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sophia_sol) wrote2011-08-26 10:04 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2011-08-26 10:04 pm
Entry tags:
Jane Eyre
This evening my sister Mara* and I watched the recent movie version of Jane Eyre, the one starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.
And it was....okay, it had some good things about it but all in all I disapprove of it as a representation of the important bits of the book.
Well. In its defense, it was a movie only 2 hours long, and the book is kind of LENGTHY. And there's a LOT in there that's important, and so they had to cut stuff out, including some of the important stuff. UNFORTUNATELY.
And, okay, Wasikowska does a great job of playing Jane, and Fassbender (although he looks wrong for the part: too attractive (though not my type)) also does a great job of playing Rochester.
But -- the movie felt too flat, mostly, and this is supposed to be a story of PASSION and MELODRAMA. Like. Seriously. Jane: she is a passionate person! And so is Rochester! And yes there was some good understated passion between them in some of their scenes, but overall the movie was just not passionate enough.
And a large portion of the point IS that Jane is a passionate person, and that that's part of what Rochester likes so much about her!
And the other really important part of the point is a thing that got lost even more, which is that a huge theme in this book is BALANCES OF POWER and EQUALITY. Jane is an equal with Rochester. Yes, they do have that one scene where Jane is all I AM YOUR EQUAL, and there's a lovely little scene where Jane is drawing and Rochester is pestering her and she successfully makes him leave her alone -- but those are the only nods to it in the entire movie, really.
The choice between St John and Rochester is a choice between being a subservient and being an equal, being a person with POWER in the relationship over the other person (see my earlier post about Jane Eyre the book), and that was dropped entirely.
You don't see that aspect of her relationship with St John at all! I mean, St John almost looks like a good choice, for crying out loud. (and okay that was not helped by him being played by the actor who played Esca in The Eagle, which made him rather endearing to me, but STILL.) It's supposed to be: with St John she is always doing what he wants, and with Rochester she is able to be herself. AND THAT DISTINCTION IS NOT MADE.
THAT DISTINCTION IS THE BEST THING ABOUT THE ENTIRE BOOK.
GODDAMNIT.
Okay I watched this whole movie having a whole lot of feelings. Like. I thought I was mostly over my feelings about Jane Eyre but APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG. I just -- I love this book a whole lot and this movie did not do justice to it.
In the movie's defense, it did some things very well. The scenery porn was fantastic, for starters.
And the Jane/Helen bits were appropriately slashy.
And the movie had a whole collection of great actors. (Hi Judy Dench in your role as Every Old Woman In British Movies Ever! Good to see you again!)
And the scene just after Bertha sets Rochester's bedroom on fire, where Jane and Rochester are standing there having massive UST at each other, is GREAT. Jane and Rochester: I fully believe that they have enormous quantities of amazing sex with each other.
And, idk, there was other good stuff too, I'm just not remembering it in the wake of all the things it did wrong, which I haven't even gotten into the details of. (really the passion thing and the equality thing are the most important things and I can let the other stuff go, mostly)
So. This version: possibly worth watching, for some things, as long as you do not expect it to be THEMATICALLY CORRECT or anything.
(ETA: Mara is appalled by the fact that I haven't mentioned what she apparently considers the worst part of the movie: Rochester's beard at the end. And I will freely admit: it is an AWFUL BEARD.)
Watching this version with Mara was a lot of fun, because she's seen a goodly number of previous versions, so she kept on making reference to things this version or that version did better. This is the only version I've seen, so the only comparisons I was able to make were with the book itself.
Mara has for a long time wanted to do a survey of All The Versions of Jane Eyre, but she just began doing research on the topic and apparently there are like 30 versions of it (not counting the musicals and operas and radio shows and ballets and symphonies and so forth). And she's only seen 4. IT MIGHT TAKE HER A WHILE, is what I'm saying!
But apparently in the last 102 years (since the first version came out in 1909), the longest gap between two movie versions of Jane Eyre has been 13 years, from 1983-1996. And then there was a 9 year gap from 1997-2006. So up until quite recently, CONSTANT JANE EYRE ADAPTATIONS was the name of the game for as long as there's been movies. But we're kind of out of the habit of thinking about it like that now, because of those two recent long gaps!
* I figured I should give my sister a pseudonym of her own here. Now that she's actually in the SAME COUNTRY as me again -- in the same city, even -- she's probably going to show up in mentions here kind of a lot. She and Essie are the two most important people in my life. So.
And it was....okay, it had some good things about it but all in all I disapprove of it as a representation of the important bits of the book.
Well. In its defense, it was a movie only 2 hours long, and the book is kind of LENGTHY. And there's a LOT in there that's important, and so they had to cut stuff out, including some of the important stuff. UNFORTUNATELY.
And, okay, Wasikowska does a great job of playing Jane, and Fassbender (although he looks wrong for the part: too attractive (though not my type)) also does a great job of playing Rochester.
But -- the movie felt too flat, mostly, and this is supposed to be a story of PASSION and MELODRAMA. Like. Seriously. Jane: she is a passionate person! And so is Rochester! And yes there was some good understated passion between them in some of their scenes, but overall the movie was just not passionate enough.
And a large portion of the point IS that Jane is a passionate person, and that that's part of what Rochester likes so much about her!
And the other really important part of the point is a thing that got lost even more, which is that a huge theme in this book is BALANCES OF POWER and EQUALITY. Jane is an equal with Rochester. Yes, they do have that one scene where Jane is all I AM YOUR EQUAL, and there's a lovely little scene where Jane is drawing and Rochester is pestering her and she successfully makes him leave her alone -- but those are the only nods to it in the entire movie, really.
The choice between St John and Rochester is a choice between being a subservient and being an equal, being a person with POWER in the relationship over the other person (see my earlier post about Jane Eyre the book), and that was dropped entirely.
You don't see that aspect of her relationship with St John at all! I mean, St John almost looks like a good choice, for crying out loud. (and okay that was not helped by him being played by the actor who played Esca in The Eagle, which made him rather endearing to me, but STILL.) It's supposed to be: with St John she is always doing what he wants, and with Rochester she is able to be herself. AND THAT DISTINCTION IS NOT MADE.
THAT DISTINCTION IS THE BEST THING ABOUT THE ENTIRE BOOK.
GODDAMNIT.
Okay I watched this whole movie having a whole lot of feelings. Like. I thought I was mostly over my feelings about Jane Eyre but APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG. I just -- I love this book a whole lot and this movie did not do justice to it.
In the movie's defense, it did some things very well. The scenery porn was fantastic, for starters.
And the Jane/Helen bits were appropriately slashy.
And the movie had a whole collection of great actors. (Hi Judy Dench in your role as Every Old Woman In British Movies Ever! Good to see you again!)
And the scene just after Bertha sets Rochester's bedroom on fire, where Jane and Rochester are standing there having massive UST at each other, is GREAT. Jane and Rochester: I fully believe that they have enormous quantities of amazing sex with each other.
And, idk, there was other good stuff too, I'm just not remembering it in the wake of all the things it did wrong, which I haven't even gotten into the details of. (really the passion thing and the equality thing are the most important things and I can let the other stuff go, mostly)
So. This version: possibly worth watching, for some things, as long as you do not expect it to be THEMATICALLY CORRECT or anything.
(ETA: Mara is appalled by the fact that I haven't mentioned what she apparently considers the worst part of the movie: Rochester's beard at the end. And I will freely admit: it is an AWFUL BEARD.)
Watching this version with Mara was a lot of fun, because she's seen a goodly number of previous versions, so she kept on making reference to things this version or that version did better. This is the only version I've seen, so the only comparisons I was able to make were with the book itself.
Mara has for a long time wanted to do a survey of All The Versions of Jane Eyre, but she just began doing research on the topic and apparently there are like 30 versions of it (not counting the musicals and operas and radio shows and ballets and symphonies and so forth). And she's only seen 4. IT MIGHT TAKE HER A WHILE, is what I'm saying!
But apparently in the last 102 years (since the first version came out in 1909), the longest gap between two movie versions of Jane Eyre has been 13 years, from 1983-1996. And then there was a 9 year gap from 1997-2006. So up until quite recently, CONSTANT JANE EYRE ADAPTATIONS was the name of the game for as long as there's been movies. But we're kind of out of the habit of thinking about it like that now, because of those two recent long gaps!
* I figured I should give my sister a pseudonym of her own here. Now that she's actually in the SAME COUNTRY as me again -- in the same city, even -- she's probably going to show up in mentions here kind of a lot. She and Essie are the two most important people in my life. So.
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...Not that I've seen our copy in ten or fifteen years. ;P
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You should totally try reading it again, though! It is a very worthwhile book! It has some problematic parts, but overall it is really interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking.
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*lol* I think so. That's the real problem with teaching a kid to read too young - not that they'll ruin their eyes or any such thing (I have excellent eyesight), but that they run out of reading material and start reading older-age books before they can properly appreciate them. ;P
*adds "Jane Eyre" to reading list*
(The fantastic part about LibraryThing is that my reading list is always right handy when someone online recs me a new book. The awful part about LibraryThing is that when I look at their listing for that new book, it gives me ten other recommendations, and I've read half of them but just didn't get around to listing that section of my book-devouring experience yet. LOL!)
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(...yeah, that WOULD be a problem with LibraryThing! My reading list is a gdocs document, which means that it's always easily accessible, but has no danger of expanding by its very nature. Of course, it's currently like 8 pages long, sooooo it expands quite enough on its own!)
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I do have a musical version that has some lovely pieces in it, though.
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I have heard that there is a musical version! Actually I think there are two? Also multiple operas, a ballet, radio plays, a symphony....
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Movie St. John still make me punchy. Although he was quite decorative.
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I loved the book when I was a teenager, despite not really liking romance in general, and I re-read it a few years ago expecting it to be one of those cases where a book I used to love passionately turns out to be full to the brim with DO NOT WANT. And while there was a fair amount of DO NOT WANT that had sailed right over my head as a kid (Bertha, oh my god, I was expecting it to be bad but not as bad as it actually was), I found Jane and her relationship with Rochester just as satisfying as an adult as I did when I was a kid. Yeah, it's not perfect in concept or execution, but there are plenty of romance novels and romantic movies made TODAY that don't give their heroines as much agency, backbone and independence as Jane has, and she is LIVING IN THE VICTORIAN ERA, IN A BOOK WRITTEN IN THE VICTORIAN ERA! wtf, world.
I have so much love for the way that she and Rochester become friends first and foremost, and the relationship not only develops out of the friendship, but is unable to really happen until Jane is able to approach Rochester as his social and financial equal as well as the intellectual equal that she is from the beginning. For all its (many!) flaws, this book does romance right.
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All of them. I read all of them. ;P (The first twenty are actually quite good. The ghostwritten ones, not so much.) Also all the yellow Nancy Drew and blue Hardy Boys. Several times. XD But I'm thinking more about before that, when I was really at maybe a Babar-and-Madeline cognitive level but a Narnia or Treasure Island reading level... there are no long chapter books written for toddlers. ;P
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And...yeah, I think that for most people there's not much call for long chapter books for toddlers? :D
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I too adored the book as a teen despite not really liking romance in general. And I too discovered the DO NOT WANT upon the reread (BERTHA).
But -- I am so conflicted over the Rochester/Jane. Because all the things you say about its awesomeness are Utter Truth, and I love the book for it so much and ship Rochester/Jane so hard, but I CANNOT GET OVER HOW MUCH OF A CREEPER ROCHESTER IS.
But JANE. JANEJANEJANE. I LOVE HER SO MUCH.
And I am with you on wishing that modern romance storylines would have ACTUAL AWESOME HEROINES like Jane. JANNNNNNNNNNE
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