Back there again, are we?
Grrrrr. Publicity begins for summer films in the U.S. You know what that means: Becoming Jane rises from its uneasy grave in the Chasm of the Cluebatted and comes back to fly around our face like a gnat that we cannot swat. It’s not so much the film itself but the misguided and mangled ideas about Jane that those involved will, in the name of publicizing the film, insist upon spreading in the media, where said misguided ideas will take hold with the tenacity and annoyance factor of poison ivy.
“There is a real hunger for films that are a bit more grown-up and stretch you and look at things different ways,” says Julian Jarrold, whose movie about Jane Austen, “Becoming Jane,” opens Aug. 3 against “The Bourne Ultimatum,” the third installment of the hit Matt Damon spy franchise.
[. . .]
Jarrold’s “Becoming Jane” stars Anne Hathaway as the young Jane Austen, who falls in love with an Irish rogue, played by James McAvoy, and finds in him the inspiration for the male characters in “Pride and Prejudice.”
*swats*
*swats again*
dagnabit!
“One of the most interesting things about the film,” Jarrold says, “is that I think, sometimes, Jane Austen and period dramas can be seen as a little bit stuffy and the characters a little bit dry. They are terribly witty but not full of life. So, especially in casting Annie, we wanted to give her a strong independent and feisty exuberance, absolutely bubbling full of life. We are looking at her when she’s 21 rather then when she’s 40 and has had all of her hopes dashed.”
Oh, yes, dear, having four novels published with good reviews and decent sales at the age of 40 DOES tend to dash one’s hopes and make one depressed and beaten down. Mr. Jarrold, have we shown you our Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness? No? Step over here, then, please…
May 6th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
“Jane Austen and period dramas can be seen as a little bit stuffy and the characters a little bit dry. They are terribly witty but not full of life.”
And this says the director who made a movie about Jane Austen?!?!? And who has made at least one period drama before this movie? I’m really wondering now why he took the job. Why did he want to direct a movie about a woman who wrote about ’stuffy characters’? Couldn’t they just find someone else to direct this movie?!
May 6th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I agree with you Franka.
He certainly deserves the Cluebat, unless by now he just deserves *swatting* away for being a pesky fly.
May 6th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Seriously. Or maybe we could do the Hansel and Gretel thing and stuff him in an oven. The Cluebat is more original though.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
It is such a disappointment to read those remarks by Jarrold. I had always considered him a good director so I can only attribute this pratfall to a canned script written for him in order to promote the movie to a wide (read ignorant) audience. Those of you who have seen Great Expectations or Painted Lady would probably agree.
Now here is the scariest part. Presently he is doing an adaptation of Brideshead Revisited with none other than Andrew Davies! He has really gone off the deep end. Heaven and earth!—of what were they thinking?
Brideshead Revisited, by the way, was written by Evelyn Waugh (who happened to be a guy, for those not familiar with his oeuvre). He also wrote Vile Bodies which Stephen Fry recently adapted to the screen as that fabulous Bright Young Things.
My message to JJ: Watch out who you associate with. The snark can come up to bite you at any moment. And watch your mouth, you… you oleaginous dipstick.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Tony A, you always make me go to the dictionary to learn another word…oleaginous, hmm, greases the old brain cogs, that one….she says in an unctuous manner…
We all know that life is over by the time one is 40, and now that I am 41, I rather wonder at Jane Austen living til this age, since she could not have had any pleasure out of it…life was over, hopes dashed, and she moped and pined all day, not bothering to exert herself one whit….sigh. Too bad she did not die chasing Tom to Ireland in a barque…that would have made a good scene. Or maybe if she drank herself to death in despair…the sequel could include that. “Becoming Lush”
May 7th, 2007 at 4:00 am
““There is a real hunger for films that are a bit more grown-up and stretch you and look at things different ways,””
Perhaps, but what, pray, has that got to do with Becoming Jane? Surely he’s not suggesting…? Oh dear, I think he is.
“Jarrold’s “Becoming Jane” stars Anne Hathaway as the young Jane Austen, who falls in love with an Irish rogue, played by James McAvoy, and finds in him the inspiration for the male characters in “Pride and Prejudice.””
The male characterS? I always thought I could see more of Mr. Wickham in McAvoy’s character. This explains it.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:42 am
It’s clear he hasn’t read the novels…and I totally agree with you!
There is a real hunger for films that are a bit more grown-up and stretch you and look at things different ways
Please, not Becoming Jane, I suppose he is talking about one of the sequels of this summer
May 7th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
“Looking at her . . . when she was 40,” says Jarrold? Good thing he didn’t, as she was beginning to suffer from Addison’s disease by then. And re his comment that “all her hopes had been dashed”: this presumes she really wanted to marry as time went on. Read her letters where she comments about her perpetually pregnant (and dying) sisters-in-law and her niece, Anna, whom she calls “poor animal,” and one would be wise to question the thought of poor old Jane suffering with her marital hopes dashed. Good thing that P&P was her “darling child”! So while “Becoming Jane” may well bring new readers to Austen–always a good thing–the film should not be construed as factual. My research for an article in the Sept. 2006 NOTES AND QUERIES (Oxford Univ Press) shows Tom Lefroy to be anything but the roguish lady’s man the film presents him to be. I suggest viewing this film and the book that suggested it (Jon Spence’s Becoming Jane Austen) as a purely speculative “What if?”
May 7th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Think about it like science fiction or fantasy: Austen fantasy.
Consider other impossible events, like Celine Dion singing with Elvis. Curious to think of, but ultimately absurd.
“Mr. Jarrold, thank you for playing. You have been voted off the island. Next!”