At the risk of sounding ungallant, let me begin by observing that Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Jane Austen's sister in this film, is a comparatively plain actress, or at any rate photographs as such, and is here made up and photographed to look even plainer than she is; as is Julie Walters, playing her mother; whereas Anne Hathaway, the film's Jane, who is comparatively pretty, is made up and photographed to look prettier than she is. Moreover, Martin and Walters have been dressed to look of the period, or so it appeared to me, whereas Hathaway has somehow been costumed, or her costumes tailored, for a Hollywood costume romance; so that the other two tend to look like her servants. The heroines of other Jane Austen films haven't needed the scales tipped so much in their favor--which is to say, they were better. And here my ungallantry must be qualified, or redirected: Martin, in her plainness--if she is plain--is to my eyes a much more attractive woman than Hathaway in her prettiness--if she is pretty--and to both eyes and ears a much more interesting performer; Hathaway, in interviews, comes across as bland and nasal and dull, and so do her characters on screen, including this one. According to interviews on the DVD Austen was teenaged when the experience here being dramatized is supposed to have happened; Hathaway seems to be in her 30s (except in a final scene where, apart from her want of grey hair, she seems twenty years older than Austen lived to be); according to the interviews Austen was lively, disrespectful, and boat-rocking and that was how the filmmakers wanted to show her--well, they picked the wrong woman to do it, for Hathaway's Jane comes off as cold and hollow and schoolteacherish, in fact as a pill. However, learning of the filmmakers' intent clarifies the title, which I hadn't understood before, since the film does _not_ show Jane becoming anything: she's writing at the beginning, she's still writing at the end, and she behaves identically throughout, with only minor modulations.
I take it that the details of this story, or almost-story, are mostly unknown and were mostly worked up for the film; two of the incidents seemed new and interesting, the rest seemed borrowed, from Austen's novels and from other films. The photography looks as one would expect; indeed, so many of the shots are so exactly what I'd foreseen that for a while I expected a half parody, like Shakespeare in Love. The secondary characters--with the notable exception of a (presumably) real-life Lady Catherine, played by Maggie Smith--are little attended to, especially the lesser males: Leo Bill, who made a likable Edward in the latest Sense and Sensibility, barely registers as the boyfriend of Jane's sister, and whoever played Jane's happy-go-lucky brother is just an echo of Austen's Tom Bertram. The music sounds unaccountably Irish--unaccountably, that is, until one finds out this is an Irish film.
Yet in the end I thought the film worked, in a way, despite its oddities and deficiencies, and despite my having to watch it around the central character (cf. Kevin Costner's Robin Hood). I believe this was due primarily to James McAvoy as Austen's love interest, and secondarily to Laurence Fox as his opposite; they're believable, complicated--largely but not wholly likable--and ultimately sympathetic and touching; and through their eyes, rather than through the actress's performance, I saw Jane Austen as she might have been. The feeling they conveyed was not a sense of great tragedy or blighted romance, more a wistful regret for something that it would have been nice to have but that wasn't practically possible; like a feeling recalled from childhood of having gone to a party at a fancy house and having thought, oh, why can't I live in a house like this?--not the sharp pang of heartbreak but the dull ache of a disappointment known to be unreasonable, the recognition of it, the resignation to it, and the bearing with it, partly in retrospect; and since life is largely a procession of disappointments discovered, accepted, and borne with, both at the time and in retrospect, the film inevitably strikes a chord.
I take it that the details of this story, or almost-story, are mostly unknown and were mostly worked up for the film; two of the incidents seemed new and interesting, the rest seemed borrowed, from Austen's novels and from other films. The photography looks as one would expect; indeed, so many of the shots are so exactly what I'd foreseen that for a while I expected a half parody, like Shakespeare in Love. The secondary characters--with the notable exception of a (presumably) real-life Lady Catherine, played by Maggie Smith--are little attended to, especially the lesser males: Leo Bill, who made a likable Edward in the latest Sense and Sensibility, barely registers as the boyfriend of Jane's sister, and whoever played Jane's happy-go-lucky brother is just an echo of Austen's Tom Bertram. The music sounds unaccountably Irish--unaccountably, that is, until one finds out this is an Irish film.
Yet in the end I thought the film worked, in a way, despite its oddities and deficiencies, and despite my having to watch it around the central character (cf. Kevin Costner's Robin Hood). I believe this was due primarily to James McAvoy as Austen's love interest, and secondarily to Laurence Fox as his opposite; they're believable, complicated--largely but not wholly likable--and ultimately sympathetic and touching; and through their eyes, rather than through the actress's performance, I saw Jane Austen as she might have been. The feeling they conveyed was not a sense of great tragedy or blighted romance, more a wistful regret for something that it would have been nice to have but that wasn't practically possible; like a feeling recalled from childhood of having gone to a party at a fancy house and having thought, oh, why can't I live in a house like this?--not the sharp pang of heartbreak but the dull ache of a disappointment known to be unreasonable, the recognition of it, the resignation to it, and the bearing with it, partly in retrospect; and since life is largely a procession of disappointments discovered, accepted, and borne with, both at the time and in retrospect, the film inevitably strikes a chord.