Movie Review: Becoming Jane (spoiler-free)

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE TODAY"S PARENTING POST. DATA POINTS NEEDED.

In the past 12 months I've seen one movie in the theater. So when I was asked to do a blog tour for the movie Becoming Jane I hopped on it. I actually love seeing movies by myself, so I caught a late show last night.

I definitely enjoyed the movie. It was lushly shot, and had the same atmosphere as most movies made from actual Austen novels in the last 20 years. The casting was excellent (mostly people I'd never seen/heard of before) and I thought Anne Hathaway was remarkably understated. I don't like Anne Hathaway, so I was pleasantly surprised at how often I forgot it was her and just got lost in the story. Not enough James Cromwell, but there hardly ever is. Maggie Smith playing Maggie Smith As The Mean Aristocrat was, of course, excellent.

There was one thing that bugged me throughout the movie, though.

What was real, and what was made up? I don't know enough about Jane Austen's real life to know how much of it was fact and how much was completely fabricated. I really wished that I'd done some basic reading on the facts of Austen's life. I've read all of her books (except Mansfield Park for some reason), but don't know much about her. And that made it, for me, tough not to keep wondering how much was real and how much was imagined. I kept getting sucked out of the story to wonder, instead of just going along happily being able to tell where they were having fun with her life.

So I came back home and read the Wikipedia article on Jane Austen (I know, but Wikipedia is nice and brief at midnight). I recommend that if you go to see the movie this weekend you read that article or something else on Austen first so you won't have the same problem I did.

If you are interested in seeing something romantic and vaguely like an Austen novel, with pretty country clothes and scenery, you should take your mother or sister or friend to see it with you this weekend. I do not at all recommend taking anyone male. There may be one or two men who'd enjoy this movie, but it was really just so sappily romantic that I think it couldn't even qualify as a Date Movie. To say more about the movie would be to give away plot points.

(Also, if you are the woman at the 9:30 show in Chelsea who answered two cell phone calls DURING THE MOVIE, were you raised by monkeys? I guess I might have expected it at a shoot-em-up movie, but at Becoming Jane? Perhaps you should join Netflix and save the rest of us from your boorish behavior.)

Comments

[Rachel]

Mansfeild Park is my favorite!

And OOooo a movie all by yourself? A real grown-up movie? You are so lucky!

[JFA]

The Jane Austen bio by Carol Shields is an excellently short read.

[Jamie]

As I understand it, Jane Austen wrote something like 3000 letters minimum during her lifetime. We have just over a hundred because her sister Cassandra helpfully burned many of them at Jane's death. The male lead in "Becoming Jane" is mentioned in 2 of those letters.

I saw an interview with Anne Hathaway where she says pretty clearly that the movie is essentially Jane Austen fanfic and the purpose of the movie was to play with this what-if idea so I don't think the people making the movie had any belief that their story was true.

[Maura]

I love period movies like this, but Jane Austen is such a hero of mine -- I can't bear to see her life so bungled like this.

She was an accomplished writer in her own right before this guy ever came into her life, but from what I've read the movie basically implies that it was MAN who shaped her talent and molded her into the gifted artist she was.

Hollywood just can't deal with a woman who DOESN'T have a male partner and still has a fulfilling life and many accomplishments. So they completely distort her actual life. And the sad thing is that many people seeing this will assume it's a documentary or something.

If it was some love story about Jill Austinn it would probably be a delight to see. But my heart breaks just thinking of how they've twisted her life....

[dot]

haven't seen the movie yet, but this post at Offsprung addressed some of the issues with the 'truth' of the movie: http://offsprung.com/unsprung/2007/08/07/before-i-fell-in-love-i-was-walking-into-walls-and-didnt-know-how-to-speak-in-complete-sentences/

[Moxie]

Maura, I totally didn't think the movie implied that LeFroy molded her talent in any way. He complimented her and liked that she was a writer, and introduced her to the woman who wrote Mysteries of Udolpho (in the movie), but the writing was all hers, and there before she met him.

That was one thing I really liked about the movie.

[Em]

Mox -- the Jane Austen Society put together a brief but useful "sorting fact from fiction" piece together in light of the film: http://www.jasna.org/film/becoming-jane.html

[Melanie]

This has nothing at all to do with Becoming Jane; I just wanted to thank you for the recommendation for the Rachel's yogurt. I've got a new obsession now, and it's only 99 cents a tub at Whole Foods!

[Erik]

I've been at a movie where a guy actually sat a few seats away from me whispering on his cell phone for fifteen minutes.

[Movie Review Guy]

Is it a complete girl's movie? As a guy, it looked rather boring.

[Moxie]

Erik, this is such a complete girl's movie I can't even express it. By half an hour in you'd be begging for a cameo by Hugh Grant to make it more man-like, if that tells you anything.

[Chanel Bags]

Thanks so much for posting these, they are fantastic! So bummed I missed what looks like a truly unique evening.

[chanel earrings]

Im searching for sites related to this. Glad I found you. Thanks