Jane was meant to be plain and they cast this gorgeous elf-like actress??
God, if the people in charge of the movie saw her as plain, they have what I'd call impossibly high standards. Even without any makeup it's obvious she's beautiful.
Beauty is subjective. Wasikowska was made plain for this role, colorless, severe- looking, no figure to to speak of, seldom smiles, but described as elf-like by Rochester. To him she is attractive because she is innocent, almost childlike, humble but well-educated in spite of that, honest, kind, brave, and spirited, as well as ethical, unlike the affected snobbish, petty Blanche Ingraham.
The BBC made the novel into a series in 1983. Zelah Clarke who played Jane was also small and plain in the role. Neither actress could be described as ugly in reality, but then, Jane was described in the novel as plain, not ugly. A good actor can manage to appear different as the role requires. On the other hand, Timothy Dalton, who played the character of Rochester described in the novel as not being handsome, was drop-dead gorgeous. His interpretation made me almost fall in love with a character I dislike. Rotten Rochester would have ruined whichever of the two women he married, Blanche or Jane, because he was a bigamist, and he used trickery to discover what each woman's motives were. Upon discovering that Jane loves him, he cuts Blanche, whom he had managed to inform in a roundabout way, that his fortune was not as large as she thought, loose. That part was omitted from this version.
George C. Scott who played Rochester in the 1970 version was more authentic in the role, as a much older, world-weary , arrogant man who was also not conventionally handsome.
Wachikowska was very good casting. She's pretty in a non-glamorous non-obvious way, and Jane isn't supposed to be all that plain. Rochester repeatedly compares her to an elf or fairy, and was attracted to her the first time he saw her purely on looks, before he found out what a spirited and likeable personality she had. So she should be mildly to moderately physically attractive according to the book, rather than as plain as she describes herself, at least to those who like small pixie-like women like Wachikowska.
It's also entirely believable that a woman could look as pretty as Wachikowska, and think herself plain and ordinary. STraight women are ridiculously hard on themselves when it comes to looks, and, well. Other people are worse.
Wachiskowska is plain in a pretty way. Even the real life photographs of the actress show that even with makeup, she is just average looking.
During the process of becoming acquainted with Jane, after questioning her reasons for not thinking him handsome, Rochester remarks that "...though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you..." Obviously Rochester sees Jane as plain as she sees herself.
Elven or fairy-like does not necessarily mean attractive, unless one buys into the Tinkerbelle Disney image. Jane was plain and poor. What shone through were the luminous qualities in her intellect, and her smallness and innocence making her appear almost childlike.Childlike and trusting would suit Rochester considering the secret he is hiding. He is also attracted to her indomitable spirit, kindness, and strength and those are the qualities that make Rochester describe her after he has fallen in love and proposed to Jane as 'a beauty in my eyes...delicate and aerial." Perhaps because of his first encounter with her small form on a dark road at night, he persists in seeing her as fairy-like.
When Rochester is recounting to her the dissipation of his youthful life (omitting the inconvenient wife) and the remorse he feels for it in Chapter 14, Jane tells him the the cure for remorse is repentance, he replies that reformation, not repentance is the cure, but why should he consider it? Since happiness is denied to him, he has a right... to 'sweet fresh pleasure". That is what he is after with Jane, since she doesn't know he is already married. Had Jane not been available he would have sought the same with Blanche Ingraham. He needed a wife he could sleep with. It is hard to believe that Rochester could have hidden the existence of Bertha from the more worldly Blanche for long.
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This is Jane Eyre for the short attention span.
The film was not ruined for me by its difference from the book. The leads being equally plain were true to the book, but like most adaptations, in particular, the subtlety, a lot was left out.
The characters and relationships are not fully fleshed out.
Jane encounters cruelty, but there is also kindness from the maid Bessie in the Reed household and even at Lowood School from Helen Burns, a student also maltreated, and Miss Temple, the headmistress. Most of her time there is compressed.
She encounters love and acceptance again within the Rivers family, who it turns out, are her cousins. Her interactions with them, her work as a governess and Jane sharing her inheritance from John Eyre with them are reduced to almost nothing.
Rochester is a character I have disliked in both the book and every adaptation I have seen (except the Timothy Dalton version), and that only because he was so handsome that his interpretation made the character almost likeable.
Anyone with a feminist sensibility must dislike Rochester's rude treatment (In the way he refers and speaks to the motherly Mrs. Fairfax), his unkind treatment of little Adele, averring emphatically in her presence that he does not like children ,and his manipulation in different ways of Blanche Ingraham and Jane for his purposes. He constantly speaks condescendingly to Jane. He is a cad.
Rochester only becomes vulnerable and penitent when he is disabled by the fire started by the wife, Blanche, hidden in the attic. Fassbender plays the character much as he was written, but the ending in this version leaves out the repentance he expresses when Jane informs him that she has now a fortune of her own and will build a domicile nearby. Her sense of humor and flirtatiousness (a characteristic she has not displayed until now in the interest of keeping him at arm's distance until the wedding, wisely, as it turns out; a man who would ruin her by a bigamous marriage and when the marriage is discovered proposes that she become his mistress would have no qualms about taking advantage of her before the wedding) in addressing him is left out She just throws herself in his arms and that is the end.
He keeps Blanche on a string until he underhandedly learns (how is also omitted in the film) that his love (if it can be called that: it is more lust than anything else, or he would not place Jane in a position to be ruined by a sham marriage to a bigamist), for Jane is returned.
I could never see what Jane saw in Rochester. Poor innocent girl had only been exposed to two men, Rochester, the would-be bigamist, and St. John, the religious zealot who offered Jane a loveless marriage as his helpmeet in converting the 'heathens', each in his own way, selfish.
Too much of the development of Jane's and Rochester's relationship is omitted as is much of her time with St. John Rivers and his sisters.
The movie and the book are not separate forms. The movie grows out of the book. If Charlotte Bronte had not written the book there would be no movie.
In this, as in most cases, the book is better.
The movie and the book are not separate forms. The movie grows out of the book.
This is Jane Eyre for the short attention span.
Not patronizing, a simple statement of fact.
This film is too condensed. Too much background information was left out, and the ending was rushed.
Yes, all movies made from books of necessity have to omit parts, but this director stripped Jane, in particular of much of her personality,and the film devoid of her strength. She is and remains a poor little thing
There is a sense of Rochester's redemption at the end of the book and the other film versions I have seen. There is a light-hearted side to Jane even during the period after Rochester asks her to marry him, and at the end that is entirely missing from her in this film. It is unrelievedly grim. The origin of the film, the book, was not. Your comment about 'you book people' could also be interpreted as patronizing.
The book did not begin as a movie. Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Bronte long before there was such a thing as a movie, unless of course, this film was based on a graphic novel loosely based as this movie is, on the book.
I didn't say the book began as a movie, lmao.
Oblique much?
like I said...
Because nobody's listening. Because nobody cares.share
...and that is really the main thing to digest here.
...and I meant that without the book, there would not have been any movies based in it. The comparison of movies based on the books are inevitable. The particular film under discussion has lost the spirit of its source. Anyone who has seen it without reading the book will judge it on its own merits, but those who have read the book will have a further basis for critique as to what the director has done to the story and themes of the book. In the current case, this director has eviscerated the theme of the redemption of a selfish bitter man brought about by a combination of the fire that disabled and humbled him and Jane's love and almost miraculous return. A cynic would say, her almost too convenient return.
The director has taken a book that held hopeful themes and turned it into a moribund romance.
I am listening and care enough to respond unless you are just trolling
I think the producers did a good job of making Mia look decidedly plain in this movie. Here's proof: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229822/mediaviewer/rm1676130816
The story takes place in the pre-Victorian era and the book is decidedly anti-legalism. As such, all "commoner" women LOOKED plain as their beauty was strictly hidden or de-emphasized in society. Such is the case with Jane in the story (Mia).