First Impressions

I got to see a screening of Becoming Jane last night, and came home with very mixed emotions about it. I started out hopeful, thinking it might be a good, fun movie even if it wasn't quite Jane's life. And by the end, it had nearly won me over. But for most of the intervening hour and ten minutes, I was just uncomfortable. There was so much that didn't seem right either for Jane or for that era.

The movie feels to me like a blatant marketing attempt to get all those Jane Austen fans back into the theatre. They've taken elements of her stories--Mrs. Austen was more Mrs. Bennet than anything else, and Tom Lefroy is part Darcy (the bad part) and part Willoughby, and they've taken lines from the movies -- movies! -- which were not ever in the books to begin with. And they took much of the feel of the movie from the 2005 Focus Features Pride & Prejudice -- the one with Keira Knightley -- so there are plenty of barn animals.

Most of it just simply didn't ring true. Jane would never, ever have fallen for a guy like that. She valued character too much. She would never have run off with anyone. And as smart as they tried to make her, she was smarter than that. And was surrounded by a loving, intelligent family. Her father is one of my favorite characters in her life, but I really didn't like the portrayal of him. I liked Anna Maxwell Martin's Cassandra and I thought Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy did a good job with the script they were given ... I just really didn't like the script. (sigh.)

I would love to see a movie that more accurately tried to capture Jane's life. Perhaps the Miss Austen Regrets biopic that's coming from Masterpiece Theatre will be better. There are so many interesting stories in her life, it's a shame to make things up. But it takes an eye that can focus on the small things Jane wrote about, and make them compelling the way she did.