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Jane Eyre (1996)


This is the 4th movie version of Jane Eyre that I've watched this month. Zeffirelli does what most of the other screenwriters adapting this novel tend to do... skip quickly through the early chapters, get to the meat of the story, and then at the end, end quickly. 


I don't mind that the film skips most of Jane Eyre's childhood. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte should have skipped that part as well. Maybe she should have started the novel with Jane entering Rochester's life as governance.  The romance. That's what people are paying to see. 


William Hurt. I liked his performance as Rochester. Some reviewers suggested that he and Charlotte Gainsbourg didn't have any chemistry. I disagree. First, Rochester and Jane Eyre: Are they really supposed to have oodles of "real chemistry"? They from different social classes, and let's face it, they really have nothing in common. But when she saves him from the first fire, and he professes his debt to her, the camera closes in on their two faces, and I think the chemistry is there. At least I felt it. 


It does amuse me that Rochester is has the option to choose Elle McPherson (playing Blanche), but for whatever reason, he picks plain Jane. In what reality would that ever happen? 


The ending really does feel rushed. There's no drama between Jane and St. John. And she returns to Rochester before even knowing that Bertha is dead. Why has she changed her mind about being with Rochester? Is it simply that she cannot deny her love for him? When she returns, of course, she's inherited a fortune, and Rochester has become a stump of a man -- "a ruined tree," as he puts it. So I guess she comes back to Rochester because she finally feels "equal" to him, but it's still not exactly explained. 


My favorite line: Appreciate the shade as well as the light. It's something Jane says to Adele as she teaches her how to draw. I like how characters say things that also illustrate part of their personality. 


Final thought: Jane Eyre takes about 20 hours to read. Any movie version that goes 2 hours is finding some method of cutting 18 hours of material. Jane Eyre is a wordy Victorian novel, and so any movie is going to be shorter than the novel, just from being a "modern retelling," but I'm more interested than ever to view a couple of the miniseries versions just to see what a motion picture retelling can do with additional time. 


Rating: 3.5/5

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