After reading the reviews for the new Jane Eyre, I'm still a little confused about something — the movie's tone. "Visceral," and pulsing with this "raw animal nature" according to Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek. A "subdued" and "austere" production, according to The New Yorker's David Denby. "Feverishly soulful," NPR's Ella Taylor, perhaps splitting the difference. It's strange how this inability to nail down tone afflicts only period movies: people were all over the place about the last Pride and Prejudice, too. Reading the reviews of something like Never Let Me Go, it was fairly easy to establish what the tone of the movie was — that of a flat, grey English morning — with reviewers split as to whether the numbness worked for them or not. But slip back a few centuries and nobody knows whether it's "visceral" "raw" and "feverish" or "subdued" and "austere" . Maybe they are catching a bifurcation that exists in the Victorian era — or more particularly in Jane Eyre itself, enacting a critical pantomime of the book's themes of pleasure and duty, with Denby as Rochester, damping passion's ardor with his high-minded New Yorkerish credentials, while Zacharek and Taylor get a little steamed beneath the blouson.
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Maybe they mean "feverish" because in the periods covered by period movies so many people died of fevers.
ReplyDeleteI'm laughing, Tom, because I had the same reaction. Early reviews had me convinced this picture was one hot number -- and then Denby's came along and threw me for a loop. "Feverishly soulful," though, is one of those meaningless concoctions that reminds me of Matt Groening's "How to be a Clever Film Critic" strip from Life in Hell, where the reader is invited to match adverbs and adjectives from adjoining columns ("richly absorbing," "provocatively haunting," and so on). It's brilliant. Or hilarious. Or brilliantly hilarious. Or....
ReplyDeleteLove this post. Especially because it had me imagining DD as Rochester. And thanks to Craig for the great link to the Groening strip. It made me laugh really hard.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Tom, what's interesting is that it's kinda both. It moves back and forth between calm (borderline drab) and feverish, occasionally employing a whirling hand-held camera that seems out-of-place in moments of high emotion. I think it's good, though--the screenwriter pares it down well--and Mia holds it together.
ReplyDeleteI need a list of violence and chapters and occasion, please
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