On Beauty and Being Just

A review of Jane Eyre by C. Cleary

Directed by Cary Fukunaga

Written by Moira Buffini, adapted from the novel by Charlotte Brontë

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, and Jamie Bell

Score: ☆☆☆[1]

When I resolved to write a short review of the new Jane Eyre movie as a means of 1) placating our thousands of hungry, loyal readers and 2) staving off threats of superiority from a vicious competing cohort blog, I promised myself that I would avoid pettily commenting upon the fact that JANE EYRE DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT!! Instead, I'm going to do just that. Mostly because when I was Google Image searching "Jane Eyre 2011" to find an image for this post, this blog came up, and in it, the author concluded: "But the driving force of Jane Eyre is the remarkable portrayal of Jane by Mia Wasikowska, whose absorbing performance and beautiful presence magnify the film’s visual beauty."

 Um......yes. And this is the problem.


Is it an absorbing performance? Yes! Of Jane Eyre? Not really. A new Jane Eyre, maybe. I don't mean to enforce adherence to the original text or anything (yes, I do), but what happened to Jane's stubborn assertiveness? In the film, she loses most of it after age ten, partially because Jane's splendid narration is missing, leaving, in the film, eye contact and Jane's "beautiful presence" onscreen to bear the heavy brunt of communicating Jane's insoluble will (yes, insoluble--as in, not dissolved by Rochester's domineering presence). 

Jane's not directing anymore--instead, she's obeying orders and crying on cliffs as we stare at her face. But Jane did not lay herself over the rain-stained cliffs of the heath to cry never-ending torrents of tears like a mourning seal when Rochester would leave for a few days or intend to marry a dum-dum or whatever. She was like eff that, it is raining out here and I've still got to govern this silly French girl for four more hours today, and then draw strange drawings revealing my even stranger soul.

Am I arguing that visual beauty is overrated in film? Never, my friends. Never. But the camera's fetishization of the well-lit and well-proportioned/traditionally beautiful female face is not to be conflated with the beauty of the landscape (a la Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice), or, if you want to think about it this way, set in contrast to the sublimity of the gothic landscape, to begin to mean only its pleasing (pleasingly feminine) image [2]. Especially when you're adapting texts about female characters who are not chiefly beautiful. Jane Eyre's face is boring. It's a blank space! Don't even try to look at it!


Okayyyy, you're right, reader--I'm being unfair. I can't think of an actress with a face uninteresting enough to satisfy me as Jane (does such a thing even exist? has filmic representation ever not endowed the object with meaning?)

In sum, it's hard work to film this so novel-y of novels, and maybe shouldn't be attempted. After all, besides the fact that I don't want Jane Eyre to have a face, there's not supposed to be a lot to see (I'm going to refrain from making an analogy to Bertha's imprisonment/Rochester's blindness...ahem).  It's Jane's narration and novelistic presence, and not necessarily the events of the plot, that drive the novel. All you've got is nothing happening + very little happening while you wait for something significant to happen. Well, you know, until all that crazy shit starts happening. But there's no time for this in the film, so what were incredibly powerful plot moments lose their potency and become a series of not entirely satisfying cheap thrills (I use the term "cheap thrills" loosely...). See marginal utility. And so, as my roommate pointed out, an adaptation like this one has difficulty granting its scenes enough silence and space for viewer anticipation to develop. So what I'm advocating for here is Jane Eyre doing very little in a dark, dark house with a blurred-out face and voice over narration. Yes....

Hmm, wait a minute--this review sounds altogether negative, but in truth, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie, especially for the following reasons:

 

1. Gothic to the max

2. Rochester: yes.

3. cinematography: yes.

4. Mia's acting is a pleasure to watch. It's true.

5. Excellent job of illuminating the dynamics of Western culture--i.e. "oh, wait--Rochester was actually taking advantage of this girl who knew no other life, huh?" There's a nice scene in which Jane and Mrs. Fairfax are looking out the window of the house as Jane vents her frustration about this.

6. costumes

And there you have it [3].

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[1] Though three stars appear here, in truth, the star system is temporarily suspended until we figure out just how the hell to quantify our opinions of a film's merits.
[2] I apologize for using the word "fetishization."
[3] Bessie, you need to review this movie.