TAoJE - The Lie and The Truth
Feb. 21st, 2014 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe Autobiography of Jane Eyre
Ep 55 The Lie
Very dramatic second half, although not quite working (there needed to be some kind of more blatant cut for the time taken between Jane leaving with Grace and Jane returning), but it was distressing to see her so upset.
That line about knowing Vera Wang’s name but not knowing who she is was A1.
So, we started with Jane still trying to convince us and herself that she’s happy with the decisions she’s made, like the dress...then Grace being weird and forceful about a meeting. They went and avoided the wedding for the revelation altogether (which I get from a budgetary point of view) so even readers were left curious about what exactly happened to wreck Jane so – although the video as it stands and Jane posting it really makes no sense, but I should just give up on that and enjoy the drama.
Ep 56 The Truth
Epicness.
But I have two big points: one is that it’s all very well making Jane’s reason for leaving Rochester’s mistreatment of other women (I still think that he lied to her and their relationship is adulterous works as enough reason to leave within the context of her faith) and I can see why it appealed as a modern take on the text. However, I’m not entirely convinced that Jane would have seen it all now, there’s some of it that she should have seen before (Rochester’s treatment of Blanche and, to a degree, Grace) even if she never suspected ‘M’/‘Em?’.
BUT ADELE. Jane’s always known he’s been a poor father to Adele and rarely held him accountable for it or pushed him on it and tbh they haven’t really thought through the ramifications of making Adele more of a character (whereas Charlotte could have Jane not care that much and it was fine in the context of the age and how she'd written her) and how therefore the adults have more responsibility towards Adele and if the characters don’t take that up, they become less sympathetic. Plus, making Adele the daughter of the marriage makes it totally unconscionable to post the vid where Rochester discloses the history. The 'protecting people' line was guff anyway, because we’ve seen Mason on the vids. Anyone who would know him and his sister and Edward in his college days (koff Blanche and Warren for example) would be able to tell to put two and two together, so the internet knows that Bertha is a mentally ill addict without her consent, and the internet knows the truth about Adele’s mother before Adele does. NICE. Not.
I will allow – I am too lazy to check – that Jane was talking about Adele when she said that Edward needed to tell ‘her’ the truth, although I sort of thought she’d been talking about Grace up till then?
Those (major) quibbles asides, I am really admiring of the length of this. I liked that we saw the room from other perspectives and in a somewhat chaotic state to go with limp Jane. I loved the visual of the first part even if I don’t believe that Jane would be in any state to post the first vid and position the camera there and let it run. The idea of her wanting it on for safety for her conversation with Edward, yes, up to a point. The point being posting it.
Anyway, the story? What broke me a little was the offhandedness of Edward's reference to his father killing himself in the middle of everything. I thought she did a brilliant job acting-wise) of showing Jane listening. You could get that she was empathising, partly because she isn’t much older now than he was then. But of course, saying ‘your wife’ and finding out the whole truth and facing up to what it meant was entirely different and painful and emotional.
He was good too, in between the quiet, almost numbness, of the beginning with those moments of dissonance when he was reliving ‘the good times’ to the brokenness, although while doing little (which is such a lot performance wise) she was the focus of attention in a way. Because he might have wheedled/manipulated her into staying for a day, but that’s it. And at some point Jane is going to realise that. She sort of does, because she’s decided to go and said as much, and decided too that it’s better for him to make amends and learn how to treat other people better and for herself to go to do what she wants, which was never the wedding on the terms that were set out for her,
But the bottle of water, the fact that it was a confidentiality clause that got to most previous nannies, whereas Jane was filming and posting so much to the internet, how the sun was in his eyes and that Jane got to say her say after all that? And the choice for her to kiss him on the shoulder, which was intimate but distancing. Epic.
(Flawed, but epic. I mean all the little cuts that we have to ignore, which I’m willing to, although I think they could have scripted in in!universe breaks. But I’m not all caps about it as I have been in certain episodes, like the last one, mainly because there should have been cuts but there weren’t.)
Ep 55 The Lie
Very dramatic second half, although not quite working (there needed to be some kind of more blatant cut for the time taken between Jane leaving with Grace and Jane returning), but it was distressing to see her so upset.
That line about knowing Vera Wang’s name but not knowing who she is was A1.
So, we started with Jane still trying to convince us and herself that she’s happy with the decisions she’s made, like the dress...then Grace being weird and forceful about a meeting. They went and avoided the wedding for the revelation altogether (which I get from a budgetary point of view) so even readers were left curious about what exactly happened to wreck Jane so – although the video as it stands and Jane posting it really makes no sense, but I should just give up on that and enjoy the drama.
Ep 56 The Truth
Epicness.
But I have two big points: one is that it’s all very well making Jane’s reason for leaving Rochester’s mistreatment of other women (I still think that he lied to her and their relationship is adulterous works as enough reason to leave within the context of her faith) and I can see why it appealed as a modern take on the text. However, I’m not entirely convinced that Jane would have seen it all now, there’s some of it that she should have seen before (Rochester’s treatment of Blanche and, to a degree, Grace) even if she never suspected ‘M’/‘Em?’.
BUT ADELE. Jane’s always known he’s been a poor father to Adele and rarely held him accountable for it or pushed him on it and tbh they haven’t really thought through the ramifications of making Adele more of a character (whereas Charlotte could have Jane not care that much and it was fine in the context of the age and how she'd written her) and how therefore the adults have more responsibility towards Adele and if the characters don’t take that up, they become less sympathetic. Plus, making Adele the daughter of the marriage makes it totally unconscionable to post the vid where Rochester discloses the history. The 'protecting people' line was guff anyway, because we’ve seen Mason on the vids. Anyone who would know him and his sister and Edward in his college days (koff Blanche and Warren for example) would be able to tell to put two and two together, so the internet knows that Bertha is a mentally ill addict without her consent, and the internet knows the truth about Adele’s mother before Adele does. NICE. Not.
I will allow – I am too lazy to check – that Jane was talking about Adele when she said that Edward needed to tell ‘her’ the truth, although I sort of thought she’d been talking about Grace up till then?
Those (major) quibbles asides, I am really admiring of the length of this. I liked that we saw the room from other perspectives and in a somewhat chaotic state to go with limp Jane. I loved the visual of the first part even if I don’t believe that Jane would be in any state to post the first vid and position the camera there and let it run. The idea of her wanting it on for safety for her conversation with Edward, yes, up to a point. The point being posting it.
Anyway, the story? What broke me a little was the offhandedness of Edward's reference to his father killing himself in the middle of everything. I thought she did a brilliant job acting-wise) of showing Jane listening. You could get that she was empathising, partly because she isn’t much older now than he was then. But of course, saying ‘your wife’ and finding out the whole truth and facing up to what it meant was entirely different and painful and emotional.
He was good too, in between the quiet, almost numbness, of the beginning with those moments of dissonance when he was reliving ‘the good times’ to the brokenness, although while doing little (which is such a lot performance wise) she was the focus of attention in a way. Because he might have wheedled/manipulated her into staying for a day, but that’s it. And at some point Jane is going to realise that. She sort of does, because she’s decided to go and said as much, and decided too that it’s better for him to make amends and learn how to treat other people better and for herself to go to do what she wants, which was never the wedding on the terms that were set out for her,
But the bottle of water, the fact that it was a confidentiality clause that got to most previous nannies, whereas Jane was filming and posting so much to the internet, how the sun was in his eyes and that Jane got to say her say after all that? And the choice for her to kiss him on the shoulder, which was intimate but distancing. Epic.
(Flawed, but epic. I mean all the little cuts that we have to ignore, which I’m willing to, although I think they could have scripted in in!universe breaks. But I’m not all caps about it as I have been in certain episodes, like the last one, mainly because there should have been cuts but there weren’t.)
