Masterpiece Theatre - Jane Eyre, Part Two

There are five scenes that I look forward to the most when it comes to any version of Jane Eyre:

1. The fire rescue scene


2. The proposal scene


3. The courtship scenes post proposal


4. Rochester's pleas for Jane to stay after the aborted wedding


5. Their reunion

Four out of the five appeared in part two of Masterpiece Theatre's wonderful version of Jane Eyre.

Out of all the versions that I've seen (and I've seen eight of them) this one has hit all the parts I love best exactly right.

Of course my thoughts on the fire scene was said previously but if not I loved that part. The way it was shot in shadows with those two so close together that you felt their chemistry and you wanted them to kiss and the scene afterwards where Jane believed that Mr. Rochester might actually return her feelings for him.

And you know he did in the proposal scene. Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens were wonderful in that scene: painful, emotional and passionate.

My absolutely favourite scene in this production was the morning after the proposal and credit goes to Wilson for making it such a wonderful scene. It is the scene where Jane is lying on her bed with the sunlight softly illuminating her face as thoughts were on the night before. She rises takes a look at her face in the mirror, she touches it and her mouth scarcely believing what has transpired and then she spins around like a schoolgirl in happiness before she plops back down on her bed. That scene was so beautiful and punctuated by an emotional score by Rob Lane -I wish a soundtrack would come out for this production.

Now I come to screenwriter Sandy Welch. What she has done to this version is miraculous, bringing passion to this tale that has been sorely lacking in past versions.

Her best job came tonight during the St. John scenes which are usually slow and boring. The reader and audience are just waiting for Jane to hear Rochester's voice across the moors and reunite with him.

In all other versions I have seen, Rochester's pleas for Jane to stay are usually before the St.John bits but what Welch has done is mix those scenes in with her time with the Rivers making that part of the production way more interesting. The scenes with Rochester and Jane, while not exactly following the book, were sizzling. I love those scenes. You see both their despondence and their passion for one another. Stephens was magnificent in these scenes the passion and desperation in his voice and the way he touched and kissed Jane would have convinced me to stay or in his words would have "tempted me in a life of sin."

As for St. John, Andrew Buchan has been one of the better ones I have seen in recent versions. He is handsome but a cold fish as he was written unlike the St. John's of 1996, 1997 and the musical.

The final scene where Jane and Rochester have married were a nice glimpse into their married life and you get to see the full transformation of their characters. Jane, who started the story with no family or love has finally found love and a family. Rochester, who throughout was brooding and unhappy at life, is joyously happy with his life.

I read in the production diary that the man paiting their portrait was the same man who did the Reed's portrait. A nice connecting piece there but too bad you didn't see his face.

Four final words to close my thoughts on this: Best. Jane. Eyre. Ever.

Movie review -The Queen

It is hard to believe that this August will mark 10 years since the unexpected and tragic death of Princess Diana, the Princess of Wales. It is one of those moments in history where you remember where you were when you heard the news. And while watching The Queen, the docudrama the recreates the behind the scenes drama of how the Royal Family dealt with the tragedy, brought back all of the memories of the summer of 1997.

The most amazing thing about this film is the exquisite and amazing performance of Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. She brings humanity to the role of the only monarch I have ever known and someone I consider sometime stoic but emotionally unattached when I see her appearances at Christmas. She makes Queen Elizabeth a person like you and I and not some monarch just sitting on her throne waited hand and foot. She drives a Range Rover! (albeit not wearing a seat belt).

I don't know how true it was in real life but it was fascinating to see the Queen's struggle on how to deal with it and it almost seemed as if she was being bullied into doing what was ultimately the right thing to do by the British people and Tony Blair (Michael Sheen in his second go around playing the Labour PM after TV's The Deal). I really did feel sorry for her but at the same time you wanted to yell at her to get off her high horse and do something.

We all know now that she did misjudge on how the public wanted her to address the people and I really got teary eyed as Stephen Frears used a mixture of archival and re-enactments of how the people reacted to Diana's death. I remember feeling what the people felt at the time but not necessarily about how the Queen should have reacted.

Sheen is also a revelation as Blair. He was amazing and should have been nominated for some sort of acting award. There is a scene towards the end of the Queen where after all the frenzy surrounding Diana's death and funeral had passed, they meet again (very similar to their first meeting earlier in the film when Blair first got elected) and discuss how the Queen's reputation was damaged by the way she handled things while Blair's popularity soared. Blair countered that the Queen saved her rep by addressing the people on the eve of Diana's funeral but she added that Blair may soon feel what it was like to have one's reputation damaged. This was excellent foreshadowing how Blair's rep was damaged by joining forces with President Bush to invade Iraq to find no existent weapons of mass destruction.

When the lights came up, I thought that the Queen was one of the most amazing fillms I have seen in a while. The performances were excellent and the screenplay by Peter Morgan was well written.

Come Oscar time I know that Helen Mirren is the one to beat. She embodied the Queen not only physically but emotionally as well. This is her third time playing a monarch after Queen Charlotte in the Madness of King George (her first Oscar nomination) and Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth I and you know what they say third time is the charm.

Oscar Nominations are out

This morning I got up to watch the Oscar nominations. There were many surprises about what movies were left out of certain categories and some surprises at who were nominated.

The first surprise was Dreamgirls being shut out of Best Picture and Best Director despite winning the Golden Globe and racking up eight Oscar nods (three alone in Best Song). I saw the movie over the weekend and I thought I was watching a potential Best Picture nominee (I try to watch all the Best Picture nominees before the ceremony so that I can make my predictions better). But I was happy to see that Jennifer Hudson, who was amazing in the film, and Eddie Murphy, also great, get nominated.

A welcome surprise was the nominations for Canadian Ryan Gosling. I am happy for him and sure goes a long way from his days on Breaker High! And I am happy to see that Abigail Breslin got nominated for Little Miss Sunshine and the film got nominated for Best Picture too! (Guess what I am renting this weekend!)

So the Best Picture race is this: Babel, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen. I didn't know what I was going to this Saturday but now I know, I am going to watch The Queen.

An interesting race and from the looks of it no clear front runner. If I were to bet money on it (but won't) I think it is going to be Babel (and that is only because it won the Golden Globe -but then so did Brokeback Mountain last year) So what do I know.

But I am willing to bet money (but I won't) that these three people will win the Oscar in their respective categories: Helen Mirren, Forrest Whittaker and Jennifer Hudson.

Looking forward to February 25th as the Oscar's is my Super Bowl.

Cheers!

Masterpiece Theatre - Jane Eyre, Part One

Words cannot describe how much I love this story. It was way back in the early 1990s when I first became exposed to this incredible love story by Charlotte Bronte which is when I saw the 1973 BBC version that starred Sorcha Cusack and Michael Jayston as Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester on a Sunday afternoon. I completely fell in love with the story of a plain governess looking for happiness and thinking she found it with her employer but learns of his dark secret.

After watching that mini-series, I read the book (something I never do) and I instantly became a fan. But I soon forgot about Jane and her Rochester until 1996 when flipping through a movie magazine I noticed a new version by Franco Zefferilli and starring Charlotte Gainsbourgh and William Hurt. I rushed to theatre when it opened and I became entraced with the story all over again and its magnificant score but it was an incomplete version. I soon was on a mission to find a complete version again like the 1973 version but with better production values.

While watching A&E's version of Emma, I came across a commercial for a new version of Jane Eyre that would air in the fall of 1997 and starring Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds. I fell in love with that version, while incomplete in its telling of Jane's story, had the right production values, a great score, awesome chemistry between the two leads and while not perfect thought I found the one.

By now, I sound obsessed with the story and I think it must be in my genes as my paternal grandmother really loved the story. To further my obsession, I discovered that Toronto in 1996 was holding the world premiere staging of Jane Eyre the musical starring Marla Schaffel and Anthony Crivello. Unfortunately, I never got to see that staging but managed to buy what is now the rare cast recording of the Toronto production and was entranced by Ms. Schaffel's and Mr. Crivello's performance and the music was awesome for a lack of a better word.

Even after discovering the Samanthn Morton version, I came across the 1983 production of Jane Eyre (thinking it was the 1973 one) that starred Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke. I loved this version too because a) it was complete b) loved Timothy Dalton, he, up until that point, was the best looking Rochester and loved how he delivered his lines. But what bothered me was a) the production values -real exterior, fake interior (you can tell it was filmed on a soundstage and not at a real stately home) and that Zelah Clarke was really short and there was no chemistry between the two.

So now it became my mission to see every single version of Jane Eyre. Up unti this point I've mentioned four versions that I have seen. The next version that I got to see was when Jane Eyre the musical moved to Broadway and I got to see it twice in NYC still with Marla Schaffel in the title role but now with the handsome James Barbour as Rochester. Their singing conveyed the passionate nature of the two characters very well and Schaffed deserved her Tony nomination and should have won.

Then I saw the 1944 version with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine and I disliked that version because it totally didn't follow the book at all. Then the 1970 version had a great score by John Williams but Susannah York was way too old as Jane and George C. Scott was awful as Rochester. And the look of the story was washed out because of the age of the film.

Yes I am getting to Masterpiece Theatre's version of Jane Eyre. What lacked in every single version that I've seen, even the 1997 version was the intense, romantic and passionate chemistry between the two leads and the Masterpiece Theatre/BBC version has that in spades.

When Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens are on screen together it is electric, I feel their attraction to each other. And after seeing part one over and over again on tape, I still feel it. What is also superior is the fact that there is no narration. All other versions depended on Jane's narration to tell us (the audience) what she is feeling. But the great thing about Ruth Wilson's performance is that we don't need narration to tell us what she is feeling, we see it on screen. We feel what she feels. Ruth Wilson is the best Jane Eyre I have ever seen and I think she is more beautiful in this role than she is as Jewel Diamond in Suburban Shootout.

And Toby Stephens is very sexy as Rochester and we see his pain of his past. The production values of this production is superb. I love that fact that the filmmakers used Haddon Hall for Thornfield as it is the second time it has played host to this literary household after the 1996 Zefferilli version. The music by Rob Lane is moving and while the production short changed her childhood (I mean they got Georgie Henley -of Narnia fame- to play young Jane that they could have used her better) But so far they got the core love story right and I am so looking forward to part two next week as it looks totally awesome.

I think I have found my one Jane Eyre, the version that I love above all else as it is so far complete (as long as they get the Rochester/Jane part right, which they have so far), excellent chemistry between the two leads, great production values and great score.

I gave up watching Battlestar Galactica to see this and would do it again next week and anytime a version of Jane Eyre is on.

Yes I am obessed but I can't help but relate to her story.

Looking forward to part two next week.