfield. Combined with the other things that are not explained—for example, the fact that Mr Borcklehurst of Lowood is shown up as the hypocrite he is and removed from office—the picture of Christianity in this
Jane Eyre is sinister or anaemic. In the absence of true Christianity, Jane's religion appears to be some vague proto-hippie spiritualism—something not entirely absent in the novel, but firmly anchored there in context of the Faith.
To sum up, this
Jane Eyre is quite a rarity—it's well-made, well-acted, entirely believable, beautifully-shot, deftly updated, and most enjoyable. It's all so well done, in fact, that it's hard to turn around and say, And yet wrong...I don't like it when people update stories, when strong feminine characters are given more feminist lines, when madwomen become, even in local legend, vampires. It's bad enough when it's jarring, but this new skill, this ability to mesh it in seamlessly with the original, seems worse. It doesn't belong in
Jane Eyre, however well it is camouflaged.
