Jane Eyre (2011)

A mousy governess who softens the heart of her employer soon discovers that he's hiding a terrible secret. [imdb]

Nominated for 1 Oscar:


Best Costume Design

5 minutes into this film all I could think of was: I bet this film is better than the book. This happens because I think the film has a good start, with beautiful landscape, artistic direction and a screenplay that seems to correct the story mistakes the book does. The other reason would be that I am not a big fan of the book, I think it has its good parts, but it's overall mediocre. 

To the screenplay's credit, it almost completely ignored the childhood scenes which are indeed the weakest in the book. To the screenplay's fault, it doesn't sell the love story enough, and that's why the 2nd half fails a bit inside the film: the characters are nicely developed, but I didn't feel the twisted love connection between Jane Eyre and Rochester. Had it looked more believable, it would've made the film better.

Mia is simple enough to be right for the part and she gives a good performance, though nothing groundbreaking. Judi Dench is memorable, while the best performance comes of course from Michael Fassbender - he does the best he can with the character, gets the dark side of Rochester, but I feel like he's not the right casting choice: not because he wasn't good, he really IS, but because Rochester was a well-built, but unattractive man in the book, and Fassbender is... well... quite gorgeous here. I didn't appreciate that.

My rating for the film: 7.5/10. The costume design is worthy of the nomination, also beautiful Cinematography.