jane eyre: notes after percolation

WHY JANE EYRE WHY??

now let's just all bear in mind that had i liked this film, i would have been somewhat disappointed.  i came to watch it suck, and it sucked.

acting: quite good.

direction: not bad.

basic premise of fragmentary kaleidoscope of jane eyre plot-nessfulness: RUDE but promising, for the first half hour or so.

presentation of conditions of jane eyre's young life: not bad!  helen burns was there and she didn't dispense any advice about advertising!

other points of eyre-y goodness: two whole rivers sisters!  with lines!  st. john/jane eyre relationship made interesting, and is not totally disrespectful of what appear to me to be bronte's intentions!  jane eyre has no pretensions to being a naturalist...mia wasikowska gave a luminous performance...soundtrack could have been worse...blanche is not blonde...

it was the core rochester/jane relationship that sucked, though not for lack of trying.  my personal opinion of rochester is that bronte gives a very exact depiction of him, and thereby renders him impossible to cast.  jane eyre is also a very exacting character, but somehow you can get a likeable jane out of many different types of people (not charlotte gainsbourg, but many people [ruth wilson still being my favorite--though i have a friend that i think would play the part the best of anyone ever]).  the closest i've ever been able to come to getting a good casting of rochester, though, even just in my head, is right now, when i'm thinking that kristin chenoweth would do a great job with the part, if hell froze over and she somehow got the opportunity.  rochester is just impossible to make right.  orson welles is all thunder and no humor, timothy dalton, though awesome, is too byron and not enough bothwell, toby stephens is way too suave... and i like all of these performances.  i just feel bad for michael fassbender.  he's trying to play this impossible part, and the only support he's getting from either the script or the production is a miniscule flower and a neckcloth.  who could do anything with those materials?  mcguyver?  maybe he could make a weapon with which to free himself from a tricky situation (victorian england, for instance), but even he couldn't construct a rochester characterization worth balls.  fassbender did a great job with what he was given--but this seemed to consist of, "okay, now stare at an angle to the camera.  you can't flirt with jane, so just pant at her.  make it more angry!  now more sensitive!  angrier!  sensitiver!  i don't know, something with your nostrils, maybe?  are you wearing the neckcloth?  do you have your tiny flower?"

i'm wondering how many woman directors there have been of jane eyre...how many woman screenwriters...  it's sexist of me, i know.  i didn't think the direction was that bad.  i read a review at the movie theater (you know, one of those they post on cardboard) in which cary fukunaga discussed having read the book several times, and i felt like i could see what he'd read expressed in the movie.  his interpretation of jane, who, as the review pointed out, can get lost in the furor sometimes, was quite respectable.  not perfect (for a rabid fangirl, there is no such thing) but certainly well within respectable range.

to put it in the most abstract terms, i felt like the movie's intensity of purpose was admirable, and its use of its materials was kind of deplorable.  it faltered worst when it came to rochester, turning the whole thornfield sequence into something almost painful to experience, and not in the i-identify kind of way, but in the i-wish-this-were-less-teh-suck* kind of way.  a sequence of shots of cherry trees does not a romance make. 

UNFORTUNATELY!!  am i right?  am i right?

hey, maybe robert downey jr. could rochester it righteously.  i just like the idea of kristin chenoweth.

*rereading my megatokyo volumes; sorry.