So even though I'm jetlagged and had a pint on a less-than-full stomach, I still can't resist posting on the Jane Austen biopic, which I saw tonight in London with Nicole. Be forewarned: I'm tired and this is rambling.
There are a large number of things wrong with this movie. First of all, it is just a bad movie. Period. It is poorly directed, poorly acted (with one exception), poorly scipted and very poorly plotted to the point where you think the movie is going to end at about five or six different points... and yet it continues. It is only two hours long, but it feels much longer, with no sense of a narrative arc or even act breaks.
Initially, the movie is merely boring, as Anne Hathaway's performance fails to make the viewer care about Austen at all. Hathaway's accent sounds affected and her line delivery occasionally too rushed, as if she thinks that saying something quickly automatically makes it clever. Hathaway is let down by a script that characterizes Austen as (as Nicole put it) a petulant teenager who does not know how to behave in society. There is too much Elizabeth Bennet in this portrayal; methinks a little wish fulfillment was at play on the screenwriters' parts.
But boredom is soon overtaken by incredulity, as the flirtation noted in Austen's letters escalates to a marriage proposal and then an attempted elopement. Austen is faced with not one, not two, but three — THREE! — suitors who all propose marriage at one point or another, and sometimes on more than one occasion. That is not an embarrassment of riches—it is just an embarrassment.
The movie pays little attention to Austen's development as a writer and when it does, it presents the situation as one in which Jane Austen had to have her heart broken in order to write great novels. In other words, she wrote well because of a man. The movie presents Austen with an intriguing dilemma between being a woman writer and being a wife, but does so by having Austen meet a highly popular contemporary (but older) novelist, Ann Radcliffe, who wrote Gothic novels which are nothing like Austen's novels, and which Austen herself satirized in Northanger Abbey. The Radcliffe reference makes little sense, and that's only assuming that the viewer gets the reference in the first place (most wouldn't).
The movie's basic premise, that Austen and Tom Lefroy could not marry for monetary reasons (she is penniless, he solely dependent on an older uncle for money and career advancement) though they loved each other dearly, tells us little about the author of Pride and Prejudice or Emma. Moreover, it turns the movie into a melodramatic tearjerker about star-crossed lovers, doing so most egregiously in the stupid epilogue in which the actors are aged 20 years. The epilogue is filled with ridiculous details—Austen is recognized as the author of Pride and Prejudice even though she published it anonymously, she gives a reading for a circle of society people in London, before which she accidentally runs into Tom Lefroy who is there with his eldest daughter, who is named Jane. Turns out the real Lefroy did name his eldest daughter Jane (as we learn at the movie's end, in which textual pieces of information are shown), but to take that fact as proof that he still loved Austen (assuming that he did in the first place) is to ignore the fact that 'Jane' was a not uncommon name in the late 18th century. And really, the entire epilogue was wholly unncessary.
Finally, some other points:
- The movie incorporates the existence of one of Austen's brothers, George, who was born with a developmental disability. In the movie, George is shown to be included in family fesitivies, and several characters, including Austen, use a type of sign language to communicate with him. In reality, a very young George Austen was boarded with another family who were paid to take care of him for the rest of his life, and the Austen family had little contact with him. There seems to be little point to the revisionist history of George Austen, except perhaps to redeem the Austen family, somehow, for something.
- The actress who plays Jane Austen's cousin Eliza de Feuillade bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Ehle in the Pride and Prejudice mini-series. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not.
- The incorporation of plot points and lines from Pride and Prejudice was superfluous. What kind of imagination did Austen have if she based every incident in her novels on real life?
- In one nocturnal scene, Jane Austen is inspired (by love, of course) to start writing Pride and Prejudice. She begins with the first chapter, and later in the montage we hear a passage from the middle of the novel. It is impossible for a person to type half of Pride and Prejudice in one night, much less write it out by quill pen.
- The movie's one redeeming factor is James McAvoy's performance as Tom Lefroy. McAvoy makes Lefroy a charming, likeable rogue who is also smart enough to talk about novels. Also, it doesn't hurt that McAvoy is a very attractive man.
- Director Julian Jarrods occasionally uses a shaky, hand-held camera, as if to give certain scenes more intimacy or emotional heft. Instead, the technique comes off as showy and self-indulgent. Moreover, when it's a period film, the illusion of realism is weaker because of the very showiness of the art direction and costume design.
And I guess that's more than long enough for now. Tomorrow: actual research.
Post time: 11:08 p.m., Wed. April 25 in London.
