Becoming Jane
Director: Julian Jarrold. Screenplay: Sarah Williams, Kevin Hood. Cinematography: Eigil Bryld. Film editing: Emma E. Hickox. Production design: Eve Stewart. Music: Adrian Johnston. Producers: Graham Broadbent, Robert Bernstein, Douglas Rae. With: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, James Cromwell, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, Anna Maxwell Martin, Joe Anderson, Lucy Cohu, Laurence Fox, Ian Richardson, Leo Bill, Jessica Ashworth, Eleanor Methven, Michael James Ford, Tom Vaughan-Fowle. UK/USA/Ireland. 120 min. 2007.
What are the factors that turned Jane Austen the book-loving country girl into Jane Austen the indispensable chronicler of English manners at the turn of the nineteenth century? You won’t find out from this handsomely shot biopic, which focuses its energies almost entirely on Austen’s ill-fated romance with an Irish barrister-in-training. The premise is exaggerated at best, and probably downright apocryphal. Other aspects of the picture—including its psychological notions and a great deal of its dialogue—are just as dubious, especially in the first half, which nearly drowns in the smothering syrup of movie-style romanticism.
The film picks up after that, thanks mostly to Anne Hathaway’s appealing portrayal of Austen and, secondarily, James Cromwell’s restrained performance as her poor but pious dad. By contrast, Julie Walters is irritating as her mother; ditto for Maggie Smith as one Lady Gresham, who’s also burdened with some of the screenplay’s worst lines. Smith: What is Jane doing over there? (Answer: She’s writing.) Smith: Can’t something be done about it?!!? (Audience: Har har haaardy har har.)
If you can stomach that sort of thing, and enjoy pretty views of the English countryside, you’ll have a reasonably good time. Too bad, though, that the film’s prevailing spirit is utterly at odds with Austen’s own impeccably controlled way of transmuting a certain kind of living into the stuff of indelible art.
– David Sterritt
