who is jane austen?

It's not released in the U.S. until August, but I just saw Becoming Jane (2007) before going to Sainsbury's this afternoon. The movie theatre (or as they say here, "cinema") was empty. There was only one person manning the concessions area, and I had to ask him to tear my ticket so I could go into the auditorium. It was that dead.

And when I got inside the theatre, I was the only one there. For at least ten minutes, and then couples started to pour in: mother and daughter, teenage female friend and teenage female friend, and even middle-aged male friend and middle-aged male friend (or is that male lover and male lover?). I really was looking forward to having the theatre all to myself. Not only would I be watching it alone, I would be watching it alone, in a first-run movie theatre, a full five months before it comes out in the States. Pity. That would have been a great blog post.

Now, the film. I haven't even written about it yet in my film journal, so I hesitate to get really into it, but I will say a few things:

1.) Anne Hathaway's acting is better with an English accent.

2.) James McAvoy tried too hard to be Jane Austen's lover that he acted more like one of her CHARACTERS. If Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham and all those other men are inspired by McAvoy's Tom Lefroy, it seemed more like HE was inspired by THEM. I suppose this is the danger in making a biopic about an historical figure, a writer whose characters are so well-developed we think they're REAL because we've seen them in our minds as we read or on our TV screens as we watch actors portray them over and over. You can't wipe Mr. Firth and Mr. Grant and Mr. Northam and Mr. Hinds and Mr. Macfadyen (the best!) away, whether you're playing a new Jane Austen man or watching him. But having said all this, I think McAvoy is still one of the sexiest Austen men.

3.) I think they granted Jane a lot more "independence" than she probably had. What is this called? Retroactive gender role subversion?

4.) Very much inspired by Pride & Prejudice (2005) because it is grittier and more conscious of how to use the medium to create a style that captures a time and place. The other major filmic adaptations--Emma (1996), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and Pride and Prejudice (1995)--are very by the book, if you will. The Keira Knightley version, which I take over the Firth-Ehle one any day, represents the landscape (I'm not just talking Nature here) as one that is much more lived-in and beautiful. It's not stiff and prim and proper all over. The Dashwoods may be poor, but their cottage is so cute and charming, everyone wants a house just like it. How realistic!

5.) Hated the title, but I've thought about it some more. Yes, the film is about how she developed into a writer, how her experiences contributed to her worldview and to her work. I think it can also be that she is very becoming.

6.) Unfortunately, the epilogue overlapped with the last sequence of the film. And I think it would have been better without one because let's face it, anyone who sees it must already know a thing or two about Austen and/or her works. Unless, of course, you are one of my former roommates who LOVED Masterpiece Theatre and romances, but when I mentioned Pride & Prejudice (it was coming out while we were still living together) she didn't know who this Jane Austen person was that I was talking about.

Glad I saw it, and I recommend it because you are a Jane Austen fan. Wish I had iTV so I could see the Masterpiece Theatre-type adaptations of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion.