Cinema 2011 #85: Jane Eyre

Cary Fukunaga, the Hollywood Wunderkind best known for his 2009 breakthrough with the central American family drama Sin Nombre, here adapts Charlotte Brontë’s paean to plain girls everywhere, lending Jane Eyre a distinctly handsome feel. The production, starring two of contemporary cinema’s ones to watch with Mia Wasikowska as the titular governess and ubiquitous Irishman Michael Fassbender as the roguish Mr. Rochester, is a beautifully crafted period drama, with a fine eye for detail and costume, and more moors than Heathcliff could hope to mope around.

But for all its finery, there is an undeniable lack of dramatic tension to proceedings. The stewing romance between Jane, a mousy waif whose keen intellect belies a life of strict educational reform courtesy of a hard-hearted aunt (Sally Hawkins, playing keenly against type), and Rochester gets suddenly thrust upon the audience without so much as a coy smile or hanky’s wave. In their place, we get some supposedly pithy banter that mostly feels like two adults, a misanthropic bastard and a petticoated outcast who clings to her sense of ordinariness like some sort of spite-driven shield to fight off would-be naysayers, who suddenly decide one day that they both enjoy hating everybody else, so why not spend the rest of their days despising the dolts around them together? 

Cinema 2011 #32: The Eagle

What happens when you strap two strapping young stars into a couple of tunics and togas, give them some swords and sandals, drop them in rural Scotland and add a 12A certificate? The Eagle – the latest Roman romp to tell the tale of the legendary Ninth Spanish Legion, who, along with their famed bronze standard, supposedly disappeared without a trace north of Hadrian’s Wall in 117AD. Coming mercurially hot on the manly leather skirt-tails of 2010’s Centurion, The Eagle is loosely based on the 1954 novel The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, something of a perennial boys’ own adventure and already adapted by the BBC. This time around, we follow soldier Marcus Flavius Aquila and his Briton slave Esca, as they cross the northern border, leaving the security of the Roman Empire for the treacherous unknown, hunting for the titular emblem to reclaim Rome’s lost glory and the Aquila family name. Legions and legends, battles and Daddy-issues, GI Joe and Billy Elliot, will this Eagle fly high or leave you running for the nearest vomitorium?

It actually starts very well, with Channing Tatum’s Marcus starting a new career as the cautious commander of the dodgiest outpost south of the wall. He’s bearing the brunt of his family’s name, his company all stage-whispering his general father’s infamous loss of the Ninth, while he prays to the gods he won’t bring further shame to bear. However, after a hasty display of tactical prowess and derring-do when a frenzied surprise attack descends upon the settlement, he’s earned his men’s respect, and a wince-worthy knee injury. While on respite in uncle Donald Sutherland’s villa, Marcus persuades the crowd to save the life of captured Pict Esca, played by Jamie Bell, who in turn becomes enslaved by honour to the injured Roman. When Marcus hears rumours of the bronze standard’s northern whereabouts, the real story begins, as the role of master and slave swaps around, both warriors becoming reliant on each other for survival, as they faceoff with some Gaelic-garbling goons known as the – I kid you not – Seal People. Led by A Prophet’s Tahar Rahim, who frankly needs to listen to his “Leigh anois go curamach, ar do scruid phaipear, na teoracha agus na ceisteanna, a gabhann le cuid A” a bit better, these baddies are nameless and very expendable, which is just as well when all hell breaks loose.