My review of the new movie adaptation of Jane Eyre is up at Taki's:
What we are left with seems rather like Jane Eyre if Jane Austen had written it. Austen, who died in 1817, was a witty, levelheaded product of the 18th century. She would have gotten along well with Ben Franklin. In contrast, the Brontës were the quintessence of the 19th century’s Romantic mood.
After the neo-Romanticism of the 1960s-70s, tastes have moved away from the Brontës and toward Austen. (The name “Emma,” Austen’s second-most-famous heroine, was merely the 448th most popular girl’s baby name in the 1970s. By 2003, it was the 2nd.) Thus, the new movie features much about the Austen-like topics of class and gender battles. Fassbender’s Mr. Rochester comes across more like a bigger, bolder version of Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy than like Wuthering Heights’ demonic Heathcliff. Yet Jane Eyre is so expansive and lively a source that this rendition remains authentic and entertaining.
Read the whole thing there.
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32 comments:
When I first went to live in Australia I soon realised that it had been a rich country for a very long time. So eventually I remarked to an Aussie friend that many people must get a decent inheritance. Oops! This question was clearly beyond the pale and was met with bluster and prevarication. Would the reaction have been the same in the USA?
I worked with Michael Fassbender on another movie and he's about to blow up into a huge movie star. Gracious and friendly as well as technically gifted and blessed with old time movie star good looks. The women on set just melted in his presence. He's playing young Magneto in the X-Men prequel this summer, then the lead in Ridley Scott's quasi-prequel to Alien.
Ugh! Chick flick!
No car chases. No kung fu. Little or no gun fire. No vengeance theme. No sports triumph.
How is this movie anything but "Sex in the City" in period costumes?
I tried to look up the attendance stats for these kind of movies. No luck. There would seem to be five classes of attendees: single men alone, groups of men, couples, groups of women, and single women alone.
I would like to see some demographic breakdowns of audience by film type. I suspect that this kind of offering attracts a lot of lonely and desperate women. We need to figure out a way for Whiskey to exploit this resource.
Albertosaurus
After the neo-Romanticism of the 1960s-70s, tastes have moved away from the Brontës and toward Austen. (The name “Emma,” Austen’s second-most-famous heroine, was merely the 448th most popular girl’s baby name in the 1970s. By 2003, it was the 2nd.)
I take it, Steve, you don't have a teenage daughter. (Lucky you!) Next time you step in a bookstore, pay attention to how much gothic-romantic vampire literature abounds.
OT Stoppard in the Name of Love.
http://uncensoredsimon.blogspot.com/2011/03/unstoppable-stoppard.html
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/4250
This one has the stuff on Stoppard.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/3090
Some notes: the actress who plays Jane Eyre is less than attractive.
Second the uber-drama stuff. There is no kidding a book called "Lonely Werewolf Girl," about a girl who is a fashionista, and a werewolf. Much angst over Alpha males ensues.
Steve, you probably know more about this than I do, but I was under the impression that the 19th century was the heyday of the illustrated novel.
"Some notes: the actress who plays Jane Eyre is less than attractive."
Read the review: Steve said exactly that. Geez.
"I suspect that this kind of offering attracts a lot of lonely and desperate women. We need to figure out a way for Whiskey to exploit this resource."
Albertasaurus, you owe me a new keyboard.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12766930
Remote control robots would sure come in handy.
Next time you step in a bookstore, pay attention to how much gothic-romantic vampire literature abounds.
Indeed. Edward Cullen, hero of the Twilight series, is famously based on Edward Rochester. The appeal of 19th-century romanticism lingers on, but for some reason it is no longer considered a topic for respectable literature. That's a shame because, when done well - as the Bronte sisters did, and Dickens, too, to some extent - it makes for great reading ... much more so than the aimless prattle found in most modern prestigious fiction.
This question was clearly beyond the pale and was met with bluster and prevarication. Would the reaction have been the same in the USA?
No, it would have been met with blank stares, shrugs or giggles. By reputation, Aussies are fanatically devoted to egalitarianism*, far more so than Americans. While a topic like this might cause consternation in the Antipodes, here it would simply cause confusion because nobody talks about such things.
(And, in fact, it is a rather gauche remark. Are you, by any chance, not of European origin? In Western culture, we don't generally remark about wealth and inheritance to total strangers.)
*To the point of seeming rather silly about it. No offense is intended to Australians, but do you really get in the FRONT seat of cabs to avoid making it look like the driver is a servant? If so ... well, as I said ... silly.
Inheritance was still central to English plots in early 20th century fiction. Wodehouse's charaters were drawn with a clear sense of who was gettin' what. E.M. Forster's Howards End also turns on the matter of a certain estate.
(I mention this because you jumped straight from 19th Century literature to something I did not know existed - 21st Century fiction.)
Gilbert Pinfold
So eventually I remarked to an Aussie friend that many people must get a decent inheritance.
My apologies, dearieme. I hadn't noticed earlier that you were talking to a friend.
In the US, reaction to your remark would depend on context. If you were (say) driving through an expensive neighborhood, speculating about how people could afford such houses, it would be normal to comment that some of them might have "family money" or "come from money," to use two popular euphemisms for inherited wealth.
If the remark came out of the blue, it would seem odd because (a) duh! Isn't this true in every rich nation to one degree or another? and (b) we don't talk about inherited wealth much any more, as Steve has pointed out.
However, in general, Americans are not in a state of denial about the existence of same, so your remark would not cause "bluster and prevarication." At most, it would be greeted with puzzled or slightly embarrassed silence.
Not many people inherit anything because there's so much debt in the things that don't depreciate, and depreciation in the ones that...well, do.
By the time you've paid off the encumbered stuff, the lawyers, the funeral director, an upper middle class estate ain't worth much.
"Aussies are fanatically devoted to egalitarianism*, far more so than Americans." Heh, that's why I asked. Mind you, it's really the appearance of egalitarianism that matters rather than the reality.
"do you really get in the FRONT seat of cabs..": well I do whenever I can - but just because I much prefer a front seat. I did it last time I was in the US too - I and the Sikh driver had an enjoyable chat about cricket. Did I commit a faux pas?
Bah, using the Brontes to stand for Romantic lit is like using My Chemical Romance to stand for rock music.
Romanticism was long done by 1847... like 1820 or 1830, and beginning around 1780. At least, the Romanticism you're referring to as what Jane Austen was reacting to.
Austen's personality may have been more pre-Romantic, but her works are all a product of the Romantic/Gothic era -- if the world had not been turned upside-down, she could not have written novels about trying to keeps things more in balance.
Every great figure needs some kind of worthy adversary. So the great works that stress moderation and conservatism can only be made during times of frenzy and debauchery. No one could write the Bible during the tame and stable world that we live in today, for instance.
People who like movies and Jane Austen tend to like Metropolitan, and that too was made during the twilight of the recent violence wave, very clearly inspired by Whit Stillman's coming of age during the late '60s through the early '80s.
Steve Wood writes:
*No offense is intended to Australians, but do you really get in the FRONT seat of cabs to avoid making it look like the driver is a servant? If so ... well, as I said ... silly."
Yes, I'm an Australian, and I'm afraid most of my compatriots do get in the front seats of cabs for that very reason. It comes as a shock to them when they go abroad and find that in several other countries it's literally impossible for a passenger to get in the front seat.
The other particularly obvious manifestation of Australian egalitarianism is the local mania not only for calling everyone by their given names (telemarketers are especially addicted to this habit), but for pretending that surnames LITERALLY DO NOT EXIST. Whereas in countries like Germany one only gets to call someone "Du" after a long acquaintanceship, here a similarly long acquaintanceship - indeed a passionate friendship - is usually required before one learns a person comes from a family called Smith or Jones or whatever. ("Darling ... oh darling ... oh that's wonderful darling ... may I call you Miss Bloggs?")
I once was employed full-time in a Sydney office for two solid years before discovering the amazing information that a secretary, with whom I and a dozen others shared an open-plan workplace, had a surname at all. Hitherto she was simply "Diana." Or, more often, "Di."
A number of years ago I saw a stage adaptation of Jane Eyre done by an artsy British theater troupe. It was quite good. For me the most memorable thing was that the actor playing Rochester made some daring choices: really big, eccentric acting, almost wild, but he pulled it off. Whenever he said "Jane" it sounded like "JHHAAAAAYYNNN!" almost like Doctor Smith from Lost in Space. I thought he'd never get away with it but he did.
btw, I've read Jane Eyre but never studied it in an academic context. Does anyone call much attention to the whole Eyre/Eire thing? The Bronte family was Irish. (surname was originally Brunty.)
blasphemy, Jane Eyre is nothing like Sex & The City.
Our heroine is actually likable, and not a dirty slut.
"Me Tarzan, you Jane Eyre."
Does anybody besides me wish there was a version where Mr. Rochester is played by Rochester from The Jack Benny Show?
"For me the most memorable thing was that the actor playing Rochester made some daring choices: really big, eccentric acting, almost wild, but he pulled it off. Whenever he said "Jane" it sounded like "JHHAAAAAYYNNN!" almost like Doctor Smith from Lost in Space."
I thought Dr. Smith's quintessential phrase was "You ninny."
You mean, maybe, William Shatner as Captain Kirk in Star Trek II, going,
KHAAAAAAAAAAANNNN?
Bill Shatner is the KING of big, loud, cheesy, over-the-top acting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnSnfiUI54
Oh, yeah, that's some fiiiiinnnne Roquefort, right there.
I worked with Michael Fassbender on another movie and he's about to blow up into a huge movie star. Gracious and friendly as well as technically gifted and blessed with old time movie star good looks. The women on set just melted in his presence. He's playing young Magneto in the X-Men prequel this summer, then the lead in Ridley Scott's quasi-prequel to Alien.
I, for one, am a little star struck that Michael would come here and leave comments. Dont be shy Mike, use your own name next time!
The Jane Eyre version from the BBC is my favorite adaptation. Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens was spectacular in that version. It would be hard topping that but I'm looking forward to watching the 2011 film nonetheless. :)
"How is this movie anything but 'Sex in the City' in period costumes?"
Anyone who could make such a statement knows nothing about "Jane Eyre" OR "Sex in the City". Have you ever watched two full episodes of "Sex in the City"? Have you ever held the novel "Jane Eyre" in your hands?
Read something besides Game and HBD blogs and you might discover interests you can share with girls.
The name “Emma"...was merely the 448th most popular girl’s baby name in the 1970s. By 2003, it was the 2nd.
That's in America. "Emma" was the #4 name in England and Wales in 1975, according to Leslie Dunkling of the Names Society. (It wasn't in the top 50 in 1965.)
I doubt that Miss Austen was the cause-- "Jane" dropped from #13 to #48 the same decade. No, the real credit must go to Diana Rigg!
American name fads often slavishly (colonially?) follow UK ones. A couple of Americans about Obama's age told me how shocked they were when their cousin named a girl "Emma"-- in 1973. It sounded so old. I once stunned a California girl in the early '90s when I guessed correctly, over the phone, that she was born in England. How? Because the average UK Emma was about 22, and the average US one more like 122. Now she's 2.
"Hayley" is another UK name that hit the charts then-- #32 in '75, #26 in '81-- only to show up here a half-generation later.
I knew a girl named Emma. Parents were libs (dad was a prof where we went to college, actually), but not abnormal. She'd be about...25 now.
"How is this movie anything but 'Sex in the City' in period costumes?"
How very -- unlearned -- of you. To keep such a story from being a "Perils of Pauline" you need a unique perspective and skill with language, and the ability to conceptualize from common cloth, a heroine of singular intelligence and imagination.
I assume you only know the story as poor girl meets rich man. Anyway, they NEVER get it right. The soul of that book is the opening salvo, her orphan childhood, the rich family that hated her, the concentration-camp like boarding school that killed the real Charlotte's sisters, and the 14 year old Christian existentialist, Helen Burns, whose detached advice to Jane still informs me even though I wasn't able to count on early death to release me from persecution and quandaries.
It is about unrelenting and hopeless isolation in society. The heroine is challenged to maintain values, under extreme duress, of integrity, honesty, independence, and -- chastity -- in situations that threaten her very existence, physically, mentally and morally. I don't think these dilemmas are first and foremost in the coke-addled brains of the s&c sexcapade crowd.
To keep such a story from being a "Perils of Pauline" you need a unique perspective and skill with language, and the ability to conceptualize from common cloth, a heroine of singular intelligence and imagination. The "gothic" genre in which the Brontes wrote was already glutted in the 1840s, but when the publisher received his copy of JE, he read it non-stop till he finished and knew he had a best-seller on his hands. It had been many times rejected by publishers and returned to Bronte, who merely crossed out the address and wrote a new one. Retelling old stories in way that makes them seem new and gripping, is a literary talent the very best have plied--Shakespear (or whoever wrote his plays) being the supreme master of that art.
Charlotte's greatest work was Villette and that has never been dramatized, which is a mystery--the story is far more interesting and complex than Jane Eyre, with more modernity, while we get tired version after version of Jane Eyre.
Sex in the City? May as well compare Seinfeld to Hamlet.
Please. Read a book carefully before you give an opinion. Please.
Lonely and desperate women... the one time I went to a movie and all four of us in the audience were middle-aged women the movie was 'The Scorpion King'.
"Bill Shatner is the KING of big, loud, cheesy, over-the-top acting."
Now WHAT...could you POSSIBLY...mean...by THAT?
"Lonely and desperate women... the one time I went to a movie and all four of us in the audience were middle-aged women the movie was 'The Scorpion King'."
Why didn't you just stay at home and watch Doctor Zhivago?
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