Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Thu 29 Sep
Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre is the most recent adaptation in a long line of cinematic and televisual retellings of Charlotte Brontë’s classic. What, if anything, does another addition have to offer to the oeuvre of this over-produced canonical text? The answer is in its glowing cinematography and loyalty to the nature of its original source.
Afflicted by the twisted morality of her boarding school teachers, a duplicity that attempts to assuage some perceived wickedness within her, Jane (Mia Wasikowska), soon finds comfort in the form of Thornfield Hall, a gloomy mansion where her employment as Governess introduces her to Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender).
As Fukunaga teams up with Adriano Goldman, the pair’s background in cinematography couldn’t be clearer; in the peering overhead shots and elegant tracking sequences throughout the film, an uneasy voyeurism stalks the characters. Brontë’s text features so many overlapping and interconnecting themes: the sexual politics and duelling classism between Jane and Rochester, the immorality of poverty, the importance of social hierarchy, and we won’t even go into feminism and oppression. There’s a lot to handle. So Fukunaga grants those motifs the freedom to blend and snake their way throughout the plot, only gazing at and admiring their beauty and construction. The framework is already there for him, and so instead, he crafts the environment for them to flourish in; through flickering fires which light the faces of Brontë’s characters, to the open moorlands which so heavily epitomise the vacuum between social statuses, Fukunaga has as much respect for the roles as Wasikowska and Fassbender demonstrate in their humble performances.
Really, this is what the film leads with: a humble dignity, which instead of being confused with undercooked passion, is an affirmation of the text’s place amongst such highly regarded, classical works of literature. Moira Buffini’s lyrical script houses the seething melodrama with such expert detail, its occasional lapse in bite is forgivable. It’s a lavishly tenacious screenplay, which only mirrors the playful coyness of its protagonists. One of the reasons Brontë’s text is so heavily adapted is because of how startlingly relevant it appears, and will probably always remain: Fukunaga knows this. What’s left behind the burgeoning relationships and perilous back-stories are rhythmically orchestrated metaphors, neatly accompanied by the delicacy of Dario Marianelli’s emotive soundtrack.