Rochester is Too Young

And too handsome. And too groomed.

They say you can divide the world into two camps: an Austen camp and a Bronte camp. Having never read Austen, believe it or not, and having come late in life to Jane Eyre, I tentatively put myself in the Bronte camp of brooding romantic gothicity, although I don't claim to be an expert.

So I wouldn't say that I'm attached to Jane Eyre in the same way I might have been had I read it in high school or college. But that doesn't prevent me from criticizing this new filmed adaptation, by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), and starring two hot young actors in roles for the plain and the ugly. I suppose the studio would never have allowed otherwise.

I've heard there is a 1996 version with William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg, which, even if terrible, probably gets the age difference closer to the novel. Orson Welles seems like a better fit too, he's certainly big and boisterous and brooding, yes, and not so attractive in his later years, no. I will have to see Orson's scene-chewing performance in that earlier version. Welles liked his ham and he liked it big and that sort of thing would have breathed some much-needed life into this movie.

Micheal Fassbender makes googly-eyes at Mia Wasikowska,pretty much from the get-go, and the acting is fine and and the cinematography is handsome, sure, but the music is overwrought and the screenplay is questionable and the director Fukunaga doesn't get to the guts of the story in the way he should, merely fulfilling his duties as the person who films the scenes as written (or adapted).

Remains of the Day gets this notion of repressed, forbidden love way way better. Even Age of Innocence ratchets up this tension masterfully compared to this clunky mess. Near the end, after Jane returns to Rochester's burned-down mansion, she seems more like a young waif with a crush than the radical, noble individualist (and now a woman of means, with property) who's deciding her own fate and who's willing to accept a broken-down Rochester for what he is.

Indeed, this radical notion of individualism and a young female protagonist who speaks her mind and determines her own fate, with or without men involved, seems to be lost in this film. She seems passive, actually, even though she's given her requisite lines of saucy, impertinent dialogue. And when she's out flopping around on the moors, crying, it's a little hard for me to get behind it. Maybe if she were pining for Orson Welles! Or Al Pacino!

Finally, the house isn't scary enough, the crazy wife in the attic seems like an undeveloped afterthought, and the bizarre fortune teller scene (Rochester in drag!) has been cut to speed the story along.

Too bad, it could have been great!