Review: Jane Eyre

Director Cary Fukunaga's use of ambient light feels fresh and modern.

Jane Eyre
Directed by: Cary Fukunaga
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench
Released by: Universal

Book-to-film adaptation is done well when it doesn’t merely render the same events onscreen, nor incarnate the characters exactly as fans imagine them, but rather when it preserves the book’s spirit or atmosphere in the transition between the very different vocabularies of film and literature.

Film, for instance, loves human expression and gesture as much as it does visual spectacle, so it tends to emphasise relationships. As many people know, Jane Eyre is a love story between wilful 19-year-old governess Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) and her brooding, troubled boss, Mr Rochester (Michael Fassbender), slotting into a Romantic (as well as romantic) dynamic we’ve recognised since Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.

Many film adaptations of Jane Eyre – especially the 1943 version starring Orson Welles crushing a terrified-looking Joan Fontaine to his bosom – also emphasise the gothic aspects that are more explicit in Charlotte’s sister Emily’s novel Wuthering Heights. The metaphysical manifestations of ghosts and spirits; the weather mirroring emotional turmoil; a spooky country house full of secrets; a terrifying woman in the attic; the moral ambiguity of a hero who mingles danger with passion.

Refreshingly, Cary Fukunaga downplays these things for a more contemporary take on the story. I was struck by his impressionistic use of natural light and lack of self-consciously ‘period’ flourishes. His Jane Eyre is an intellectual struggle to be cherished for one’s own best qualities, rather than a melodrama about repressed desire.

For me, this is closer to the spirit of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, whose first-person narrative immerses the reader in the keenly felt moral dilemmas of its protagonist. From an early age – since long before she met Mr Rochester – Jane’s emotions are governed by a startlingly strong dignity and personal integrity. “Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?” she expostulates in a key scene.

Her interior life is harder to render onscreen, but Fukunaga evokes it by rearranging the novel’s narrative. He begins about two-thirds into the novel, as Jane flees Thornfield Hall in distress and ends up far across the moors on the doorstep of young clergyman St John Rivers (Jamie Bell) and his sisters, near death. From there, the story loops in flashback before continuing its forward momentum.

No sin for St John: Jamie Bell is perhaps too determinedly pious.

This was a great move. Rather than the traditional Bildungsroman logic that an unformed protagonist matures over time, Fukunaga evokes an already morally developed individual who acts decisively on her beliefs. This version sacrifices the novel’s themes of family and of religious suffering, but does justice to its exploration of class and its proto-feminism.

The other problem with rendering Jane’s interior life onscreen is that, famously, she presents an inscrutable and unlikeable face to the world. Mia Wasikowska is brilliant here. Unlike other actresses who’ve portrayed Jane, she’s the right age and she’s not conventionally beautiful, possessing instead an obstinate self-possession that the camera can soak up without its seeming dull.

Michael Fassbender lacks the smouldering surliness many actors bring to Rochester, and unlike in the novel, he’s quite good-looking. At first this annoyed me, but I enjoyed the way this refreshed the famous fireside interlocution scene. When Rochester challenges Jane, “Do you think me handsome?” and she answers “No, sir,” because “beauty is of little consequence,” it’s not because she’s trying to be diplomatic about Rochester’s ugliness. She’s genuinely saying appearances matter less than hearts capable of both passion and atonement… themes which turn out to be vital to the film.

Jamie Bell is less successful as St John – whom Jane rejects because he is passionless – because Bell portrays the character’s severity as a kind of subdued fury, rather than the almost terrifying stillness and conviction with which Brontë endows him. Judi Dench has little to work with as Thornfield’s housekeeper Mrs Fairfax. But these are quibbles; this iteration of the classic story is intellectually satisfying without sacrificing its emotional resonance.

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