224: Review - Jane Eyre

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



Jane Eyre
10th September 2011. Location: Cinema

The Good News: Conan is no longer the worst film I've seen this year.

The Bad News: In order for this adjustment to happen...

...I'm not familiar with Jane Eyre in any of its previous incarnations (be it book, television or film). As such, I went to see this with no baggage. All I require of a film is to keep me engaged/entertained for most of the time between the opening titles and the closing credits. Jane Eyre failed to do this, completely.

I'm assured by the good folks I went to the cinema with, that Jane Eyre is a massive book, with a complex, sprawling storyline. I'm also assured that in order to make this fit the two hour run-time, the makers have butchered it to the point where the narrative structure makes little-to-no sense to anyone who doesn't know what's meant to be happening anyway.

The relationships between the characters don't have enough screen time to really flourish, and major plot points are skipped over with no build-up and then almost forgotten about. The film opens with a series of flashbacks within a flashback, with almost nothing to differentiate the relative timelines (ie there's no fade-to-white etc, we just cut-scene and suddenly it's 10 years earlier). The main plot skims over a couple of years (apparently), then there's marriage proposals and tears, all out of bloody nowhere. Even in the film's thoroughly underwhelming final scenes, I felt like I didn't know the characters. I think they're meant to be conflicted, but they come off as badly written.

And yes, I know how that sounds given the classic status of the story. That's how poorly adapted it is. It's not that it's badly acted, but this film is broken.

Folks who know Jane Eyre weren't overly impressed, so what the hell am I supposed to make of it?



And that's me being generous. Hmmmf.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.