I just saw Becoming Jane with my friend, Gwen. It's a pretty film, the scenery is gorgeous, the music is wonderful, the acting is good, there are some great one-liners and banter, the story is a nice idea - everyone seems to want Jane Austen to have had a love life. But I don't buy it. Not for a minute.
In essence, the film was a thinly veiled version of Pride and Prejudice. Becoming Jane tries too hard to make Jane Austen's life fit the story of Pride and Prejudice, which doesn't do anything any justice because it tries to come across as fact. If the film had been marketed as a fictional supposition, I might not be so critical. Austen was a superb writer because she knew the value of composites - you take everything you see and hear in life and everyone you meet, and you pick and choose what resonates most with you and mix them together for character, setting, and plot. That's good fiction, and she was so good at it because she was such a keen observer of what was around her - you can see this in her letters to Cassandra.
However, when you're presenting a biopic, which is how this film disguises itself, I think it's reasonable to assume that you're going to get the facts right, which this film doesn't do.The story presented here is that Irishman Tom Lefroy is reckless and irresponsible and not too keen on learning to be a lawyer. His uncle sends him to his family in the country "to teach him a lesson." Tom at first hates the country, and comes across as a snob. He meets Jane and criticizes her writing as being merely "accomplished." In Austen language and times, "accomplished" is something of an insult - it means you've got all the usual and expected qualifications to be a decent wife - you paint, you draw, you sing or play an instrument, you can read a little French or German, you know all the dances, you sew, you can arrange flowers, etc. So Tom and Jane start out loathing each other (though the loathing is more on Jane's side as Tom just finds her amusing), then they become friendly, then fall in love. In the meantime, Jane has received a proposal from Mr Wisley, who is (I think) supposed to be a version of Mr Bigg-Withers, who really did propose to Jane Austen. She declines, then accepts, then declines. Lady Gresham is displeased by the way Jane has treated her nephew - how dare a poor clergyman's daughter decline the offer of a rich man? Lady Gresham is meant to be the thinly veiled version of Lady Catherine of Pride and Prejudice. Jane's mother isn't too pleased either because money is everything. Affection for your spouse is nice to have, but not necessary, as far as she's concerned. The irony here is that Mrs Austen married a poor clergyman, which she apparently regrets doing, and it's painful to watch Mr Austen hear what his wife really thinks of him. The later scenes in which Mrs Austen is comforting her daughters don't come across as genuine after this.
Tom does learn a lesson - Jane is more remarkable than he had at first supposed - so he proposes to her, and goes to his uncle to get consent for the marriage. His uncle refuses - odd because his uncle is the one that sent him into the country in the first place; they never explain this satisfactorily. (Historically, the Lefroy family didn't want them to get engaged, so there was never even a proposal - I assume this is Hollywood's way of explaining things because if they had stuck to the facts, the film would have ended here, and since the Tom-Jane relationship is the main part of the story, the screenwriters had to change it and drag it out). Suddenly, Tom is going to marry someone else. Tom and Jane meet again, he asks her to run away with him and elope. She agrees, and they leave home, but Jane soon discovers that without his uncle's money, Tom can't support his many siblings, and his uncle will stop Tom's allowance entirely if he marries Jane. She can't let him sacrifice his family, so she leaves him and goes back home. They meet again, years later, at a concert. Tom had gone home to Ireland, married, and had children, one of whom he brought with him to the concert, and who is, of course, a fan of Jane's books. The ending is pure fabrication, as historically Tom and Jane never met again after Tom's family interfered to make sure they never got engaged.
You can almost hear the screenwriters cursing Austen for not having had a more exciting life, at least by Hollywood standards, thereby forcing them to spin it to make it more exciting. How disrespectful is that? In the end, they had to present the facts - Jane and her sister never married, and they lived quietly for the rest of their lives, but the writers kept putting off the finality for as long as possible, which was tiring. Just when you thought the film was finally over, no, there's more. I guess the poetry of a quiet life isn't allowed in film. Sad.
I couldn't fully accept Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen either. Hollywood rarely goes for the less glamorous person for a lead part. If they had cast Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Cassandra, as Jane, that would have been more believable. Martin is a great actress, I've seen her in several things - Bleak House, for instance - but I strongly suspect she wasn't considered pretty enough for the lead. James McAvoy, Mr Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, played Tom Lefroy; the film assumes he is the basis for Mr. Darcy. I don't buy that either. Austen's letters show that she was quite taken with Tom from the get-go.
James Cromwell and Julie Walters (Mrs. Weasley) were great as Mr and Mrs Austen, though they were made to seem too much like Mr and Mrs Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall) was perfectly crusty and snobbish as Lady Gresham. The Henry and Eliza subplot, though historically true, was irritating. Both characters came across as cold.
In my opinion, if you're going to take liberties with Jane Austen's life, then do what Stephanie Barron did - have Jane turn detective in a series of fiction novels and never try and force the idea of them as truth. This series of books is written in the form of journals as Jane might have written them. Barron takes the known facts about Jane and the historical events occurring at the time, and has fun extrapolating what she might have been like as a detective. It works because Barron never expects you to believe it's real. It's just a fun idea.
The highlights of the afternoon were chattering with Gwen and watching the previews before the film - The Jane Austen Book Club and Elizabeth: The Golden Age in particular. Cate Blanchett was scarily wonderful in her first go as Elizabeth I (was that really almost 10 years ago?). It looks like she pulls it off again in the sequel - if it's as good as it looks to be, she may actually get the Oscar this time for it. And the scrumptious Clive Owen is playing Sir Walter Raleigh. Can't beat that!
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