Everyone was praising the structure that starts about 2/3 of the way through and flashes back, but shit, if you're going to do it, do it right; start with her arrival at Thornfield, which is what most of the audience is familiar with anyway, and flash back to Gateshead/Lowood and then the second half of the movie isn't as rushed.
Yes. The flashbacks contribute significantly to the compression: they're the high (or low) points as Jane remembers them, but that doesn't take care of all the dimension-making detail in between.
I really don't think my problems were with the acting or the atmosphere, just the script. The casting was very good, even allowing for most people's agreement that Fassbender is easy on the eyes. Scene by scene, I think much of the film is beautifully done, like Jane and Rochester's first conversation by the fire, as he begins with his usual self-amused irony, expecting his more Byronic remarks to go over her head, and finds the mind behind her unusual eyes intriguingly equal to his own—he's the one left off-balance, drawn out and then dismissed. That's the right kind of economy and tension. The sense of the uncanny which at any moment might become genuinely supernatural also worked for me, even if there was actually less Mrs. Rochester in the film than I expected. (The tearing up of the trousseau is an odd omission.) Just the film finished and I thought back on it and it seemed very vivid, tactile, a jewel-box of a Gothic adaptation, and nowhere near as deep as it should be.
There's a lot more to the book than just Thornfield, but I've never seen any adaptation yet that manages to balance it.
I don't remember how the 2006 version was structured, but I don't remember hating it. You had a much better sense of her connection with the Rivers siblings, for example, and the degrees by which her relationship with Rochester developed. Mrs. Fairfax is a stronger presence when played by Judi Dench, though.
no subject
Yes. The flashbacks contribute significantly to the compression: they're the high (or low) points as Jane remembers them, but that doesn't take care of all the dimension-making detail in between.
I really don't think my problems were with the acting or the atmosphere, just the script. The casting was very good, even allowing for most people's agreement that Fassbender is easy on the eyes. Scene by scene, I think much of the film is beautifully done, like Jane and Rochester's first conversation by the fire, as he begins with his usual self-amused irony, expecting his more Byronic remarks to go over her head, and finds the mind behind her unusual eyes intriguingly equal to his own—he's the one left off-balance, drawn out and then dismissed. That's the right kind of economy and tension. The sense of the uncanny which at any moment might become genuinely supernatural also worked for me, even if there was actually less Mrs. Rochester in the film than I expected. (The tearing up of the trousseau is an odd omission.) Just the film finished and I thought back on it and it seemed very vivid, tactile, a jewel-box of a Gothic adaptation, and nowhere near as deep as it should be.
There's a lot more to the book than just Thornfield, but I've never seen any adaptation yet that manages to balance it.
I don't remember how the 2006 version was structured, but I don't remember hating it. You had a much better sense of her connection with the Rivers siblings, for example, and the degrees by which her relationship with Rochester developed. Mrs. Fairfax is a stronger presence when played by Judi Dench, though.