Fresh Eyre

Hot young director Cary Fukunaga recasts Jane Eyre, getting back to what really makes the romantic masterpiece live and breathe.

Like all potentially great directors, Cary Fukunaga has the nerve of God. Two years ago, the then 31-year-old New York University film-school grad made a terrific feature debut with his Spanish-­language drama Sin Nombre, about the lethal intertwining of a violent young Mexican gang and Central American families already risking their lives to reach the U.S. by riding the tops of northbound trains. After the movie won him the Best Director prize at Sundance, Fukunaga looked locked and loaded to become Holly­wood's latest big-shot action director. ­

Instead, he took a meeting with the BBC and chose to make a new, improved screen version of Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel inspired a genre of ­bodice rippers that shows no signs of letting up; with the eventful romance between a quiet young governess and her stormy ­upper-class ­employer, who keeps a madwoman locked in the attic of his stately home, at the core of the story, the 21 previous film and TV versions have mostly been bodice-ripping too. How could they not? Better than anyone who came before, Fuku­naga shows us how—by making a movie as fresh and ­almost as smart as Brontë's enduringly ­brilliant novel. He gets help from an A-list Brit supporting cast that includes Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins, Simon McBurney, and Imogen Poots. But it's his leads—Mia Wasikowska as Jane and ­Michael Fassbender as Edward Rochester—whose presence instantly signals that this is not your grandma's cozy gothic.

Narrated by its heroine, Jane Eyre is a big novel, more than 500 pages full of incident, beginning with the orphaned Jane's painful childhood, first in the disdainful clutches of a rich aunt (Hawkins) and her bullying ­children, and later at Lowood, a Spartan charity school where Jane loses her best friend to consumption. But she rises to ­become a teacher there, making it possible to seek work as a governess in the outside world. The movie opens at a provocative moment deep into the story, when she's ­literally running away from Rochester, his little ward, Adele, and his grand, gloomy Thornfield Hall, eventually finding refuge with a young missionary, St. John Rivers (Bell), and his sisters (St. John will prove to be Rochester's rival for Jane's affections). Fukunaga is a cinematographer turned direc­tor, and the thoughtful way he cuts back and forth in time keeps the story ­moving even while augmenting it and ­further piquing our curiosity. But what emerges most vividly is Jane herself. It's her story, after all, but on-screen she has ­seldom been allowed to fully claim it—her sym­pathetic goody-two-shoes character over­shadowed by that dubious object of ­desire, the far more vivid Rochester, smoldering away on the battlements.

That template was set by one of Fuku­naga's favorite versions, Hollywood's 1943 Jane Eyre, with Orson Welles and an unsuitably beautiful Joan ­Fontaine in handsome if melodramatic black-and-white. "You wouldn't make a film like that anymore," Fukunaga told an interviewer. ­Actually, there's still a lucrative female TV audience for just that sort of thing, but Fukunaga has broken the mold of the towering, glowering all-powerful male and the meek but lovable little woman sitting wistfully in the ­corner while he dances with someone richer and better-looking.

Much in demand at 33, following his brilliant turn in Inglourious Basterds, Fassbender is showing signs of limitless talent, but he banks his fires here, letting anger and bitterness flicker just beneath Rochester's surface. He's also of medium size, nicely made but unlikely to tower over anyone. So instead of a ­satanically tormented hero, we see a flawed, unhappy man trapped by a life-blighting circum­stance.

That's what Brontë saw too. It being the Victorian era, she had to sign her novel with a man's name, Currer Bell, but she was a bold spirit nonetheless, and for all her demure exterior, so is Wasikowska's Jane. Wasikowska, now 21, drew notice for her work in Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right. But this is a breakthrough. She owns this part—it's her Jane, and Brontë's as well. For ­starters, she's ­reserved rather than meek, and she speaks her mind as needed. She also solves the problem of the ­heroine's famous lack of beauty, which defies Victorian and movie conventions alike. With Wasi­kowska seemingly devoid of makeup, cinematographer Adriano Goldman's camera finds the plain yet ­luminous features that make her the beacon of light and moral courage that Rochester craves. Better yet, she ­perfectly dispenses the soft-spoken but mischievous wit that makes Jane someone we want to know as much as he does. Calling himself "a stickler for raw authenticity," Fuku­naga has said he spent a lot of time rereading the book, trying to feel what Brontë felt as she wrote it. Like the original, his Jane Eyre is a love story, as fiercely intelligent as it is passionate. He uncovers what the ­bodice rippers miss: that these lovers are equals and, as such, equally deeply felt aspects of their creator.

This Is A Developing Story

Don't Miss