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Becoming Jane (2007)
Sep. 21st, 2010 08:42 pmSome bio-pics are good. On the other hand, this is one that I turned off after about 15 minutes, because I could see where it was going and I didn't want to go there.
The problem is, that if you're filming an Austen novel, the source is at least protected by a league of angry Janeites who will beat you to death with their parasols if you depart too far from the sacred text. But virtually nothing is known of Jane's dalliance with Tom Lefroy, so that gives the filmmakers a free hand to make crap up.
What they made up was a combination of dampeningly strict fidelity to Austen's novels mixed with a free licentiousness that would never have appeared in any Austen novel, just because they could. While the movie's London is squalid, its countryside is so Merchant Ivory that it grates in what's intended not as an Austen novel but as her life. I began to wish that the movie had been directed by Terry Gilliam, not a wish I often have.
Not only does the fidelity suggest that Austen had no imagination but copied strictly from life, it also contrives to imply that the same goes for the people who've made previous Austen films. When I saw that Julie Walters as Jane's mother and Maggie Smith as some noblewoman were not only playing Mrs Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh respectively, but that they were playing Mrs Bennett and Lady Catherine as portrayed by Alison Steadman and Barbara Leigh-Hunt in the 1995 "Colin Firth dives into a pond" BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, I switched off with alacrity.
The problem is, that if you're filming an Austen novel, the source is at least protected by a league of angry Janeites who will beat you to death with their parasols if you depart too far from the sacred text. But virtually nothing is known of Jane's dalliance with Tom Lefroy, so that gives the filmmakers a free hand to make crap up.
What they made up was a combination of dampeningly strict fidelity to Austen's novels mixed with a free licentiousness that would never have appeared in any Austen novel, just because they could. While the movie's London is squalid, its countryside is so Merchant Ivory that it grates in what's intended not as an Austen novel but as her life. I began to wish that the movie had been directed by Terry Gilliam, not a wish I often have.
Not only does the fidelity suggest that Austen had no imagination but copied strictly from life, it also contrives to imply that the same goes for the people who've made previous Austen films. When I saw that Julie Walters as Jane's mother and Maggie Smith as some noblewoman were not only playing Mrs Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh respectively, but that they were playing Mrs Bennett and Lady Catherine as portrayed by Alison Steadman and Barbara Leigh-Hunt in the 1995 "Colin Firth dives into a pond" BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, I switched off with alacrity.
