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Jane Eyre  (PG)   120 mins                                Where can I see this film?

Director:  Cary Fukunaga        Screenplay:  Moira Buffini,        from the novel by Charlotte Brontë        Cinematography:  Adriano Goldman        Original music:  Dario Marianelli

10-year-old orphan Jane Eyre (Amelia Clarkson) is mistreated and then cast out of her childhood home by her cruel aunt (Sally Hawkins). Packed off to Lowood, a charity school run by the harsh and hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst (Simon McBurney), Jane encounters further unkind treatment but makes friends with Helen Burns (Freya Parks), a fellow pupil who impresses Jane with her spirituality and contentment. When Helen falls fatally ill, the loss devastates Jane, yet strengthens her resolve to stand up for herself and make just choices in life.  Her education completed, the teenage Jane (Mia Wasikowska) arrives at Thornfield to take up a post as governess. She is treated with kindness and respect by housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench), and is intrigued and attracted to her employer Rochester (Michael Fassbender), but his dark moods are troubling to her, as are strange goings-on in the house – especially the off-limits attic. Having uncovered the terrible secret which he had hoped to hide from her forever, she flees, finding a home with the Rivers family. When St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell) makes Jane a surprising proposal, she realizes that she must return to Thornfield – to secure her own future and finally, to conquer what haunts both her and Rochester.

"Reader, I liked it. This Jane Eyre, energetically directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga from a smart, trim script by Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe), is a splendid example of how to tackle the daunting duty of turning a beloved work of classic literature into a movie. Neither a radical updating nor a stiff exercise in middlebrow cultural respectability, Mr. Fukunaga’s film tells its venerable tale with lively vigor and an astute sense of emotional detail. Ms. Wasikowska is a perfect Jane for this film and its moment. She has already tackled another notable 19th-century literary heroine — Alice in Tim Burton’s weird renovation of Alice in Wonderland — and, perhaps more to the point, exemplified the everyday heroism of a young woman of independent temperament in The Kids Are All Right. Her Jane withstands strong crosswinds of feeling and the buffeting of unfair circumstances without self-pity, but also without saintly selflessness. And what about Rochester? It is not easy to dispel the shadow of Orson Welles, who nearly crushed Joan Fontaine in his overscaled embrace in the 1944 version, and Michael Fassbender, to his credit, does not try. His Rochester, greyhound lean, with a crooked, cynical smile set in an angular jaw, is very plausibly a thinking girl’s half-inappropriate crush object." 

New York Times

"The brilliantly evocative sound design deepens the sense of the unknown lurking in every scene, from wind through a chimney to thunder rumbling under a first kiss."  The Village Voice

"The look of this version may be the finest of the 27 Jane Eyre film and television re-tellings. Close-ups, beautifully framed, capture nuance and detail while muted milky tones give the windswept moors a compellingly desolate quality."  USA Today

For more information, and to see a trailer and stills, visit the official website at  www.focusfeatures.com/jane_eyre

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