Becoming Jane (2007)

Best movie of this year hands down!

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

As ever the old adage holds true. No matter how good the cast a film will fail if the script is weak. This was. Despite a stellar cast (and one of the great Ian Richardson's last appearances). This was not so much a biopic as a drama constructed from various scenes from Austen's novels. Yes, the lady wrote from life, from her own intimate world but she observed acutely. Of course her characters are based on people she met, knew, or watched but to flagrantly take scenes from her novels and imply these were events in her life takes things just too far.And how on earth could they shoot a film about Austen entirely in Ireland? Where was Bath? Austen lived there for five years and her father is buried there!

I tried very hard to like this film. I thought director Jarrold's choice of locations excellent; the atmosphere of mid- to late eighteenth century England was lovingly recreated through use of light and shade; the performances on the whole were well drawn. As the action unfolded, however, I felt that BECOMING JANE lacked originality; it seemed to include every single cliché associated with the heritage film. There were scenes of coaches arriving and departing from historic buildings; panning shots of oh-so-verdant landscapes accompanied by soft violin music; Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) took a walk in the forest accompanied by the Darcy-figure Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy); not to mention the frequent ball-scenes in which Jane flirted with Lefroy and rejected the unwelcome attentions of Wisley (Laurence Fox). Not to mention the presence of Maggie Smith and Julie Walters, part of the Great Pool of British Acting Talent, in the supporting cast. With all this visual display at his disposal, it's not surprising that Jarrold's narrative unfolds in a slow, leisurely manner. In the canon of Austen-related adaptations, BECOMING JANE is a minor entry.

Events from the life of the author Jane Austen inspired this romantic historical drama,Becoming Jane which speculates of a romance that may have had a significant impact on her life and work. It depicts the early life of English author Jane Austen and her posited relationship with Thomas Langlois Lefroy. Anne Hathaway stars as the titular character,Jane Austen while her romantic interest is played by James McAvoy. Also appearing in the film are Julie Walters, James Cromwell, and Maggie Smith.It was directed by Julian Jarrold.Twenty-year-old Jane Austen is the daughter of Rev. Austen, a minister who looks after a flock in a small rural community in Southern England with his wife. While her older sister, Cassandra, is engaged to be married, Jane resists her family's efforts to match her up with Mr. Wisley, the wealthy but dull nephew of Lady Gresham, a minor member of the British nobility. Jane has the heart of an artist, and hopes to distinguish herself as a musician or a writer, though her parents don't think much of her prospects. When Jane meets Tom Lefroy, a young man her own age, she's intrigued; while he scoffs at her writing style, he clearly sees she has talent, and is eager for her to learn more of the larger world by exposing her to more daring literature and modern pastimes such as boxing. As Tom begins to court Jane, she finds herself increasingly attracted to this poor but keenly intelligent man, though she soon realizes her own ideas about love and marriage are sometimes at odds with the conventions of the society in which she lives.Anne Hathaway gives a radiant performance as a young, love-struck Jane Austen in the witty and engaging movie.With a spot-on accent and altogether charming performance, she makes another convincing statement that she has grown, as a woman and as an actress.And with her performance,it is an enchanting and imaginative film you'll fall head over heels for.

Having grown up near Steventon, I have to confess I'm not familiar with the mountainous terrain that appears in parts of this film. Luckily I'm sensible enough to recognise that this isn't attempting to be a wholly accurate biographical work. It uses elements of Janes life, people, places etc. in a fairly loose way to construct a plausible work of fiction about how things might have been. Ultimately, unless you were expecting a detailed biographical work, the success of this film isn't about how accurate or inaccurate the depiction, its how well it works as a piece of drama. In my view it worked very well. So well in fact it's difficult to pick out the flaws. It was in the construction of this films Jane, that I think things didn't quite work. The critical factor in determining her future was where this would leave her and her parents financially marrying Lefroy or alternatively marrying Wisley. For some reason this critical and monumental part of the story failed to carry anything like the same sort of weight it might do in an Austen work. It almost got there in several places - the scene where she screams something about "are there no other women in Hampshire" I thought was particularly good, but instead of building and building the drama, here and in several other points throughout the film, things just sort of dissipated. My other criticism (and this may be just a male thing) was the sheer beauty of Anne Hathaway throughout. She is a fantastic actor, her performance and accent were flawless and I believe she deserves to appear in work with far greater artistic merit than generally seems to be her lot. In this role however, and I think largely due to artificial constraints of Jane's characterisation rather than Anne Hathaway's acting, she just wasn't quite ordinary enough. That may seem a strange thing to say about a fictional depiction of one of the greatest writers the world has even known, but it's not about Jane Austen's extraordinary gifts that I mean, its about how mediocre much of Austen's life was, that crucial part of the back story was insubstantial and, possibly because of the characterisation of her parents, not quite believable.