lily_handmaiden

So, I saw Becoming Jane on Saturday. And I really liked it.

I think, had I known nothing whatsoever about Jane Austen going in, I would probably have enjoyed it for itself, as it was. There were some really lovely performances. Anne Hathaway was okay. Her voice annoyed me a little at times (maybe she's a little more nasal than the Jane Austen in my head, I don't know; finally I just said to myself, 'Look, you don't know Jane Austen didn't sound like that, so just deal), but not so much toward the end. The movie had a few good laughs but, especially for the kind of movie it was with the subject it had, could have used a lot more. Like people keep saying, it would all be well and good if it was trying to be like Shakespeare in Love, or even remotely light-hearted throughout, but it's not. 

Since I do know quite a bit about Jane Austen, I enjoyed the movie partly for the good parts that were there-- and there were some-- and partly because it was so much fun to make fun of. When it's out on DVD, Whitney and I are going to write a parody. We were probably really annoying in the theater again; we couldn't shut up. Here are some highlights:

 

I have some good news and some aggravating news. The Compendium people have heard the aggravating news before, and so has Bethany... but it is possible that my readership extends beyond this, at least to Whitney (look at that; I've mentioned you again!) and Jenaba and ABFG, so I am going to post it here because I CAN. 

But first the good news. Some of you may have heard of a movie hitting the US this summer entitled Becoming Jane. It is supposed to be a biopic about my girl Miss Jane-- Jane Austen, that is. Unfortunately, it has quickly become apparent that the movie is not so much with the accuracy to historical fact and is, in short, a Made-Up Story. This news grieved me to hear. The bad part is that they're marketing it (as they did with King Arthur, and you will remember it bugged me then, too) as The Absolute and Factual Historical Truth Beyond Dispute in All Ways. I am here to tell you now, it is not that. Heed the disclaimer: Becoming Jane is a Made-Up Story. Yes, Jane Austen did briefly know a young man named Tom Lefroy and they were infatuated with each other. But he was a) a respectable young man, unlike in the movie and b) practically engaged to someone else, so Jane's mentor, his aunt (I think?) Mrs. Lefroy c) encouraged him to go away so as not to entangle Jane's feelings which were d) not yet very serious, and they e) more than probably never met again. He could not be fairly called the inspiration for all of her best work; that is silly. He was not anywhere near the love of her life. As plot details have come out, Janeites everywhere have been up in arms, dealing out liberal punishment with the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness (tm Austenblog). 

Per a reviewer on Austenblog, however, the situation is not so bad as it was generally believed to be. My main problem was the mangling of historical fact which is absolutely known. The rumor was that, for example, they were going to have Jane's sister Cassandra get married. Which she never did. Because her fiancee died of the yellow fever. She and Jane lived their whole lives together; well, Jane's whole life, anyway. However, a person who went to see an early screening said that the first half doesn't have all that much stuff that is Made Up at all! Cassandra does get engaged, but her poor fiancee is dead by the end of the movie. No vows exchanged. I hate to be relieved about Thomas Fowle's dying, but... well, it should be accurately represented. Anything else is unfaithful to his memory and Cassandra's. Of course, the second half of the movie takes some major license, and Jane does a thing or two that she would never, ever have done (whited out for spoiler):  HALF-ATTEMPTED ELOPEMENT WTF!. However, this seems like more the kind of thing you can take dramatic license with. Like, we don't have anything written down saying that Jane did or did not do this thing, and while of course she didn't because all of her characters who do it are irresponsible and stupid, which indicates that she looked down on the practice... the fact that it's in the movie doesn't bother me so much, as long as we all keep in mind that the movie is a Made-Up Story. The other quibbles with the movie have to do with the costumes being from all over the place, time-wise, the dancing being wonky, and the whole thing looking too much like the 2005 version of P&P. These things don't bother me too much. I think it's actually kind of smart of them to play off of the most recent version of Jane Austen's work that their target audience would have seen, and it could even be cool. The period things... meh. I'm not a purist when it comes to movies. I liked the 2005 P&P. I'm a very forgiving audience member, and if I intend to like something I usually do. This report gives me hope that there will be plenty to enjoy in Becoming Jane, and that pleases me. I now want to see it once again. Hooray!

Now for the aggravating (Ally, if you read this... and you remember who it is in reference to [not you, I promise]... um... well, you can beat me up if you want to. I won't be hypocritical. I just feel the need to vent this. I don't expect agreement or even comprehension.):

Something happened in Women in Fiction the other day that really pissed me off. There's this rather cynical girl in my class, who is just way too objective in my opinion. This particular day she began a comment with, "What I don't like about Jane Eyre..." or "What's wrong with Jane Eyre is..." or maybe even, "The reason I don't like Jane Eyre," I can't remember, and something about how she has no follow-through and constantly undermines herself and sabotages her own happiness and sells herself short of living up to her ambitions, or something. Which is kind of crap anyway. I mean, do you have no concept of having to balance a liberal mentality with a conservative time period, GEEZ! Just because Jane's ambitions are not yours does not mean that she is not a fully self-possessed woman who achieves what she wants because she is determined and has a will to do so! And this girl did the same thing with Elizabeth Bennet ("The thing I don't like about Elizabeth, the reason I just don't like her is that she's vain and selfish." PLEASE! There is a difference between selfishness and self-respect!).

This same person adores Fevvers, the heroine of Nights at the Circus, which takes place in 1899 but was written in the 1980’s, with 20/20 hindsight and a modern mentality. The worlds can’t even be compared. As I wrote in my notebook, “No. You don’t get to say a word when you like this cartoon of a woman and you insult those who do not have wings.” (Okay, maybe she's not that cartoonish, but literally, Fevvers has wings. Are you incapable of seeing a woman metaphorically fly?) While a modern author can perceive the means of breaking out of social structures, how were Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte supposed to do the same when they were fighting for the simple privilege of women being considered as rational human beings? They could manipulate and subvert those structures and make them work for them. When Jane and Lizzy get married, it is no different from a woman today deciding to get married. You can’t say that’s wrong. They earn for themselves the option of choice. That is not a cop-out. That is not weakness. Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are remarkable women. And…

I realize why this bothers me so much. It is because I am the opposite of objective. I always want to be on these characters' sides. To defend them, to the death. Why do I feel this way? Because. For me, this girl saying this was like her attacking one of my friends. It was like her saying, "What I don't like about Marten is..." or "The reason I don't like Bethany is..."

And what's a person's natural response to this kind of attack? You want to beat that person up. To defend your friend, because he or she is your friend and YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY FRIENDS LIKE THAT.

Of course, I care about and love my real friends more than Jane and Lizzy, because Jane and Lizzy are fictional. I do realize this. But at the same time, throughout my life, there have been times when it has felt like these fictional heroines-- Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Jo March-- were the only ones really there for me; when I was alone and I was upset I could imagine them there, I could imagine what they'd say; if I felt like no one in my real experience could understand what I felt like, there would be someone not real who I felt like could, had she been real. It’s not the same as defending a fandom, like I have done in the past with Star Wars, etc. That’s more like, if you don’t get it, that’s your problem. This is more personal than that.

And that is why there was almost a smackdown in Women in Fiction.

In the words of Jane Austen (via Henry Tilney, one of my foremost pretend boyfriends), “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” In this spirit, I have introduced a new lj tag, “the intolerably stupid,” to deal specifically with people who piss me off with their literary stupidity.

But what makes it more frustrating is that I feel like I let Jane down. I wasn't able to defend her like I should have. For one thing, I felt like there was no opening to talk, and second, I wasn't sure what to say and couldn't trust myself to give the subject the coherence it deserves. Still, if I don't defend these heroines, who will? So I’m venting a bit here. And now I am finished.

Okay, over Fall Break I went with Whitney and ABFG to see Marie Antoinette. It was a very weird movie. Very pretty, but very weird. Very, very pretty. Very, very weird.

Versailles is, of course, gorgeous. The costumes were just breathtakingly awesome. Despite everything, if I were, say, Rose Byrne, I would have agreed to do this weird-ass movie solely based on the awesomeness of the costumes. 

The problem is... the movie is completely and totally carried by its prettiness. And it is just pretty enough to get you through two hours and fifteen minutes without wanting to scream. 

The problem is, the movie has no real plot. It's based on a single biography of Marie Antoinette, and it seems to be trying to simply transfer a biography into film. This does not work well. A movie needs a central conflict. It can be about a person's life, okay, fine, but it needs to focus on something that carries through that person's life. If they had made the central theme of the movie Marie Antoinette's lack of privacy due to constant and complete exposure to the public eye, it would have worked much better. And at some points it seemed like they might do that, but didn't quite make the connection explicitly enough. I think part of this may have been the fault of some of the actors. One, in particular. Kirsten Dunst just could not carry this movie. I was withholding judgment on her, but... no. I am pretty well convinced that another actress could have done something better with that part. What made me decide this was that there is this part where Marie Antoinette gets yet another letter from her mother condemning her for not yet doing the sex with Louis and producing an heir, and she is leaning against a wall that somewhat matches her dress and she slides down the wall just barely holding the letter between her fingers, and it's a very pretty scene so you don't notice at first, but... her face is completely blank. I mean, there's blank because the character feels numb, and then there's just blank. Her eyes are dead. Her face is dead. There is nothing going on there. And I compared that in my head to the part of Pride and Prejudice '05 where Elizabeth has just refused Mr. Darcy and is feeling numb and terrible and she just stands and stares for a while and in that part of the movie, on Keira's face, you can see what Elizabeth is feeling. She gets it across. Kirsten does not do that, ever.

Also, they needed to pick a style of music and stick with it. They switched between classical and modern music seemingly randomly. The only pattern I can think of is that maybe the music went modern every time there was debauchery going on? The classical score was very pretty, and there were some parts where I liked the effect of the modern music, but they should have just gone with one of those styles all the way through. They also should have picked an accent and stuck with it. Everybody came with the accent they were born with and kept that accent. Marie Antoinette was American, the Duchess of Polignac was British, Marie Therese was French... it was weird.

Some of the supporting performances were really good. I didn't have much of a problem with the weird casting-- Molly Shannon and Rip Torn and so on. And I really liked Rose Byrne (former handmaiden to Senator Amidala, and also Briseis in Troy-- apprently selling your soul to George Lucas gets you hot naked men and pretty dresses) and the guy who played Louis XVI. Rose was just... fabulously fun, and I wanted to give Louis a hug. Also, the little girls who played Marie Therese were really French and THE CUTEST CHILDREN EVER. They were just toddling along, babbling in French, and it was adorable. I wanted to take one home.

Here is briefly how the movie went.

Marie Antoinette, dressed like Alice in Wonderland to convey that she is supposed to be 14 even though Kirsten Dunst is just not, is sent off from Austria to France with her pug dog, who I think should get the Oscar, by her mother Not Judi Dench. On the border, Molly Shannon and Moaning Myrtle (bff) strip her and take away her doggy and give her new clothes. She meets Louis, who is like, "Ewww, a girrrrl!" King Louis the Rip Torn is pervy, and Molly and Myrtle are catty.

There is a gorgeous wedding scene, and we admire the pretty. There is a wedding night and no sex. In the morning Marie is stripped again in front of everybody. She makes friends with some Nice Comtesse.

Many more scenes of the same pass by. Marie refuses to make friends with Madame du Barry, because Madame du Barry is a whore. There is some controversy about this, and about the lack of sex. Not Judi Dench writes to Marie about it a lot. Finally, Marie comes up to Madame du Barry and says, "There are a lot of people here today" in order to get everyone off her back. That scene is actually kind of good.

There are more scenes of pretty to admire. Some random woman has a baby, and Marie cries because she is still a virgin ("DAMMIT!"). Marie copes with this by first sliding down a wall (Kirsten Dunst wonders, "Do I need to pick up groceries on the way home?") and then by having a montage of shoes and really yummy looking food. It looks kind of like if Clueless was a period movie (and that period movie was not Emma). She goes to some opera and we have the pleasure of being introduced to Rose Byrne, Duchess of Something. Marie and Rose Byrne, Duchess of Something are now BFF. Molly and Myrtle will now disappear from the narrative, never to be seen again. Rose and Marie drag their spouses to a spendidly gorgeous masquerade ball, where Marie flirts with some Swedish army officer. You would think at this point that something was going to happen betweeen them, but he does not appear again for another good half hour at the very least. Probably 45 minutes.

Maybe it is at this point that Marie and Louis are just standing around waiting for something to happen when some people run up and say that Louis the Rip Torn is dead and they now rule France.

There is a birthday party of debauchery, and that is also pretty and there are more shoes and food and fun games which involve sticking paper on your head and guessing whether you are Mozart or Madame du Barry. I totally want to play that game. At this point public opinion of Marie is not too high. This is expressed through showing a portrait of her and spattering, headline-style across it, words like "Harlot!" I... don't know, but I am not making this up.

Marie's brother visits and gives Louis some manly talking-to and finally there is sex. And then there is a baby. Publicly. Ew. Later on, Marie builds herself a little fake countryside for her to take her adorable daughter to and play with lambs. Marie Therese, the adorable daughter, tries to ignore Kirsten Dunst saying, "Look! Beautiful!" She points at a flower and says, "Bleau." "Yes!" says Kirsten Dunst, excited. "Blue!" Marie puts on her very own opera. At some point that Swedish officer from waaaay back when shows up again and they do the sex a lot. Then he leaves, and Kirsten expresses a mild amount of regret.

There are more silent scenes of pretty. Look how pretty Versailles is!

Marie is staring out the window and has a random fantasy sequence of her Swedish officer boyfriend in the midst of a bloody battlefield. He will never be seen again, nor will his fate be explained. 

...I know.

Not Judi Dench dies while Marie is standing around waiting for people to run up to her and deliver some kind of news in the midst of the pretty. She writes a voiceover letter to her brother (who we never see or hear from), "I am devastated by our mother's death" or something, and Whitney and I both burst out laughing because it is said in a monotone, the same voice one might use to say, "I picked up some rice at the grocery store." Thank you, Kirsten.

There are more babies and some babies die, expressed by the hanging up and taking down and re-hanging of a portrait. Public sentiment begins to turn against Louis and Marie, as word spread arounds around the country that Marie responded to the plight of the peasants with, "Let them eat cake." "That's ridiculous!" says Marie. "That was just a fantasy sequence! Where would I have gotten lipstick that dark? And why would I be wearing it in the bathtub? It makes no sense!"

But things just get worse until finally Nice Comtesse and Rose Byrne, Duchess of Something are sent away for their own safety. There is a mob in the night and they're calling for the Queen, so she steps out onto the balcony and is all, "Don't cry for me, French peasants," and the peasants are like, "Dude, why did she just come out here and stand on the balcony and lean over all dramatically like that? Huh. Oh, well. KILLLLL THEMMMM!" In response to the loudness outside, Louis stands up in front of his family as though he can protect them. Awww. And then Marie Therese comes up and takes her daddy's hand. AWWWWWW. 

Then Marie and Louis and their two living children leave Versailles. ("Get your stupid veil out of my face, Kirsten!" says the baby dauphin.) Marie stares out the carriage window at the retreating pretty. Louis is like, "Hey, Marie, you look like you might be having an emotion." And Marie says, "I"m just saying goodbye."

Very Abrupt Fin.

And Whitney and I look at each other and simultaneously say, "What?"