REVIEW: Visceral Jane Eyre Is All Brontë, and Wholly Alive

Watching Jane Eyre, I envied those who have never read the book: What would it be like to watch this movie without already knowing all of the story's secrets? Miraculously, Fukunaga preserves much of the book's spooky mysteriousness, its bold hints at the way basically good people can do some really bad stuff and still be redeemed. He's also attuned, as Brontë was, to the unfair horrors that can befall innocents. An early scene shows the very young Jane (at this point played by Amelia Clarkson), entrusted to the care of her cruel aunt (played, with uncharacteristic acidity, by Sally Hawkins), being struck with a book by her abusive cousin: The ringing in her ears fills the soundtrack, too -- it's an abrasive hum. And when she's locked in the room of her aunt's house that most scares her, she throws herself so violently against the door that she knocks herself out. This is a girl who, shy as she may seem, is ready to give it all.

More suffering ensues -- most notably a stint in a hardcore school for lower-class girls, presided over by a sinister Simon McBurney -- before Jane finds her way to the dark and gloomy manse of her new employer, where she's greeted by a no-nonsense but not unkind servant (the always-reliable Judi Dench) and entrusted with the education of a precocious, flirty little girl who speaks only French (Romy Settbon Moore). When she finally meets the often-absent Mr. Rochester, he sizes her up as if she were a dollop of pudding on a plate.

And she is just a little slip of the thing. One of the marvels of this Jane Eyre is its casting: Wasikowska's Jane, in her simple dresses and with her hair coiled modestly at the nape of her neck, still looks like a young girl. Fassbender, on the other hand, is all man, a feral being who looks as if he could swallow her whole. Sex is threatening, as Brontë knew, and Wasikowska and Fassbender make this particular dance look exceedingly dangerous. Fassbender plays Rochester as a man who knows his manners but doesn't always use them -- he's always stalking off abruptly, often in mid-sentence. Fassbender has the right kind of brooding handsomeness to play Rochester, and the performance works because he finds the character's inherent warmth without mistaking it for anything so bland as mere niceness. Rochester's kindness is the cutting kind, and Fassbender -- with his straight, even teeth and his mocking eyes -- knows it.

Wasikowska stands up to him in every way, and her performance rings with understated fierceness. Although the real-life Wasikowska is nothing short of a beauty, she makes us believe in Jane's homespun radiance. It doesn't hurt that she's often lit to look as if she's glowing from within, like a Vermeer painting -- one whose subject always meets our gaze directly.

More astonishing yet, Wasikowska embraces all the carnality Brontë built into this story. In one of the movie's most striking scenes, she lashes out at Rochester for the way he is, she believes, toying with her affections. Wasikowska begins this monologue as if she were an obedient schoolgirl, gradually building it into a miniature manifesto of self-possession -- it's like a lit match encompassing all the heat of a house fire in its tiny flame. Jane Eyre, as Brontë wrote her, is a small girl who makes for a big story. Wasikowska steps easily and naturally into those little footprints stamped out some 160 years ago. In this Jane Eyre, it seems as if they were made only yesterday.

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