Becoming Jane (2007)

I can't say that I actually know much about Jane Austen, but I know quite well that she was an honorable English novelist that has left a great mark, and that's why I was expecting much more than what I've experienced in the movie. A movie about such a great writer, I think, should be more dramatic, sophisticated and elegant. There is no enough emotion or monologue in the movie to get the viewer into the character as in any other touching biography. In contrary, the movie is a kind of prosaic for me and humorous in a bad way. It would have been better if it was more deep and sentimental as for an admired writer. Personally I don't think that this is an appropriate biography for a remarkable writer; it did not enrich me, and sadly the movie is just light, tasteless, superficial and a kind of disappointment.

This is an imagined semi-biographical story of Jane Austen. It's around 1795, and Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is a rebellious young woman before her great works. She forms a combative relationship with rogue Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) while her family wants a more aristocratic match in Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox) and stability of money.It's very doubtful that this has much relationship to reality, but it's still a very good movie. Hathaway and McAvoy are great young actors, and they have magnetic chemistry. It's really an interesting way to create an Austen-like story by using her own life. And I do like the ending and the depressing tone no matter how little it has to do with her true life. We must allow for poetic license. I do wish for a faster start to the drama. Once it gets started, there are great performances such as Julie Walters as Jane's mother in addition to the two leads. I like to think of this as a Jane Austen novel that she never got to write herself.

To make a film about the life of Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated (if not the most celebrated) female authors of all time which manages to patronise women is quite some achievement and Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams should be justly proud. This seemingly impossible feat is brought off by pretty much ignoring her many literary masterpieces and focusing instead, with barefaced inaccuracy, on a failed early romantic liaison. I'm not going to criticise the actors as they all too often get the blame for badly drawn characters but the notion that Anne Hathaway's Jane could have written a book like Pride and Prejudice is, frankly, hilarious. I can only assume that the makers of this film have mistaken all that swooning over Colin Firth's wet shirt scene and Greg Wise's heroics on horseback as evidence that fans of Jane Austen are nothing more than lovers of ditsy romances.Yes, Austen's stories are, essentially love stories but take the romance out and it's still great literature. It is her timeless wit, intellect and brutal exposure of human nature that has made Austen one of the most widely read and appreciated authors in history. There is a very great, and not at all delicious, irony that the world Jane Austen describes is one in which a woman is judged merely on her ability to make a good match and that, despite all her critical acclaim as a writer, this is what film makers centuries later should choose to reduce her own life to. I watched this film, against my better judgement, on a flight between Quito and Miami. The immigration queues couldn't come quick enough.

I enjoyed Anne Hathaway in DWP, but her performance here is just awful. Her English accent is horrible. Why do directors insist on always going for stunning beauty opposed to talent and ability? Anna Maxwell Martin should have been cast as Jane. She is a spectacular actress (Bleak House) who can actually speak with a genuine English accent. What an unusual concept: Make certain the actress playing a British woman can actually speak with a true British accent. Anna Maxwell Martin should also have been the choice as the real Jane was average looking - not drop dead gorgeous. What else can I say. Oh, yeah, The plot is completely inane and Jane's love interest (at least at the beginning, I didn't watch the film all the way through) is an irritating annoying little boy. No chemistry and I wanted to punch him in the throat. What I can applaud is the cinematography. Wow. Absolutely gorgeous. That is what the four stars are for.