Movie adaptations of the classic works of English literature face a daunting task. Take a wrong step in updating a novel, and you might give it too much contemporary political or social weight, violating the spirit of the original. Play it too square, and you’ll embalm it in a “Masterpiece Theatre”
cocoon of dullness.
Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” has been adapted many times, and a new film version strikes just the right balance between the modern and the old. It’s not electrifying, but it’s very solid.
Mia Wasikowska, the rising young star of “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Kids Are All Right,” provides an earnest, quick-witted performance in the title role. Her looks muted to fit the character’s description as a truly plain Jane, Wasikowska navigates the saga by wielding a forthright intelligence — without making Jane seem older than her years.
The story’s told in flashback form, so we first meet Jane as she flees from an isolated estate; she is rescued by a country preacher (Jamie Bell, excellent) and his sisters.
From there we see pieces of her past: First she’s an orphan given up by her cruel aunt (Sally Hawkins) to a strict boarding school, then she’s engaged as a nanny in the home of the strange and dark Mr. Rochester, that literary character for whom the word “brooding” was likely coined.
Rochester is played by Michael Fassbender, from “Inglourious Basterds” and “Centurion.” In case anybody was still wondering, Fassbender confirms his status as one of the most intriguing and agile actors on the current movie scene. This role requires an actor to be harsh and arrogant while maintaining the audience’s interest (and hinting at depths of pain that will only be revealed in the late going).
The cast includes Judi Dench as Rochester’s housekeeper, a small role for an Oscar-winning actress, yet impeccably executed. The other starring role goes to the moorland of Derbyshire, rendered here as a windswept and unglamorous backdrop to the sad story.
Director Cary Joji Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) and screenwriter Moira Buffini have wisely created scenes that cut to the heart of the matter without sacrificing a certain richness of period dialogue. This is, after all, the kind of movie where you want to hear people saying, “Tell me, am I justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom to attain her?” And words along those lines.
If this “Jane Eyre” doesn’t entirely take cinematic wing, it does do justice to a literary classic. A classic that, as this version attests, tells a very strange story indeed.
“Jane Eyre”
Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel comes to the screen in an impeccably acted version. Mia Wasikowska plays the title character, a plain nanny who comes to the estate of the brooding Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). If this take on the material doesn’t entirely take flight, it does have a fine eye for the unglamorous moorland of Derbyshire and the 19th-century language of its people.
Rated: PG-13 for subject matter
Showing: Egyptian
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