Won’t You Come See Me Plain Jane-William Hurt’s “Jane Eyre” (1996)-A Film Review    

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Jane Eyre, starring William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, based on the novel by Charlotte Bronte, 1996   

I have already gone through the genesis of how I came to review a now growing bunch of films based on that early 19^th century English author Jane Austen’s works having viewed a film titled The Jane Austen Book Club whose theme was based on the plots of her six major novels. I don’t have to now go into the details of the Jane Austen experience except to cite the obligatory mention that in my young adulthood back down in New Jersey reading Ms. Austen’s books or watching a film adaptation was strictly “girls” stuff. (Except of course an also mandatory mention if you were interested in a girl and she either wanted to rattle on and on about some old time romantic theme from those books or wanted you to take her to a movie which if you expected to get anywhere, and usually it was not anywhere with Austen devotees so don’t lie guys, you were obliged to sit through.) That same youthful standard (including exceptions to the “girls” book aversion) applies to the other big 19^th century English romantic novelist Charlotte Bronte of the infamous Bronte sisters.        

This is where for once the aging process actually produces a positive result. Sitting through this film adaptation of Ms. Bronte’s Jane Eyre starring William Hurt as the brisk Edward Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as why don’t you come see me plain Jane (Rochester’s continued plaintive plea toward her throughout the film) showed me why the Austen/Bronte combination was so strong not only as great literature but as something that would appeal to the hearts of all but the most hardened of young women. That I sat through it with my wife who was in suspense about the fate of her poor Jane added to the pleasure when despite every possible obstacle she gets her man, gets the slippery slope Rochester.        

This is the point where my old friend and fellow film critic here, Sam Lowell, before his recent retirement from the day to day film review work would begin to outline the plot and I have increasingly attempted to follow in his footsteps when reviewing older films. With this important caveat from him since he unlike myself (yet) has actually read the book (and Austen’s as well) so knew that the director here Franco Zeffirelli had eliminated much of the last part of the book when attempting to be true to the author’s plotline the thing became too long for the screen. Still the film adaptation is faithful to the key element of what drove the young girls to distraction and my wife recently plain Jane gets her man. 

Like I said not without a ton of work and a fistful of trials and tribulations along the way starting when Jane’s bitch aunt pawned her off on a hellish orphanage to break her willfulness. Somehow she survived that institutional experience (having actually taught there a couple of years as well as eight years as an inmate) and since she needed to poor and plain fend for herself in this wicked old world sought gainful employment in her chosen profession. That necessity led her to Thornhill Castle and the mysterious and secretive Rochester when she was hired as a governess for his charge/illegitimate daughter. From the beginning when they met by chance on the estate there was no question that the thoughtful and intelligent Jane whatever her plain looks (as opposed to the one Mayfair swell upper-class gold-digger on his trail) and the troubled but ultimately good-hearted and able Rochester were if not a match made in heaven (or “society” earth since as the household administrator said a landlord and governess don’t mesh in that world) then drawn together by some passion not related to looks, class, money or previous experiences.                

Still the road was tough since whatever attraction there was between them there was that little quirky secretive side of Rochester who was vague about his daughter’s mother and the way she was brought to him and more importantly as her world came crashing down on her on her wedding day that he had a mad hatter of a wife living up the penthouse (okay, okay not penthouse but maybe attic). There would be as Sam Lowell suggested more trials and tribulations after that fiasco but a romance novel as great literature or as a Harlequin dime store novel needs to in the end proclaim victory for love-and it does here as well.