I really, really enjoyed this. Like, a lot.
Which is weird, because by no means am I a huge fan of Anne Hathaway, and I know the accent she used in this won’t be the same one used in the upcoming One Day, but still-this has given me a teensy bit of hope that a beloved book won’t be unduly massacred.
Otherwise, I can’t find much at fault with Becoming Jane. There was this huge, glaring production error that my producer friend (heh-I’m fancy, huh?) said that they would’ve over looked because when projected in a cinema, something that far down the screen would be cut off, but I’m not quite convinced. When I start my directing career, no one’s getting that excuse, not even me. I’ll try and find a screen capture of it...
In other news, James McAvoy is succeeding in ruining me for other men. First in X-Men: First Class (well, actually-first in Narnia, but that sounds so...pervvy, doesn’t it? So we’ll ignore that), and now in Becoming Jane. How many men can read out the mating ritual of birds and make you want to, well, become a bird yourself? No really-try and count. There aren’t too many. (well...)
The typical Austen exploitation scene.
Anne Hathaway has convinced me that she can be British. Sort of.
I don’t know the actual story of Jane Austen’s (Hathaway) life and love life (or lack thereof, it seems), but I really did appreciate her journey in becoming a writer. She starts out being ever the pragmatist, making sure that good characters weren’t always rewarded in life, and bad characters weren’t always punished for their deeds. Because that’s life, and not many stories end up that way.
No, Jane wanted to be realistic and to live by her own pen. Which is dangerously dancing into the territory of the ‘what’s a woman from 2011 doing back in the 1800’s?’ trap. Because it’s too easy for us to all want our characters, especially one as famous for her strong female leads as Austen, to be strong and modern and defiant where they’re not expected to be. Well, not even not expected to be-they’re practically demanded to not be. Independent, I mean. Man, this paragraph really got away from me.
"WHY AM I SO AWKWARD?"
I digress-Jane was defiant enough when she needed to be, and filled her role as a dainty female when it applied to the situation. Clearly, when she was in a more comfortable setting with her family and her home and neighbors, she would be a bit more...quirky. Eccentric. And then once in the company of strangers well above her station, she would wilt a bit-become what society demanded.
And that’s what I liked. Jane Austen was by no means perfect, and in the semi-biographical story of her life, she wasn’t painted as such. And neither was her life. I feel pretty lucky not knowing much about Austen aside from the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice (thank god for Colin Firth), because when our heroine came up against a brick wall, I honestly had no idea how she was going to proceed. I wanted her to do the Right Thing, but I also wanted her to make sweet sweet nookie with Lefroy (McAvoy).
Why can’t we just have both in life? Why does it have to be one or the other?
And that’s exactly the journey we see Jane on in this period of her life.
In short, it’s a very sweet film, littered with references and “influences” to Jane Austen’s library of books. It was nice to watch as an Austen fan, and was...it was really sweet.
And as a writer myself, pretty relatable-although I’m still pretty gung-ho about making my characters suffer their guts out with no possibility of a happy ending. I’m a sucker for emotional gore.
"Zombies! And maybe some sea creatures next time..."
No comments:
Post a Comment