Film Review: "Becoming Jane"
Mar. 17th, 2008 12:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flowrs4opheliaI started writing this review after first seeing this movie in theatres and finally finished it once I'd seen it again after its release on video. I win at procrastination.
Becoming Jane is no masterpiece of a film, but nonetheless I've found it to be one of the most underrated (or maybe just "over-trashed") ones of last year, mostly because of viewers who were expecting it to be something it's not. Yes, it is about Jane Austen, but it is not a biography. As the title suggests, it takes place only in an early time of her life when she was not even a published author yet. No, the real Jane Austen did not have movie-star beauty like Anna Hathaway and of course there is not anything more than the smallest shreds of evidence in her letters that she and Thomas Lefroy had any kind of an affair like what is portrayed in this movie. It might be easy to trash just for these reasons, with the idea that it was obviously made just to cash in on the success of Austen adaptations like the recent Pride and Prejudice by trying to make a similar hit romance out of the writer's own life.
But strangely enough, I was surprised to see that what is actually so poignant and enjoyable about this film is not the ways it is like her beloved classics but the ways it is not. It illuminates a sad truth about how the author gave her characters the kind of blissful and perfect happy endings that she herself and many other women like her could never have. Characters like Elizabeth Bennett were ahead of their time with their independent thinking, something most women could not afford to be, and it is sometimes only luck and deux ex machina that allow these characters to end up in happy marriages anyway.
This film offers no such easy resolution. Instead, it shows the way things really were in that time, and the way Austen might have written them to be if it were publishable. Just because it was unthinkably scandalous for an unmarried couple to go anywhere alone together or kiss doesn't mean it didn't happen. There's an amusing scene with two characters who are secretly involved properly bowing to each other and saying goodnight as it seems they are about to part ways in a hallway, only for the man to proceed to follow her into her bedroom.
The story revolves mostly around Jane becoming acquainted with a lawyer named Tom Lefroy who comes from London to stay with relatives where Jane lives (not at all by his choice). Tom does not have money nor much of a respectable reputation, while Jane stands to lose these things or her chance to have them. Jane is from the country and he from the city. At first it is impossible for them to understand one another. But even as she still apparently despises him she is intrigued by him; friends and relatives warn her about how he could never be a good husband before she has ever even begun to imagine such a thing, and their comments about how it is wrong to associate with him too much seem to have the opposite of their intended effect. Even as they disagree about things like what makes a good novel and if someone with a woman's limited experience can write a good novel, Tom cannot miss the fact that he is all the while enjoying intellectual discussions with a woman. Jane initially sees him as everything she has always been taught is immoral, but soon it seems to become clear to both of them that they might be exactly the same if society allowed a woman to do everything a man can without losing everything.
Meanwhile, there are other situations in play in which we can see the inspiration for several of the more minor characters in Austen's books. Jane has an offer of marriage to consider from the wealthy Mr. Wisley, who is stuffy and unsociable but shows himself to be something she didn't expect by the end. Maggie Smith is tons of fun in her role as his extremely condescending and mean-spirited aunt Lady Gresham.
I have always thought Anne Hathaway's supporting performance in Brokeback Mountain was just as impressive as Michelle Williams' more honored one, and I could have expected this role to be the one that would finally get her more attention. She is certainly not bad, but she never quite shines. Perhaps she simply dims in comparison to James McAvoy, the only actor I can imagine being able to pull off a character like Tom Lefroy so easily; he is never a completely careless "bad boy" without a soul, nor does he seem to just turn into a wimp at his moments of vulnerability. The way he plays Tom doesn't change throughout the film, but we can still see how the way Jane sees him would.
Besides having some comedic lines that somehow feel a little too forced to get the intended laughs, the film succeeds in being what it was meant to be: not truth and history, but still a reflection of truth that feels very true to the spirit of Jane Austen's stories. It not only shows what things were like in her time and how sadly unrealistic her "happily ever after" endings might have been, but is true to what life is like all the time. The conflict between one's other responsibilities and their own possibly impractical dreams or desires, whether they want to be a dancer or marry someone they love, is something even Franz Kafka and Tennessee Williams seemed to struggle with for much of their lives. Even if I'm not a woman of the 1700s I can certainly relate to poor Jane, and in the scene that her father warns her, "Nothing destroys spirit like poverty," it is just about the most terrifying statement I've ever heard.
Becoming Jane is no masterpiece of a film, but nonetheless I've found it to be one of the most underrated (or maybe just "over-trashed") ones of last year, mostly because of viewers who were expecting it to be something it's not. Yes, it is about Jane Austen, but it is not a biography. As the title suggests, it takes place only in an early time of her life when she was not even a published author yet. No, the real Jane Austen did not have movie-star beauty like Anna Hathaway and of course there is not anything more than the smallest shreds of evidence in her letters that she and Thomas Lefroy had any kind of an affair like what is portrayed in this movie. It might be easy to trash just for these reasons, with the idea that it was obviously made just to cash in on the success of Austen adaptations like the recent Pride and Prejudice by trying to make a similar hit romance out of the writer's own life.
But strangely enough, I was surprised to see that what is actually so poignant and enjoyable about this film is not the ways it is like her beloved classics but the ways it is not. It illuminates a sad truth about how the author gave her characters the kind of blissful and perfect happy endings that she herself and many other women like her could never have. Characters like Elizabeth Bennett were ahead of their time with their independent thinking, something most women could not afford to be, and it is sometimes only luck and deux ex machina that allow these characters to end up in happy marriages anyway.
This film offers no such easy resolution. Instead, it shows the way things really were in that time, and the way Austen might have written them to be if it were publishable. Just because it was unthinkably scandalous for an unmarried couple to go anywhere alone together or kiss doesn't mean it didn't happen. There's an amusing scene with two characters who are secretly involved properly bowing to each other and saying goodnight as it seems they are about to part ways in a hallway, only for the man to proceed to follow her into her bedroom.
The story revolves mostly around Jane becoming acquainted with a lawyer named Tom Lefroy who comes from London to stay with relatives where Jane lives (not at all by his choice). Tom does not have money nor much of a respectable reputation, while Jane stands to lose these things or her chance to have them. Jane is from the country and he from the city. At first it is impossible for them to understand one another. But even as she still apparently despises him she is intrigued by him; friends and relatives warn her about how he could never be a good husband before she has ever even begun to imagine such a thing, and their comments about how it is wrong to associate with him too much seem to have the opposite of their intended effect. Even as they disagree about things like what makes a good novel and if someone with a woman's limited experience can write a good novel, Tom cannot miss the fact that he is all the while enjoying intellectual discussions with a woman. Jane initially sees him as everything she has always been taught is immoral, but soon it seems to become clear to both of them that they might be exactly the same if society allowed a woman to do everything a man can without losing everything.
Meanwhile, there are other situations in play in which we can see the inspiration for several of the more minor characters in Austen's books. Jane has an offer of marriage to consider from the wealthy Mr. Wisley, who is stuffy and unsociable but shows himself to be something she didn't expect by the end. Maggie Smith is tons of fun in her role as his extremely condescending and mean-spirited aunt Lady Gresham.
I have always thought Anne Hathaway's supporting performance in Brokeback Mountain was just as impressive as Michelle Williams' more honored one, and I could have expected this role to be the one that would finally get her more attention. She is certainly not bad, but she never quite shines. Perhaps she simply dims in comparison to James McAvoy, the only actor I can imagine being able to pull off a character like Tom Lefroy so easily; he is never a completely careless "bad boy" without a soul, nor does he seem to just turn into a wimp at his moments of vulnerability. The way he plays Tom doesn't change throughout the film, but we can still see how the way Jane sees him would.
Besides having some comedic lines that somehow feel a little too forced to get the intended laughs, the film succeeds in being what it was meant to be: not truth and history, but still a reflection of truth that feels very true to the spirit of Jane Austen's stories. It not only shows what things were like in her time and how sadly unrealistic her "happily ever after" endings might have been, but is true to what life is like all the time. The conflict between one's other responsibilities and their own possibly impractical dreams or desires, whether they want to be a dancer or marry someone they love, is something even Franz Kafka and Tennessee Williams seemed to struggle with for much of their lives. Even if I'm not a woman of the 1700s I can certainly relate to poor Jane, and in the scene that her father warns her, "Nothing destroys spirit like poverty," it is just about the most terrifying statement I've ever heard.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 08:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 01:35 am (UTC)You might be alone in thinking Anne Hathaway has "movie star beauty." I can see her as unconventionally attractive, but I've never heard anyone describe her as a knockout.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 01:43 am (UTC)