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Becoming
Jane
(2007)
Biopics of literary figures are nothing new. Occasionally
a film comes along which tells not only the story of a writer's
life, but depicts the creative process and inspiration in such
a way as to exceed the expectations and limitations of the
biopic genre. Becoming Jane tackles
Jane Austen's life, but lacks the spark of imagination needed
to distinguish it as anything more than a standard period love
story. That it's based on the life of one of the most
influential female authors in the history of the English language
comes merely as an afterthought, and for anyone with the desire
to get inside Miss Austen's head, it is anything but
satisfactory.
Like the protagonists in her novels, Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway)
possessed an intelligence far beyond the norm for a woman of
her time, and the film presents her much as she herself presented
Elizabeth Bennett or Elinor Dashwood—wanting more than
the Georgian society to which she belonged would allow, both
in terms of romantic satisfaction and independence.
Becoming
Jane attempts to show Jane's real-life inspiration for
her first (and arguably most famous) novel, Pride and Prejudice,
somewhat like Shakespeare in Love did for Romeo
and Juliet and Finding Neverland did for Peter
Pan, but fails to attain the same level of success. The
primary reason for this failure is that screenwriters Kevin
Hood and Sarah Williams and director Julian Jarrold create no true
parallel between Jane's life and the creation of Elizabeth
and Mr. Darcy. We see her writing and beginning to form
the beginnings of the story, but there's no correlation between
the events in her life and those in the novel.
When she is urged
by her mother and father (Julie Walters & James Cromwell) who
rest on the verge of the British gentry but are not nobility
themselves, to marry well and secure a stable future for herself,
Jane instead falls in love with and pursues a rebellious young
lawyer named Tom LeFroy. This may appear on the surface
to parallel the action in Pride and Prejudice, but the
love story is forced, inorganic and too sudden to be believed,
and all the subtlety of the time period is lost, instead replaced
with a clicheed storybook love unworthy of existing in the same
movie as Jane Austen. Since the film is based on mere speculation
based on only a few letters writen by Jane to her sister, it's
conceivible that Hood and Williams could have pushed creative
liscense to a level which would better demonstrate how Jane's
own life and experiences influenced the common themes in her
work.
Further lessening the impact of what is otherwise a technically
beautiful film, the chartacters and performances seem far too
anachronistic to be truly effective. From the opening scene
in which Reverend Austen slips beneath the bedcovers much to
Mrs. Austen's embarrassed delight to the frequent secret meetings
between single men and women throughout the film, the strict
social taboos of the era are thrown in merely as flavor instead
of playing the major role that they did not only historically,
but in Austen's own work. Furthermore, both Hathaway and
McEvoy, who I find to be generally among the best actors of their
generation, don't seem to know quite how to play their characters
and the chemistry between them is awkward, if existant at all.
I won't claim to be the world's greatest Jane Austen fan, and
would rather make it known that I tend to not enjoy her novels
very much personally. That said, I respect her both in
a literary and historical context and recognize the potential
to capitalize on both her character and her work which was not
reached in Becoming
Jane. For all intents and purposes, it's an enjoyable love
story, and a well crafted film, but to anyone who knows anything
about Austen, much less her avid fans, this film is a dull shadow
of what it could, and should, have been.
-Mark
Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2009 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Julian
Jarrold
Writer: Kevin
Hood, Sarah Williams
Starring: Anne
Hathaway, James McAvoy, Maggie Smith, James Cromwell, Julie Walters,
Joe Anderson
Distributor: Miramax
Pictures
Runtime: 120
min
Rating: PG
Release Date: August
10, 2007
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