Was Mia Wasikowska any good in your opinion?

maharani: Her performance was to me the single biggest detractor in the film. I was totally unfamiliar with Fassbender until I saw this, but the challenges of the time and script for MW were beyond her abilities. Bronte's Jane experiences moments of exquisite happiness, but you would never know it from this film. Had she had more range of expression, less timidity emotionally (more like the wonderful young Jane in this production)this may have been quite a triumph.

As to the comment by britlover on the begging scene: That whole scene suspends belief because it was preceded by so little interaction. Whether the actors handled it masterfully seems a moot point as it quite literally came out of nowhere. It was like the director said, OK, you've had a few scenes together and the proposal has occurred, Bertha revealed and NOW it is time to show the audience the strength of your emotions.

Very well put. I agree with your observations and especially the example you gave of after the “I’d do anything for you scene.” Mia’s body language and expression made me feel (or remember the feeling) of being a teenage girl experiencing that melting inside, weak-kneed sensation of new love. Another scene I loved was Mia sneaking a peek at Michael as he dressed after the fire (and who wouldn’t!). Again, it captures the sense of Jane’s growing sexual attraction to Rochester, as well as her youth and vulnerability.

The visual images tell much of the story. Jane and Edward’s engagement is portrayed against a backdrop of flowering cherry trees. Mia’s face transmits Jane’s radiant happiness and playfulness. Yet, the blossoms themselves presage what is to come (as much as the lightning struck chestnut under which Rochester proposes) as their symbolic meaning is the ephemeral nature of life.

I also think you see Jane’s growing maturity and self-possession through Mia's body language. In an interview, Fassbender remarked on the physical nature of Mia’s performance and attributed it to her background in dance.

I agree with your comments on Mia. The way she captures Jane's introspectiveness - that is what makes her portrayal the nearest to the book.

Subtle, yes, but wonderful

Exactly.


Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I was wondering if someone was going to invoke the "subtly introspective character" defense for Wasikowska's cold and tentative performance. This is not the Jane of the book and this is not the Jane that the story needs her to be for it to be a coherent narrative. Any production of Eyre will live and die with the actress who plays Jane, and her personality will naturally overshadow the whole thing. This movie is likewise cold and tentative, and as Mia runs through the character moments as they were dictated by the book instead of allowing them to flow from the screen naturally, so the movie does also with the plot.

The argument that she has a "fire and passion inside her, not outside" is only effective if you assume that apart from the way the movie works in its own universe. There is very little hint that we are allowed to see that this is the case. Mia plays her as a modern pop-psychological case-worker-defined product of an abusive home, with the self-doubt and self-abnegation of a girl who's been knocked down her entire life and has learned to hide her light under a bushel as a survival mechanism. No doubt many modern girls who have grown up feeling wronged somehow will find a kindred spirit in this interpretation. But this isn't the Jane that the story demands. There are key moments missing from the movie, such as how the schoolmaster is exposed for his cruelty, that would have got in the way of Mia's kicked-puppy portrayal. I can only assume that either the movie was edited around Mia's unfortunate stone face, showing only the moments that justify it, which is admirable if misguided, or else the director intended her to be this way from the beginning, which is sort of a revisionist Sofia-Coppola-style update of the story, without the same artistry or lingering emotional power. Either way, the chemistry between her and every other character is overwhelmed by aloofness, making their reactions to her more of a dramatic necessity rather than organically believable. Even then, if the chemistry between Jane and Rochester is palpable and transcendent, it would have saved the movie. Alas, no. And while even this might be forgivable in an eye-candy production, in this bleakly emotionless production, there is very little humanity to hold onto as a result.


The instrument has yet to be invented that can measure my indifference to that remark.

Gonna read the book.

Any adaptation that prompts that action is mission accomplished.

I must agree that her portrayal is of a certain likeness to that of the book, but I don't think it's necessarily all due to her acting capabilities.