Movie Review: JANE EYRE

Originally released: 2011
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench
Directed by: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Based on: The classic novel of the same name by Charlotte Brontë, of course.

Since 1996, there have been four movie adaptations of Jane Eyre. FOUR. Why so many? I have noooo idea. Granted, two of those adaptations were for television (and both were better than this piece of crap), but it's not as if Jane Eyre lends itself to the screen. I love the book--it's my favorite novel ever--but when I think about it, stunning visuals don't exactly leap to mind. Obviously I'm not a director, but as a reader I can tell the biggest problem with adapting Jane Eyre to film is that it's all about what's not happening--what isn't seen, what's not being said, the fact that you can never know what someone else is thinking. It makes for great reading, but can lead to a pretty boring movie.


One of these two people needs more sleep.

Something every Jane Eyre adaptation I've ever seen has in common is that they all start with scenes from Jane's childhood and then her going to that depressing school. WHY. WHY. WHY. WHY? Yeah, I like part of the book, too, but it doesn't really have that much to do with the main story, and Jane's a sympathetic enough character without it. Just throw Jane into Thornfield and let's get this party started, okay? But this version has a twist (exclamation mark). It combines the boring childhood scenes with the boring scenes when Jane stays with the Rivers family, together into one incomprehensible block! Making it... twice as boring! At the start of the movie! GREAT idea.

I really wanted to fast forward through that section because I felt like I was watching paint dry, but I didn't. My bad. Then we finally get to Thornfield and I'm all like, "Yay!" and "Judi Dench is Mrs. Fairfax!" and "Oh good, that Fassbender person is here, maybe this movie will at last start to get interesting." But because we've spent a good half hour reprising stuff no one cares about, that apparently means the things I do care about--i.e., the developing relationship between Jane and Rochester--needs to be slashed to pieces and my favorite scenes in the book have to be messed with. OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

 
"This is one of my three expressions. Get used to it."

I guess the movie still could have been saved from being horrible if it wasn't for Fassbender. I know everyone is in love with him, but I have to be honest and say I do not get the attraction of this guy at all. First of all, his face is seriously weird. It reminds me of Gumby. But he's Rochester, so it's not as if he has to be attractive or anything; that's in the book. Second, and more importantly, he cannot act to save his life!! He wasn't even trying, I swear to god. Whenever there was a romantic scene in the movie, he sounded like he was reading directions from a teleprompter. "Jane... veer left, then proceed onto the motorway. Will you marry me?" I felt like he decided the flowery language was ridiculous so he wasn't even going to attempt to say the words as if he actually meant them. WHAT A DICK. And don't even get me started on the creepazoid factor. Who does he think he is, Rat's Nest RPatt? Stop watching that woman who's, like, twenty years younger than you sleep, sleazebag! Instead of finding him attractive, I was grossed out. Even Jane knows enough not to let him loan her money.

There's also this weird BDSM thing going on in the movie. Fassbender is literally strangling Jane at one point when he's trying to get her to do what he wants, the psycho. And don't even get me started on St. John and his untoward interest in Jane's education being juxtaposed with scenes of a schoolgirl being caned. I was like, what the fridge? Jane's also super-fascinated with a picture of a nude woman writhing in the grass (Roll, roll! Roll in zee hay! Spoiler alert, Jane does this at one point) with her wrists restrained. I get that we're trying to sex it up, but Jane as a submissive is a little trite and obvious, dontcha think?

Aside from the terrible acting, the movie's "artistic interpretation" of the book is soooo graduate film school. At one point, instead of actually witnessing Jane and Rochester's relationship develop, I had to sit through one of those love montages where they frolic amid nature with flowers and a gentle breeze. Are you freaking kidding me?!? What is this, the 1960s? Look at your life, look at your choices! As for the one part of the book where things have the potential to be visually interesting--the burning of Thornfield--do you think we get to see that? No, Jane and Mrs. Fairfax literally stand on screen and tell us about it. With their words. They don't even use hand gestures! I do believe that's the very definition of "pictures of people talking."

This is honestly the worst film adaptation of Jane Eyre I've ever seen IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. It's boring as heck, the acting is pretty bad (except for Judi Dench, and you can tell even she gives up at some point), and it's clear the director had no idea how to tell this story in a cinematic way. The William Hurt and Ciaran Hinds versions were pretty boring, too, but at least they made an effort to tell the story, and Ciaran Hinds emoted nicely. Compared to the Toby Stephens version, though, this one is just a sad mess. You can slap the word artistic on a donkey's ass but that's not going to make me think it's a masterpiece. Maybe next time we should try focusing on the script instead of the lens filters? Just an idea.

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Book Review: THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM by Gaston Leroux

After a woman is mysteriously attacked in her own bedroom, with the door still locked from the inside, the police are baffled. Fortunately, Joseph Rouletabille, the most famous investigative journalist in the world, is on hand to solve the case.

The Phantom of the Opera is one of my favorite books of all times, but for some reason I never even wondered what other books Gaston Leroux might have written. Or if I did wonder, I forgot. But! When I saw a review for The Mystery of the Yellow Room and its sequel, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, at Cynical Optimism, I knew I had to give it try.

This is the first "locked room" mystery ever written. You can still find variations on this plot today--The Mentalist, for example, had an episode based on this idea. The linchpin question is, how did the murderer escape the room? In this case, the mystery is further complicated by the fact that the murderer doesn't escape once, but several times, something the police don't know and that Rouletabille has to figure out.

As far as the mystery goes, this book is excellent. I don't think I've ever encountered a more successful red herring in my life (perhaps Leroux invented red herrings, as well?). At first the story seems relatively straight-forward (aside from the problem of the room, of course), but it keeps twisting and twisting until the end when Rouletabille reveals the killer, which is the biggest twist of all--but also left me thinking, "OH DUH." As a reader, one definitely has all the information to solve the case, but Leroux is so skillful at distracting one with delicious Victorian drama that one doesn't realize it what the pertinent clues were until later.

I also loved the detective, Rouletabille. He's only eighteen, so he has wild mood swings, is very enthusiastic about everything, and is freakishly smart. His origin story is just bizarre, with him discovering an important piece of evidence when he was eight which led to a job at a newspaper. Apparently there's a whole series of books starring Rouletabille, one of which is the first espionage novel ever written.

That being said, my enjoyment of this book was tempered by the fact that I listened to it in an audiobook format from Librivox. Since the narrators for Librivox are all volunteers, it can be pretty hit-or-miss, and this novel had seven or eight different narrators, some of whom were pretty good and some who could use a little work. Hence I'm still really confused about some things, like who is telling the story? It's not Rouletabille, it's some other journalist, but I'm not sure who. Are we supposed to assume it's Leroux? Also, who is the Lady In Black? Still don't know, and a little freaked out by the fact that Rouletabille kept going on and on about her perfume, as I was reading Perfume: The Story of a Murderer at the same time. Also, for the first quarter of this book I thought the woman in the yellow room, Mlle. Stangerson, was dead; so you can imagine how confused I was when she started giving her statement to the police (?!). That's when I knew this audiobook wasn't working out very well. I'd like to reread the novel in actual text format before I move on to the next Rouletabille book, which I definitely plan to do.

If you enjoy Phantom of the Opera or turn-of-the-century mysteries, I definitely recommend you give The Mystery of the Yellow Room a try. Rouletabille may not be as awesome as Eric (who is?), but he's nevertheless a pretty great character, definitely right up there with other classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Poirot. And this novel has the same great mix of fun and suspense as Phantom.

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Book Review: PERFUME, THE STORY OF A MURDERER by Patrick Süskind

Once upon a time in France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born into a harsh world. Forget about love and human kindness; everyone is out for themselves. Especially when it comes to Grenouille, because he has no soul--or so people believe, because he has no scent. He doesn't smell bad, like the fish market he's born in, or good, like a baby generally does--he doesn't smell of anything. Ergo, he freaks people out. As far as they're concerned, he shouldn't even exist. One of his nursemaids calls him a vampire, and this is more accurate than she knows, because once Grenouille realizes he can distill people's scents, he decides to steal them for himself. And by people I of course mean beautiful young virgins.

This novel wasn't exactly pleasant to read, but it had its moments. The first fifty pages or so are pretty boring, because Grenouille's just an innocent little serial killer and doesn't do much except sniff around woodpiles and whatnot. There's also a slow part in the middle where J-BG lives in a cave for seven years and entertains himself remembering all the smells he's smelled (yeah, I skimmed through that part). Other than that, though, the book's actually pretty interesting, especially when Grenouille is learning how to become a perfumer; and the very end, which nearly punches you in the face with its existentialism, really makes the entire novel worth it.

One thing that did surprise me was the subtext. I definitely don't think every work of fiction emerging from Germany in the last 60 years has something to do with WWII, but in the instance of this specific book, there's a case to be made. Like Adolph Hitler, Grenouille is seemingly unkillable, surviving abandonment by his mother, anthrax, some sort of black plague episode, and hypothermia, just to name a few. He's completely asexual and not a sensuous person at all--as in, he doesn't care about food or beauty or being comfortable; he only cares about scent. When he does kill, it's not because it brings him a personal sense of satisfaction, it's just a means to an end--gaining these girls' scent so that people will love him and do whatever he wants them to. The killings aren't acts of passion or even hate, but are efficient, almost mechanized, so that Grenouille can get what he really wants: control and power. "If he wanted, he could be feted in Paris... or could walk out to Versailles and have the king kiss his feet; write the pope a perfumed letter and be revealed as the new Messiah...."

Despite seeing with their own eyes the evidence of Grenouille's murders, and hearing him confess, the people of Grasse cannot resist the pull of Grenouille's perfume:

The ten thousand men and women, children and patriarchs assembled there... grew weak as young maidens who have succumbed to the charms of a lover. They were overcome by a powerful sense of goodwill, of tenderness, of crazy, childish infatuation, yes, God help them, of love for this little homicidal man.... These people were now pure liquid, their spirits and minds were melted; nothing was left but an amorphous fluid, and all they could feel was their hearts floating and sloshing about within them, and they laid those hearts, each man, each woman, in the hands of the little man... for better or worse. They loved him.

After this massive incident of Group Think, which results in Grenouille's escape, the town of Grasse tries its best to mind-bleach the entire episode. They convict an innocent man of the killings, the records pertaining to "G" are lost, and no one speaks of it again. Life forcibly moves on. One might say Grasse has lost its innocence, but it would be more correct to say that the people of Grasse lost their perception of their own superiority. Grenouille's perfume of beauty, love, and purity reached these people and they all reacted with their basest lusts and greediness, behaving like "human beasts." Because of the enchantment of having their desires satiated, they let a murderer go free--not only that, but worshiped him. It's not just the knowledge that they're no better than Grenouille, but how thin their veil of morality and humanity is that keeps the citizenry from looking each other in the eye.

This is the type of novel where everyone is to blame. Even the people who "save the world" from Grenouille (at his own design) do so in the most disgusting and inhumane method imaginable, then congratulate themselves afterward. The narrator believes Grenouille is a terrible person, yes, but he's a terrible person because the world, totally selfish and greedy, made him that way. Aside from his superpowers--unkillable, super-smell, etc.--there really isn't much difference between Grenouille and any of the other characters in this novel. Does Grenouille really have no soul? Of course not; he desires the same thing we all do, love. It's when he realizes no one will ever love him--or vice versa--that he gives up.

If this story is a metaphor for what happened to Germany in WWII, then it's only in a more abstract sense. But I don't think it's as cynical as it first appears; if anything, Süskind is making an argument for tolerance and kindness and the Enlightenment values of freedom, equality, brotherhood, etc. (except for when it comes to women; if I thought the movie was misogynistic, the book is a lot worse). So while this may not be my favorite book ever, I do think it was worth reading. There are Ideas and there is History, and it reads amazingly fast in the non-boring parts (which is most of the novel). On more than a few levels this book is deeply disturbing, but then what else would one expect from a novel about a serial killer?



Musical notes: "I Think Ur a Contra," by Vampire Weekend

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Preparing for the October 2011 24-Hour Readathon!

Today is the first day of fall, and that means the fall edition of Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon is almost upon us (October 22nd). Excitement!

I have horrible luck when it comes to readathons; I've never finished a whole book during one, just books that were already half-way read. It doesn't even have anything to do with working; I just get too distracted by things like visiting blogs and doing challenges. My TBR pile for the Dewey's Readathon hasn't changed once since I first participated, that's how bad it is.

SO ANYWAY. I was going to just do cheerleading this time, because looking at my constantly not-changing stack of readathon books is quite frankly not good for morale, but then I woke up with the conviction that I really had to read during the readathon. I just had to. This time, though, I'm not even going to TRY to finish a book. I'm picking a long-ass novel and just sticking with that for the entire day. It's gonna be Pillars of the Earth all up in here. Okay, maybe not Pillars of the Earth, but definitely a chunkster will be read, or at the very least started.

I'm also going to try to wake up and start reading w/everyone else this year. It probably won't happen, but I'm going to make the effort-ish.

Have you signed up for the Readathon yet? You should!

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Book Review: GAMES AND PLAYERS by Manna Francis

Proposed alternate title: Val Toreth and the Challenge of the Really Real




In this Administration novel, both Warrick and Toreth deal with how whacked their perception of reality is... then again, what perception of reality?

Throughout Games and Players, Toreth is criticized as being a psychotic because he doesn't consider people as "real." It all starts with Carnak, a socioanalyst sent to compile a report on I&I, who just happens to know Warrick from back in the day. He finds Toreth interesting because he knows Toreth does consider at least two people as "real"--Warrick and Sara--which to his mind makes Toreth an unusual parainvestigator. But after witnessing Toreth interrogate a prisoner, Carnak decides Toreth is a terrible person and that he's going to fuck with his mind.

There's a certain irony here of course, because Carnak doesn't consider anyone as real, and is therefore arguably more psychotic than Toreth is. But whatever the reality of the two men's psychology, the nature of Toreth's job allows Carnak to feel morally superior to him; and I think that's true of everyone in this novel, including Sara. Even Warrick feels that way to a certain extent, at least until he realizes he's behaving like a child.

Toreth may not view everyone as a Real Person, but then who the hell does? Do you think of people on the news as being "real," or homeless people, or the person who hands you your coffee at Starbucks? Looking beyond one's own reality is part of learning how to be human and growing up, and even then the whole world can't be "real." In actuality, many people have less of a grasp on reality than Toreth does, and simply use other people to play out what goes on in their own heads--like Toreth's old teacher, Gee, for example. At least Toreth's able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, which Warrick doesn't and doesn't want to.

Like Quid Pro Quo, this novel is organized into shorter stories and novellas that I read for free on Manna Francis' website, and all of them deal with reality and perception to some extent. I have to admit that while I've been enjoying these stories before now, I just considered them fun and gratuitous light reads. But at some point while reading this novel, I suddenly started thinking this was the greatest series ever! Why? I'm not sure. But Francis has a great grasp of her characters and the more I read about them, the more I want to read about them (except for Dilly, she's annoying). Plus, I don't think it's just fluff; I think Francis does have something to say beyond writing a m/m romance. Subtext, yo.

I definitely recommend these books! They're totally glom-worthy.





Musical notes: The short story at the heart of Games and Players has to do with Warrick cheating on Toreth *gasp!*, which Toreth doesn't like at all. After that, I could not get "Woman, Woman," by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap out of my head! So here I present to you, à la Jill from Fuzzy Fizzy Thoughts (sorry, Jill!), "Warrick, Warrick," to be sung to the tune of "Woman, Woman":

Warrick, oh Waaaaarrick,
Have you got cheating on your mind, on your mind?

Something's wrong between us
That your bruises cannot hide
And you're afraid to let your eyes meet mine
And lately when I love you, I wonder if you're satisfied

Warrick, oh Waaaaarrick,
Have you got cheating on your mind, on your mind?

I've seen the way men look at you
When they think you don't belong to me
And it hurts to have them know that you're that kind
But it's wondering if they're better
That's really killing meeeeeee

Warrick, oh Waaaaarrick,
Have you got cheating on your mind, on your mind?

A submissive wears a certain look
When he is on the move
And I can always tell what's on your mind
I would love to have to say
That look's all over youuuuuu

Warrick, oh Warrick
Have you got cheating on your mind

Oh Warrick, oh Waaaarick
Have you got cheating on your mind.....

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Movie Review: PERFUME, THE STORY OF A MURDERER

First released: 2006
Starring: Ben Whishaw, Sam Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman
Directed by: Tom Tykwer
Based on: The novel of the same name by Patrick Süskind

The fleeting nature of beauty and perfection are the main themes in this is a visually memorable, well-written, and well-acted film. In the end I found it deeply disturbing--mainly because I ended up admiring the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, even as I recognized what he was doing as not only wrong, but pointless.



The movie is about a man named Grenouille (which, as we all know from NCIS, means "frog"), an 18th-century Frenchman who has such a precise and amazing sense of smell that he experiences the world almost entirely by scent. Combine this with extreme social awkwardness and a propensity for anyone who knows him to die suddenly and violently, and let's just say the guy's kind of an odd duck.

Grenouille's ride to Crazytown begins when he catches the most beautiful scent he's ever smelled: a young woman. Thereafter, he becomes obsessed with capturing and preserving people's (young women's, technically) scents forever. To that end, he becomes a journeyman perfumer and seeks to create the perfect scent.

The performances in the film are really good--especially Ben Whishaw, who plays Grenouille. He brings just the right mix of attraction and repulsion to Grenouille's character; I imagine he would also play an excellent Ted Bundy. Alan Rickman is freaking awesome, as always, and even Dustin Hoffman is pretty good. The female actresses mainly stand around looking pretty and hunted.


"But I'm too pretty to live..."

Grenouille's struggle to capture something as fleeting as scent finds many metaphors throughout the movie. The film plays like one of those historical monographs where the life an ordinary person is recreated through the interpretation of historical documents--an interesting point in itself as history can be seen as attempting to do the same thing Grenouille does, capture the essence of a person and preserve it forever. The entire point of Grenouille's life is that he disappears into the ether, leaving behind only fleeting and vague emotions in the people he encountered, if that. Yet his story is written down so it will never be forgotten? This was the most difficult part of the film to reconcile for me.

Visually, I love this movie. It doesn't saturate you with beauty all the time; instead, most of the movie is very dark and monochromatic, so that when the important scenes come up--full of gorgeous, bright, saturated color--you remember them like they've been burned into your retinas.

The movie also reminded me of an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations I watched last week. Bourdain went to Tokyo, where he asked every chef he encountered, "Is perfection possible?" Like scent, food is a fleeting, temporary experience. All the chefs Bourdain talked to said, no, perfection isn't possible to achieve, although they all strive for it. Grenouille too strives for perfection in his art; but unlike the chefs on No Reservations, he doesn't think it's impossible. When Grenouille first apprentices himself to the parfumier Giuseppe Baldini, Baldini tells him a story about a perfume found in Egypt that was so amazing, for a minute after it was unearthed, everyone in the world thought they were in paradise. This legend (which Grenouille doesn't think is a legend) combines with his obsession to preserve a young woman's beauty and innocence forever, leading him to create a scent that can command the love and admiration of anyone with functioning olfactory glands. Yet this amazing formula comes with a steep price: the destruction of the very thing he's trying to capture, the lives of the young women. Ergo, the film seems to be arguing, perfection leads to death. Perhaps this why the chefs on No Reservations believe they will never, ever be able to achieve perfection, no matter how hard they strive for it; because they know perfection would destroy the reason why they strive for it in the first place: the fleeting moment of connection with another human being.

At least, that's the conclusion Grenouille comes to, too late to save the lives of the beautiful young women of Grasse. In despair, he destroys the perfume he created forever.  Despite the fact that Grenouille gets what's coming to him and then some, it does seem a shame that so much beauty would disappear so quickly and never be experienced again.

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Book Review: THE HURRELL STYLE, 50 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHING HOLLYWOOD by Whitney Stine

When George Hurrell came to California in the 1920's as an aspiring artist, his dream was to paint. Little did he know that his hobby of photography would quickly propel him into a career of photographing the world' most famous movie stars for Hollywood studios. From 1928 to 1978, Hurrell photographed for MGM, Paramount, Samuel Goldwyn, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and many other studios, capturing the likenesses of every actor from Ramon Navarro to Keith Carradine.

Johnny Weissmuller, photograph by George Hurrell, 1932

This is an odd book; it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's more of memoir than a history, but it's organized by actor, chronologically, so there isn't really a narrative. I wouldn't say there's much of a focus, either; Stine gives us some background on the stars--especially the less familiar ones--and Hurrell tells stories about how he took the photographs, which may involve his technique or personal anecdotes about the stars themselves. I wouldn't say it's boring, because Hurrell's stories are really interesting; and although he is clearly recounting these incidents to Stine through a long series of interviews, you can tell he's quite the character.

Tallulah Bankhead, photograph by George Hurrell, 1936

To evoke different types of reactions in the actors, Hurrell would play music, dance around the studio while clicking away on his camera, or shout random phrases for no reason. Some of the stars he got to know really well and others he only met once, but his perceptive descriptions of their personalities is definitely of interest to anyone intrigued by movie history; and his descriptions of technique, such as how he framed the shots and developed some of the prints, is most certainly relevant for anyone who's serious about practicing, or likes to read about, photography.

Anna May Wong, photograph by George Hurrell, 1938

That being said, the book as a whole just feels blah and is kind of tedious to read. For one, the organization of it into star-by-star essays makes reading it seem very repetitive. Here's this one actor Hurrell photographed, and here's this other actor, and here's this other famous actor. O-kaaay. For another, there is zero analysis in this entire book. I've read wikipedia entries with more insight than these essays. And it's a shame, because Hurrell's work wasn't just promotional pablum; some of the photographs in the book are freaking amazing. You can tell he's more interested in the abstract shapes of the shadows than making a portrait per se, and that's true to some extent of nearly all the really good photographs in this book. Unfortunately, the great stuff is watered down by a lot of Hurrell's more average work.

Veronica Lake, photograph by George Hurrell, 1941

There's a lot to say about these photographs: how they played with the stars' image, issues of sexuality and exoticism, vanity; and the influence of Pictorialism, Japonisme, and abstraction in Hurrell's work. But you won't find any of that discussion here. I understand Stine is a film historian and not an art historian (I'm sure there's a HUGE difference), but even a half-assed attempt at addressing these topics would be better than nothing.

This book is a great resource if you're looking for basic information about Hurrell or classic Hollywood movie stars, but for something more in-depth I personally would search elsewhere.

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