in which James McAvoy engages in some pre-Regency mansplaining
(Yes, I know there is a proper term for the period before the Regency. I just didn't like the phrase "Georgian mansplaining" as much.)
So, I have done it. Against my will and possibly against my better judgment, I have watched Becoming Jane. (It looks like my tutorial may be going ahead, in which case the first time I see the film probably shouldn't be in a screening with whatever students I may have. But I also got Bright Star and Last Chance Harvey from the library to soothe the pain afterward, and because I always watch British movies on July 4th.) I remain utterly perplexed as to why someone would choose to make a biopic of an author by sticking her novels into a blender, putting the resulting pulp up onto the screen, and then passing it off as the genuine article, but the members of the production team doubtless had their reasons.
I was about as infuriated as you'd expect me to be, particularly by the scene in which Tom Lefroy suggests that in order to be the equal of any male writer, little Jane really needs to widen her horizons and gain experience. (If you would be so obliging as to presume my meaning, and I think you will.) I can only assume Jane falls in love with him because he's willing to read her passages about avian sexytimes out of a nature book and recommend Tom Jones--which, just by the way, the actual, historical Jane Austen had already read when she met Tom Lefroy, which is why they were able to have conversations about it. I had to pause the DVD to vent--not the first time, nor the last--because it's a particularly insidious kind of male patronizing, the kind that pretends to be in the name of female liberation. I suspect I'm supposed to have come out of this scene thinking that "Tom Lefroy" really values Jane's mind, when all I can think about is how annoyed I am that he thinks he has to school her, and that the only way to be "equal" to a man is to write like one.
I also don't think I was supposed to come out of the movie comparing the insipid "trials" of their Jane with the real suffering of her sister Cassandra; or lamenting the doe-eyed blankness of Anne Hathaway when there is the perfectly lovely Anna Maxwell Martin right there being wasted in the same film; or wishing that--if they were going to invent this ridiculous palpitating romance pretty much out of whole cloth--they could have at least done it with a Tom Lefroy more like Laurence Fox's character (a figure totally invented, I can only assume, to have an overbearing aunt so that poor unimaginative Jane could have a model for Lady Catherine) than like James McAvoy's, whom I constantly wanted to flick between the eyes, no matter how nice he looks in a waistcoat. (And anyway, the real Tom Lefroy is supposed to have been fair-haired and tall.) Yet another of the problems with this film, you see, is that it fails as a romance as well as a biopic of Jane Austen. Granted, I tend to go for the serious and shy ones anyway, but the film's Tom Lefroy is basically just a grab-bag of rakish traits--ooh, he boxes; he has such a zest for life! he doesn't want to be a lawyer; he's such a free spirit!--and the film falls back on the old, old cliche by allowing Jane's apparent dislike of him stand in for the idea that secretly, she's really attracted to him because he "challenges" her, so that the actual falling-in-love process, if it happened, was not seen by me. I saw them maybe flirt a little, and then suddenly they were hiding in the shrubbery while Tom was declaring that he belonged to her heart and soul. (His heart and soul are apparently quite cheaply bought.)
And, perhaps strangest of all, the film forgets for whole scenes at a time that the reason one would make a biopic of Jane Austen at all is that she was a writer. I suppose this makes sense, actually, for the "romance" they want to tell--one in which dabbling, dreaming Jane writes things that are only suitable for family consumption, which Tom Lefroy dismisses as mere "feminine accomplishment," until she is inspired--or molded and fired, like clay in a kiln--by her passionate love for Tom Lefroy, which would go on to shape all the novels she would write. Of course, the generally proposed chronology of Austen's life suggests that she had already written the juvenilia, Lady Susan, and a draft of Elinor and Marianne by the time she spent that month in 1796 flirting with Tom Lefroy, but she can't possibly have written a draft of the novel that would go on to become Sense and Sensibility until she fell in love with him, so there's no hint of that. Similarly, there's no real suggestion that she reads anything until Tom Lefroy recommends Tom Jones, so the bit where they visit Ann Radcliffe comes out of absolutely nowhere (especially as I can only assume that a majority of the target audience may not know who that is). It could have been a useful move for the screenplay to have a previous scene where Jane reads, or admires, or heck, even knows about Ann Radcliffe...but I suppose that would be too much like saying that she didn't need some dude to come along and inspire her reading and writing. And we can't have that. Jane Austen was inspired by love, you guys! She wrote all her novels about the one who got away! The film makes the incredibly disagreeable move to "explain" why a "spinster" would choose to write about love and marriage--because she can give her characters the happy ending she never had.
Blech.
So, I have done it. Against my will and possibly against my better judgment, I have watched Becoming Jane. (It looks like my tutorial may be going ahead, in which case the first time I see the film probably shouldn't be in a screening with whatever students I may have. But I also got Bright Star and Last Chance Harvey from the library to soothe the pain afterward, and because I always watch British movies on July 4th.) I remain utterly perplexed as to why someone would choose to make a biopic of an author by sticking her novels into a blender, putting the resulting pulp up onto the screen, and then passing it off as the genuine article, but the members of the production team doubtless had their reasons.
I was about as infuriated as you'd expect me to be, particularly by the scene in which Tom Lefroy suggests that in order to be the equal of any male writer, little Jane really needs to widen her horizons and gain experience. (If you would be so obliging as to presume my meaning, and I think you will.) I can only assume Jane falls in love with him because he's willing to read her passages about avian sexytimes out of a nature book and recommend Tom Jones--which, just by the way, the actual, historical Jane Austen had already read when she met Tom Lefroy, which is why they were able to have conversations about it. I had to pause the DVD to vent--not the first time, nor the last--because it's a particularly insidious kind of male patronizing, the kind that pretends to be in the name of female liberation. I suspect I'm supposed to have come out of this scene thinking that "Tom Lefroy" really values Jane's mind, when all I can think about is how annoyed I am that he thinks he has to school her, and that the only way to be "equal" to a man is to write like one.
I also don't think I was supposed to come out of the movie comparing the insipid "trials" of their Jane with the real suffering of her sister Cassandra; or lamenting the doe-eyed blankness of Anne Hathaway when there is the perfectly lovely Anna Maxwell Martin right there being wasted in the same film; or wishing that--if they were going to invent this ridiculous palpitating romance pretty much out of whole cloth--they could have at least done it with a Tom Lefroy more like Laurence Fox's character (a figure totally invented, I can only assume, to have an overbearing aunt so that poor unimaginative Jane could have a model for Lady Catherine) than like James McAvoy's, whom I constantly wanted to flick between the eyes, no matter how nice he looks in a waistcoat. (And anyway, the real Tom Lefroy is supposed to have been fair-haired and tall.) Yet another of the problems with this film, you see, is that it fails as a romance as well as a biopic of Jane Austen. Granted, I tend to go for the serious and shy ones anyway, but the film's Tom Lefroy is basically just a grab-bag of rakish traits--ooh, he boxes; he has such a zest for life! he doesn't want to be a lawyer; he's such a free spirit!--and the film falls back on the old, old cliche by allowing Jane's apparent dislike of him stand in for the idea that secretly, she's really attracted to him because he "challenges" her, so that the actual falling-in-love process, if it happened, was not seen by me. I saw them maybe flirt a little, and then suddenly they were hiding in the shrubbery while Tom was declaring that he belonged to her heart and soul. (His heart and soul are apparently quite cheaply bought.)
And, perhaps strangest of all, the film forgets for whole scenes at a time that the reason one would make a biopic of Jane Austen at all is that she was a writer. I suppose this makes sense, actually, for the "romance" they want to tell--one in which dabbling, dreaming Jane writes things that are only suitable for family consumption, which Tom Lefroy dismisses as mere "feminine accomplishment," until she is inspired--or molded and fired, like clay in a kiln--by her passionate love for Tom Lefroy, which would go on to shape all the novels she would write. Of course, the generally proposed chronology of Austen's life suggests that she had already written the juvenilia, Lady Susan, and a draft of Elinor and Marianne by the time she spent that month in 1796 flirting with Tom Lefroy, but she can't possibly have written a draft of the novel that would go on to become Sense and Sensibility until she fell in love with him, so there's no hint of that. Similarly, there's no real suggestion that she reads anything until Tom Lefroy recommends Tom Jones, so the bit where they visit Ann Radcliffe comes out of absolutely nowhere (especially as I can only assume that a majority of the target audience may not know who that is). It could have been a useful move for the screenplay to have a previous scene where Jane reads, or admires, or heck, even knows about Ann Radcliffe...but I suppose that would be too much like saying that she didn't need some dude to come along and inspire her reading and writing. And we can't have that. Jane Austen was inspired by love, you guys! She wrote all her novels about the one who got away! The film makes the incredibly disagreeable move to "explain" why a "spinster" would choose to write about love and marriage--because she can give her characters the happy ending she never had.
Blech.