Film Review: Jane Eyre [dir. Cary Fukunaga; 2011]

For some reason, Britain and the USA currently seem incapable of producing many period dramas which successfully convey the illusion that their characters genuinely inhabit the time in which the story is set. The anachronisms appear in several different forms, notably unconvincing dialogue and ill-judged casting. Thankfully, this latest version of Jane Eyre avoids such traps and presents an engrossing, suitably melancholy take on Charlotte Bronte's creation. Mia Wasikowska excels as Jane, managing to convey both fragility and determination with laudable understatement. And the story's Gothic elements are never permitted to divert attention from the development of the central relationship. The grandiloquent music is sometimes at odds with the pared down visuals and there is the inevitable feeling that a great many nuances and details have been sacrificed in order to keep the film's length manageable, but I suspect Ms Bronte would essentially have been quite pleased with this particular effort.