BBC Jane Eyre review, part 1
Mar. 1st, 2008 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brightlywovenI'm watching this in instalments with shanith, so, in instalments come reviews.
I should preface this by saying that while I had high hopes for this production (being an adaptation of my most beloved novel), I did not expect them to be met. Partly this is because the two that I have seen failed to really move me. William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't have time to do much, and Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke seemed a little period piece by numbers. Besides, is it really possible to 'do' such a story in film? I think most adaptations of novels struggle when it comes to internalities, and falling in love is perhaps one of the most profoundly internal processes. Sure, Andrew Davies did a good job for Elizabeth and Darcy with lingering, smouldering glances, as well as contemplative mirror gazing. But then, P&P is a story of appearances, albeit deceptive ones. Jane Eyre is a story of, well, we'll get to that. But a first person narrative, the first person narrative of a reserved person, this is a difficult thing to film. How can this be done?
Step one seems to be whizzing through Jane's childhood in a series of vignettes to depict her lonely and deprived youth. These begin with the somewhat puzzling opening shots are of desert sands, with a sari-clad Jane perched and dreaming of other lands. What? You may ask if you are me. The reason for this alteration of text (young Jane recalls reading about arctic birds in the original) may become clear later. Interestingly the actress cast to play young Jane is freckled and snub nosed, and - dare I say it - a little plump. Probably not the skinny awkward child Charlotte Bronte had in mind, but for modern sensibilities a clearly plain Jane, whose appearance is not calculated to strike sympathy from the disinterested adults who determine here fate. This ultra-quick tour does nevertheless an admirable job of implanting the seeds for much of Jane's character: solitariness and reserve, hatred of injustice, art as escape and expression.
We move quite swiftly to Jane's adulthood, and find her a teacher in Lowood, which remains cold, echoing and exposed, before she is whisked off to Thornfield Hall. Here the pace slows, and we get to know place and character.
Sandy Welch has contrived a haunted atmosphere without resorting to the excesses of gothic. The wide moors, the grey dampness of Thornfield's stone and the darkness of uninhabited rooms are sparingly suggestive. And then there is the mysterious tower, home of Grace Poole, from which a red scarf seems to wave intermittently. Did I say scarf? Is there an edging of gold to that scarf? Is that, in fact, young Jane's sari flying from the window? Have Gilbert and Gubar [1] become so much an accepted textual interpretation as to be bbc canon? We shall see. At any rate, the pace here provides an interlude with interest but not drama, and so it seems for our heroine.
Until we meet Mr Rochester. Toby Stephens is certainly not an ugly Rochester, being at the very least striking, but certainly manages to pull off Rochester's uncivil brusqueness without being either coarse or coy. Some interesting additions, or perhaps extrapolations have been made to Rochester's character. For instance, from a single line in one chapter (Rochester call's Jane's attention to a moth) has sprung a study of biology. Is this a means of rounding Rochester's character - giving him something to do all day apart from honing his brooding skills - or is there a greater significance to the white male hobby of finding beauty in nature and pinning it down under a glass case?
These interpretations aside, what is truly very well done here is the depiction of the interaction (one could hardly call it a relationship) between Jane and Mr Rochester. To declare my bias, I adore their conversations as written by Charlotte Bronte, and Sandy Welch has not curtailed them for the screen. Suddenly we do not bemoan the hurried race through childhood, because this time is so precious. The awkward pauses, the conversations brief and long, as the two gradually, sometimes accidentally, reveal parts of themselves. Rochester is so gloriously rude! And Jane is so forthright back! Lizzie Bennett may have a sharp tongue, but she never defied a man with the power to cast her out into the street.
I am, all in all, agog to see the next episode, especially as when we left our heros, he was in the grip of mortal peril and completely oblivious to the fact. Methinks he must have been sampling the madeira rather heavily that evening. Seems this Rochester has plenty of brood in him after all.
[1] Sandra M Gilber and Susan Gubar The Madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth century literary imagination, YUP 1979 - a *must* read for eng lit geeks
I should preface this by saying that while I had high hopes for this production (being an adaptation of my most beloved novel), I did not expect them to be met. Partly this is because the two that I have seen failed to really move me. William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't have time to do much, and Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke seemed a little period piece by numbers. Besides, is it really possible to 'do' such a story in film? I think most adaptations of novels struggle when it comes to internalities, and falling in love is perhaps one of the most profoundly internal processes. Sure, Andrew Davies did a good job for Elizabeth and Darcy with lingering, smouldering glances, as well as contemplative mirror gazing. But then, P&P is a story of appearances, albeit deceptive ones. Jane Eyre is a story of, well, we'll get to that. But a first person narrative, the first person narrative of a reserved person, this is a difficult thing to film. How can this be done?
Step one seems to be whizzing through Jane's childhood in a series of vignettes to depict her lonely and deprived youth. These begin with the somewhat puzzling opening shots are of desert sands, with a sari-clad Jane perched and dreaming of other lands. What? You may ask if you are me. The reason for this alteration of text (young Jane recalls reading about arctic birds in the original) may become clear later. Interestingly the actress cast to play young Jane is freckled and snub nosed, and - dare I say it - a little plump. Probably not the skinny awkward child Charlotte Bronte had in mind, but for modern sensibilities a clearly plain Jane, whose appearance is not calculated to strike sympathy from the disinterested adults who determine here fate. This ultra-quick tour does nevertheless an admirable job of implanting the seeds for much of Jane's character: solitariness and reserve, hatred of injustice, art as escape and expression.
We move quite swiftly to Jane's adulthood, and find her a teacher in Lowood, which remains cold, echoing and exposed, before she is whisked off to Thornfield Hall. Here the pace slows, and we get to know place and character.
Sandy Welch has contrived a haunted atmosphere without resorting to the excesses of gothic. The wide moors, the grey dampness of Thornfield's stone and the darkness of uninhabited rooms are sparingly suggestive. And then there is the mysterious tower, home of Grace Poole, from which a red scarf seems to wave intermittently. Did I say scarf? Is there an edging of gold to that scarf? Is that, in fact, young Jane's sari flying from the window? Have Gilbert and Gubar [1] become so much an accepted textual interpretation as to be bbc canon? We shall see. At any rate, the pace here provides an interlude with interest but not drama, and so it seems for our heroine.
Until we meet Mr Rochester. Toby Stephens is certainly not an ugly Rochester, being at the very least striking, but certainly manages to pull off Rochester's uncivil brusqueness without being either coarse or coy. Some interesting additions, or perhaps extrapolations have been made to Rochester's character. For instance, from a single line in one chapter (Rochester call's Jane's attention to a moth) has sprung a study of biology. Is this a means of rounding Rochester's character - giving him something to do all day apart from honing his brooding skills - or is there a greater significance to the white male hobby of finding beauty in nature and pinning it down under a glass case?
These interpretations aside, what is truly very well done here is the depiction of the interaction (one could hardly call it a relationship) between Jane and Mr Rochester. To declare my bias, I adore their conversations as written by Charlotte Bronte, and Sandy Welch has not curtailed them for the screen. Suddenly we do not bemoan the hurried race through childhood, because this time is so precious. The awkward pauses, the conversations brief and long, as the two gradually, sometimes accidentally, reveal parts of themselves. Rochester is so gloriously rude! And Jane is so forthright back! Lizzie Bennett may have a sharp tongue, but she never defied a man with the power to cast her out into the street.
I am, all in all, agog to see the next episode, especially as when we left our heros, he was in the grip of mortal peril and completely oblivious to the fact. Methinks he must have been sampling the madeira rather heavily that evening. Seems this Rochester has plenty of brood in him after all.
[1] Sandra M Gilber and Susan Gubar The Madwoman in the attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth century literary imagination, YUP 1979 - a *must* read for eng lit geeks