Jane Eyre - Messed Up

Sorry, but that's my reaction to the William Hurt film version.

To turn a book into a film - or a miniseries, opera, or play - there must always be cuts: other forms of story-telling just don't have the leisure or elbow-room a novel has.  Sometimes a few additions to the book are needed to explain things to an audience.  But there's seldom justification to simply up and change things.

This version of Jane Eyre changes waaaay too much.

Like the lightning blasted tree in the story, the novel Jane Eyre has a huge flaw, a ridiculous coincidence, that clefts the middle of the plot: when the destitute Jane just stumbles across her cousins.  It's too pat to be allowed in a modern novel.  Since the book was published in1847 (when coincidence was okay), readers have shrugged and kept reading.

But this film version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, presumes to correct this flaw.  So Jane's physical suffering evaporates with her starving trek across the moor; her independence dwindles as her school mistress job vanishes; the cousins become cyphers and the family home Jane finds with them is snatched away; and the male cousin, St. John, loses his tortured grandeur (and alternate love-interest status), reduced to moral beggary...

Upon that splintered-oak of a plot "flaw" hangs half the novel.

Zeffirelli made the crippling mistake of trying to substitute logic for emotion... in a masterpiece based on emotion!  I guess it proves you have to understand the heart of an artwork - its basic impulse - and, whatever else you do, not mess with that.

Public domain image.

(Earlier posts on Jane Eyre.)

Jane Eyre

I just finished listening to Jane Eyre on CD in the car (coming home at midnight after a run-thru).

I've loved the story, of course, ever since I first read it as a teenager... Jane Eyre is exactly the sort of novel a teenage girl can moon over properly and a good many grown women retain their affection for the book.  (Hence the reappearance of film versions every generation since film was invented.  The latest here.)  But though I've read it quite a few times, I'd never had it read to me before.

Hearing rather than reading the book made me realize how elaborate its language is.  Not unwieldy nor purple - quite - but ornate, rich, teetering on the border of over-the-top.  For instance, Jane doesn't just not understand the person she's talking to - no - she was, "sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration."  And house guests don't just open bedroom doors and stick their heads out to see what the fuss is: "door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out."  There's an elaboration and a leisure to the writing that carbon-dates it as from another time.  Interlocutor? That's just big vocabulary.  Unclosed?  That's kinda silly.


But the story seems to be proving itself timeless enough.
             

Film Field Trip # 3ish

Jane Eyre - really enjoyed it.  A good version I thought that, though it condensed and simplified etc. as a film always does which always irritates a book-lover, nevertheless caught the passionate mood of the story perfectly.  Both this Mr. Rochester and especially this Jane Eyre were very, very good.  Worth seeing!

But I hadn't quite realized until I saw the audience how much of a chick flick Jane's story is... there were a few men in the auditorium, but many of them had a slightly "dragged" look.  Which was short-sighted of them.  I remember one critic, years ago, talking about Freud's question (asked by many other men before and since), "What do women want?"  and pointing out that Jane Eyre gives one answer: freedom of mind, heart, and action; and a loving family; worthwhile work (however humble) that uses abilities and talents, is respected, and has satisfying results; and a little money to make that work not wage-slavery; and beyond that, a soul mate to marry as an equal!  Or... to tell truth... maybe to have a little bit the upper hand there.

This book is emotional, gothic, almost surrealist at moments.  It's an orphan-makes-good story reminiscent of Harry Potter (but with a much tougher school), a combo of Oliver Twist and Cinderella.  In it's day it was also a sort of geometry proof of the theorem that: "Woman has a soul and isn't afraid to use it!"

A very controversial book.

Film Fest Theme...

...this week seems to be dumb "guy" movies - I need a (polite) term equivalent to "Chick Flick."  Last night's prize film was The A Team - the new version.  Now, any movie with Liam Neeson in it has a few virtues, and this one also had lots of stuff blowing up, plus, as someone pointed out, it will act as a balance to Jane Eyre which comes out next week and will be seen immediately!