Becoming Jane

Seldom does one go to a movie with high expectations and ends up having them fulfilled, but Becoming Jane is an exception in this case. I was charmed by Anne Hathaway's turn in Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada and couldn't really understand the outcry resulting in her being cast as Jane Austen and after having watched the movie I know for sure Anne Hathaway was the right person for the role.

Hot on the heels of 2005's Pride and Prejudice this movie offers a look into the early years of a spirited Jane Austen and her encounter with a man who could have formed the basis of one of her most famous literary characters Mr Darcy.

I have to say this movie is without a doubt one of the BEST period films I have ever seen. Not only is it visually stunning but the performances from everyone are superb.

Maggie Smith a delightful as the shrewd old Aunt.

Julie Walters excellent as the mother who would give anything to knock some sense into her daughter ( Jane Austen that is ).

Anna Maxwell Martin is also very good as the sister and confidante of Jane Austen.

The director Julian Jarrold has done a wonderful job of making an amazing movie that will appeal to all generations.

And finally the two very charming leads who are the very heart of the movie : Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy. In one word both are AWESOME. James although has little screen time then Anne makes you understand the sheer cockiness and arrogance of Tom Lefroy, from his live free attitude in life to his transformation as a man who begins to care for Jane Austen.His chemistry with Anne Hathaway is sizzling and a very important factor in maintaining the movie's momentum.

And at last to the leading lady Anne Hathaway. The lady is a marvel as Jane Austen, her determination and spark is vividly captured by Anne in what can be called a very career defining performance. Not only does one feel the pain for Jane but one does marvel at what holds her together and her writing makes her pull through in life.It is Anne Hathaway's spirited portrayal of the literary icon that forms the essence of the movie.

From her determination to write and her heart break to her feisty attitude to succeed as a writer is uniquely captures by the young actress. One can't really find the exact words to describe the actress's performance as Jane Austen , which is if simply put great.

This movie has the makings to become the period drama of the year. A fine job by the actors and entire crew of the movie for giving us an insight to what could have been very important years in the young authors life.

A delight to watch in every sense 8/10

Although I can be considered a Jane Austen addicted, it took me a long time before watching this movie, since I feared it was a melodramatic, sentimentalist and inconsistent pseudo-biography of the English novelist. Indeed, my fears were confirmed when I saw it, the movie proves much inconsistency, and has nothing to do with Austen's life and inner world, as it can be inferred from her novels, since we do not know much about her biography.

Let's say that this story between the roguish Tom Lefroy and her is pure fiction, this man in only mentioned twice in Jane's letters to her sister Cassandra, but no love story has ever been recorded. I think the director and the producer, on the wave of Jane Austen's cinematographic revival and success of recent years, aimed at making a pleasant, audience-attracting movie (and in fact they chose an Anne Hathaway, whose stunning beauty is by itself attractive, but very far from Austen's physical appearance). They made a work of juxtaposition between her literary production and her quite unknown personal life, and interpreted her life according to the plot of her novels, mainly Pride and Prejudice, but again disregarding the true nature of her inner struggles and motivations. This improbable, mainly considering Austen's secluded and never independent life, love story is romantic, seductive, but the complexity of her inner world and the world of her heroines, is totally missing.

In this way, the final product is enjoyable, the always charming English (and Irish) locations contribute greatly to an overall agreeable perception. Whenever I see or visit some English countryside, or mansion, I immediately fall in love with them, that's why I could probably never dislike such a movie completely , but it totally missed the point, and leaves much to be desired, in terms of rendering something vaguely true about the English novelist (but this was not probably the point of the production, as I said before). In the end, the movie can be viewed as a pleasant, amusing, and well acted fiction of a young, beautiful lady, fond of Jane Austen and trying to experience in life what she read in novels, wanting to become Jane but never turning into her.

I was fortunate to come across an article explaining this film. It is a speculative fiction based upon a few facts. Speculation was aroused by the fact that a woman who never married and apparently never had a love affair came to have such a deep and intelligent understanding of relationships. I shan't expand on how potentially offensive that is. But story line is based on a few simple facts. While he was in the country Jane Austen would have almost certainly met Mr Lefroy; while on a journey to see her sister she had a rather long stop off in London during which time she began writing Pride and Prejudice and there was the mention of some letters.

It started out so well; the stifling quiet of a country life broken by our future genius at work. The structure of this opening sequence was very effective. I was thinking I'm going to love this film. But there was a niggling in the back of my mind. None of the reviews had been great, but I didn't know why (I hadn't actually read any only seen the 2 ½ or 3 stars).

I continued thinking it was wonderful through most of the film. James McAvoy was beautifully intense, Anne Hathaway was solid, Maggie Smith delightfully amusing and Anna Maxwell Martin underused. There were some beautiful scenes, some so intense. For example a scene in a ball when they are both standing back to back apparently to talking other people but having a very deep conversation.

But then, as with far too many movies we moved through the climax to an ending of this story line and that story line oh and we'd better conclude this one as well and now everything is tied up in a neat little bundle.

This is a film that would have benefited from an ambivalent ending, because, aside from the fact that we know she ends up the Western World's highest selling female author the film wasn't actually about that. The film was about the journey toward it. To have left us hanging when, perhaps, she was leaving Lefroy or back in her stiflingly quiet house would have been much more effective in terms of the story and strengthened the film. It simply is not a happy ending but they tried their damned well hardest to make it one.

I'm afraid I must give this a very generous 7 rather than what could have been a deserving 8 had the film makers (or the studio or whoever the twats are that decide on these things) the courage to make this a film, not Hollywood.

Today Jane Austen is recognized as one of the greatest writers in the English speaking world. Not so in 1795 when this story takes place and she's a young woman who wants to marry for love something unheard of in those days.

Jane's middle class parents have a suitable match for her. Dull Laurence Fox who has some family connections to some of the landed gentry in the Great Britain of George III. But Jane sets her sights on James McAvoy, a wild Irish lad and both the wild and the Irish are objected to in equal parts by parents James Cromwell and Julie Walters.

Anne Hathaway who does a wonderful job playing all kinds of bright and eager young women is a bright and eager Jane Austen. In an age when women tended to the sewing and weren't supposed to have opinions, she has them by the wagon load. No one, least of all her parents will tell her whom she is to love and marry.

As for McAvoy, he's a lawyer and a wild child who likes to have a bit of fun and delights in slumming at the grog houses and even getting into prize fights. Those matches were long before the Marquis of Queensbury set down any rules as you'll see.

The passion does burn bright between the two, but as we know Jane never did marry and died relatively young. Why is what you see the film for.

Hathaway and McAvoy will charm you as Hathaway goes on her life mission in Becoming Jane.

This is an imagined semi-biographical story of Jane Austen. It's around 1795, and Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is a rebellious young woman before her great works. She forms a combative relationship with rogue Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy) while her family wants a more aristocratic match in Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox) and stability of money.

It's very doubtful that this has much relationship to reality, but it's still a very good movie. Hathaway and McAvoy are great young actors, and they have magnetic chemistry. It's really an interesting way to create an Austen-like story by using her own life. And I do like the ending and the depressing tone no matter how little it has to do with her true life. We must allow for poetic license. I do wish for a faster start to the drama. Once it gets started, there are great performances such as Julie Walters as Jane's mother in addition to the two leads. I like to think of this as a Jane Austen novel that she never got to write herself.