“Jane Eyre” (2011)

According to IMDB there have been 19 versions of “Jane Eyre” made before the one that I saw last week.  Auteur House stocks three of them, including the 1943 film that made Orson Welles suddenly popular as a leading man two years after “Citizen Kane”.  Why make another?

An answer to this question is found in the new film’s very first frame.  An intriguing shot of a distressed, modestly attired 19th century woman fleeing a large estate gives way to a wordless montage in which she gets lost on the moors.  The decision to replace the novel’s linear narrative with a structure that cuts to the story’s chase immediately pays dividends.  Mia Wasikowska - an actress hitherto best know for playing Alice in Tim Burton’s overly busy “Alice in Wonderland” - is stunning in the title role, drawing us into the drama.

Wasikowska’s angular, expressive face does not convince as great beauty.  This is a good thing.  Better to register as rounded character than either outright victim or object of desire.  As Jane’s back-story eventually unfolds there’s plenty in it in which she is hard done by and abused yet the strength of both book and film is that she never becomes a conventional damsel-in-distress.  The deprivations of childhood - rejected by a nasty aunt after the early death of her parents, Jane is later persecuted at boarding school - strengthen an inner resolve than refuses to indulge self pity.

For some the little time spent on scenes of Jane’s childhood might be a flaw.   However, having the centrepiece of the movie Jane’s romance with her eventual employer, Edward Rochester, makes sense.  Michael Fassbender is a suitably brooding, enigmatic squire, his manner slowly softening as he falls for the none too obvious charms of the woman engaged  as his ward’s governess.   The mystery that surrounds Rochester takes a backseat to his relationship to Jane as the pair size one another up, speaking their feelings with reticence and an awareness of the power imbalance at play.

The way in which writer Moira Buffini and director Cary Fukunaga seamlessly segue between past and present demands a certain attention be paid as does the occasional scene in which Jane’s dreamy, subjective obsession with Rochester displaces objective reality.  These are not tricks for trick’s sake, rather an effective means of breathing new life into well worn material.  Even those who know Rochester’s secrets will be moved.