This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 24, 2011 - In the past century, "Jane Eyre" has been made into a film or a television series more than 20 times, according to the invaluable Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). But it would be ridiculous to call the fine new movie version of the ever-popular Gothic romance a "remake."
This passionate yet intelligent new reading of Charlotte Bronte's timeless mid-19th-century tale of cruelty, ambition, love and betrayal seems fresher and more relevant today than any number of recent romantic films set in the 21st century. At the same time, director Cary Fukunaga ("Sin Nombre") and screenwriter Moira Buffini ("Tamara Drewe") remain true to the nature of Bronte's heroine, a woman who was very much of her time but refused to be a victim of it.
The story is familiar, in part because it has since been told in essence so many times in the past 160 years under so many different titles.
An orphaned girl is cheated and abused by her selfish wealthy step aunt, shipped off to a school for poor girls run by casual sadists, watches her best friend die and becomes determined to escape poverty, goes to work as a governess at a country mansion, falls in love with the mysterious, haunted master of the house, and reaches a moment of great happiness only to discover a horrifying truth. She runs away in misery, weeping uncontrollably as the rain slashes at her, the thunder rumbles fearfully in the heavens and an eerie voice calls her name.
One reason this primal gothic romance has inspired so many filmmakers is that its scenes are so memorably visual -- an agonized schoolgirl forced to stand for hours and hours on a high stool, a horse and rider rearing out of a wooded mist, flames that appear from nowhere and threaten to destroy everyone and everything, a young woman fleeing in tears across a forbidding landscape with an ominous castle looming in the background.
The new movie, which was filmed luminously by cinematographer Adriano Goldman, opens with the scene of Jane Eyre fleeing from the castle of the man she loves and finally finding shelter. It then unfolds in a series of flashbacks, beginning where the novel begins, with Jane being unjustly berated by her aunt.
It is tempting to call the scenes of Jane's cruel childhood "Dickensian," except that "Jane Eyre" was published two years before "David Copperfield" and more than a decade before "Great Expectations." And Jane Eyre not only has to fight her way through poverty and class oppression, like Dickens heroes, but she also suffers because of her relative powerlessness as a woman.
In its heart and soul, "Jane Eyre" is about a woman overcoming obstacles and breaking boundaries through the sheer force of her will. It is, in part, about love, but love in Bronte, as in Jane Austen, is also about survival, which is why Jane's scornful refusal of a marriage of convenience is so striking.
Mia Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland") is superb in a revelatory performance as Jane, who thinks of herself as "plain" and dresses and wears her hair accordingly, but has a fierce intelligence and wit to go with her iron will. Wasikowska lets us see the real Jane in her bright eyes, in the tilting corners of her mouth, and in her small but forceful gestures. She's unlike any of the other women we meet in the story, and we can see why Rochester, the handsome, soul-tortured master of the house (Michael Fassbender, appropriately Byronic and mercurial), cannot resist her.
In addition to an excellent cast that includes Judi Dench as a kindly housekeeper and Sally Hawkins as the dissolute aunt, a principal reason the new movie of "Jane Eyre" is so successful -- much better than the 1996 version with William Hurt as a neurotic Rochester -- is that the director was not afraid of the material. "Jane Eyre" is unabashedly a romance -- perhaps the romance -- and Fukunaga stages it that way, particularly in the scenes in the majestic moors where the stormy heavens and the brutal earth seem complicit in a conspiracy to destroy Jane Eyre. You have two choices with a movie like this: either dismiss it as too ferociously romantic, or let it sweep you away.
Opens Friday, March 25
'Of Gods and Men'
In a timely film based on events in the mid-1990s, eight French Christian monks live in a monastery in the mountains of Algeria. They grow food on their land and operate a free health clinic that is open to all villagers, Christian and Muslim. Then an Islamic fundamentalist militia kills a crew of foreign workers.
As tensions rise, the monks are faced with a difficult decision: should they abandon their mission and return to France, or remain in Algeria under the threat of death.
The first half or so of "Of Gods and Men" is fascinating as we see how the monks have integrated themselves into the community, working with the villagers in the fields, attending Muslim weddings and befriending the local Imams. And a prickly scene where the monks treat a wounded militant is thought-provoking. Then, as violence spreads and the monks appear to be doomed, there are many meetings to discuss what to do, all of which appear to pose the same question -- is it a sinful act of pride to remain in a place where you are doing good when you are almost certainly sentencing yourself to death?
"Of Gods and Men" is effective at conveying the feeling of being in a monastery, with long periods of silence broken by the reverberant sounds of prayer and chant. The theological arguments -- shall we live or die? -- go on for too long and become repetitive , and the second half of the film suffers from a lack of suspense.
Opens Friday, March 25
Harper Barnes, the author of Never Been A Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked The Civil Rights Movement, is a special contributor to the Beacon.