Emotional Appeals

   The three film adaptions of Jane Eyre that we watched in class each took aspects of the novel and either lessened them or enhanced them. Two of these aspects that I found most important were the emotional appeal of Jane's struggles with reason and passion and the portrayal of nature. Along with these, I weighed cinematography, setting, and soundtrack in how much I liked each one. I can't choose a favorite, because in some I love adult Jane and dislike the portrayal of her childhood, and in others it is the opposite. Personally, I most enjoyed Franco Zeffirelli's 1996 adaptation in terms of Jane's childhood, while I preferred Susanna White's 2006 adaptation in terms of her adulthood.

   In all honesty, the only reason I prefer Zeffirelli's portrayal of Jane's childhood is because every other director's portrayal of it is absolutely ridiculous. Nothing really stood out as fantastic in Zeffirelli's version, but nothing stood out as terrible either. He dramatized and combined a couple of events to be efficient, but nothing wandered too far away from the novel. In White's version, the film opens with Jane standing in a red robe in a desert. If that isn't wandering away from the novel, I don't know what is. This version also dramatized every scene in Jane's childhood to the point of absurdity. I think the portrayal of the red room in this version is what really did it for me, I just couldn't take the red lighting seriously. In fact, the red room was what did it for me in the other version as well. Cary Fukunaga's 2011 adaptation has a red room that is not red, and that apparently has a ghost that lives in the chimney. Jane also knocked herself out in this one, which I found really strange. In short: Zeffirelli's appealed to me because it wasn't gaudy.

   I prefer White's adaptation for Jane's adulthood really for only one scene. The proposal in this version struck me as more emotionally appealing than any of the others, and I'm a sucker for emotionally appealing movies. This version was so much more appealing to me because of how Jane expressed her emotions. In both other versions we watched, Jane still seemed controlled to some degree. In the novel, Jane claims that her emotions had taken complete control of her and that she had almost lost free will during this scene. I think White's version does a significantly better job of showing Jane's surrender to her emotions than the other films do (also, the other two just weren't very moving).

   I haven't given anything to the last (Fukunaga's) version yet, so I will say that I enjoyed the soundtrack more than any of the other movies. I also enjoyed the scenery and cinematography in this adaptation as well. The flaw I found in this version, however, is that nothing really moved me. I think that's because it felt like there was a lack of vulnerability in the characters, and that's what I enjoyed so much about White's version (of the proposal, I guess). It appears that in order for a film to appeal to me, emotional appeals are the most important factor.