Check Out the Trailer

Having recently seen Franco Zeffirelli’s 1996 version of the Charlotte Bronte tale, it’s hard not to compare the two. It’s easy though to be impressed with what director Cary Fukunaga has accomplished with this new version of the much-adapted romance. He brings new tension and artistry.

The film begins with an extremely effective foreshadowing. We see the older Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska, ALICE IN WONDERLAND) fleeing from Thornfield Hall, across a rocky field. She is exhausted. Seeing a house distant she makes her way there and collapses on the doorstep where she is saved by preacher St John Rivers (Jamie Bell, BILLY ELLIOTT). He and his sisters nurse her back to health and find her employment at a charity school. She says she is content because for the first time in her life, she is not subordinate to anyone.

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Check Out the Trailer

Franco Zeffirelli’s rendition of Charlotte Bronte’s gothic romance seems quaint now 15 years after its release. The director known for his lavish period dramas, especially his classic 1968 version of ROMEO AND JULIET, gives this story a quality “Masterpiece Theater” approach.

Young Jane Eyre (Anna Paquin, THE PIANO) is an orphan whose aunt Mrs. Reed (Fiona Shaw, HARRY POTTER) sends her off to the oppressive religious boarding school, run by the sadists Mr. Brocklehurst (John Wood, WARGAMES) and Miss Scatcherd (Geraldine Chaplin, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS). It’s a very Dickensian start to her life. After suffering under the school’s rule, she (played as a young woman by Charlotte Gainsbourg (ANTI-CHRIST)) is hired on as a governess at the estate of Edward Rochester (William Hurt, ACCIDENTIAL TOURIST) where she is to care for his French ward Adele (Josephine Serre). The house is run by the pleasant Mrs. Fairfax (Joan Plowright, ENCHANTED APRIL), who describes her master as a man who is hard to read. He is an unhappy man, she says.

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