Jane Eyre (2011)

I’ve not read Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel “Jane Eyre,” nor have I ever paid attention to the dozens of film/TV versions that came before this adaptation starring Mia Wasikowska of Oscar-hopeful “The Kids Are All Right” as the titular character. Blame my lifelong manly ignorance.

The story is pure 1800s English drama: A castaway child is thrown into the meat grinder existence of a church-run boarding school-cum-orphanage, and suffers greatly. When Jane hits 18, she bolts for sunlight and a job as a head mistress at the estate of a singularly disagreeable man named Rochester (Inglourious Basterd Michael Fassbender). From there, it’s a romantic drama.

Director Cary Fukunaga creates an amazing world, going from vast open landscapes to moody interiors where you can feel the … history. (That is, the suffocating standards of Old England.) The romance might not boil to epic melodrama, but I dug Jane, a young woman who has experienced much woe but never bows or weeps like a beaten puppy.

Because it’s strongly evident on screen, I’m sure Bronte probably held a blade to the throat of her then-theocratic English government, one that upheld wealth and class above all, and used religion as a weapon of oppression in the name of greed and power. With much our of country heading fast to a right-wing church state that will boot stomp the poor, the weak, the gay, it’s timely as ever. (That Jane holds onto her faith throughout this film version is a miracle in itself, talk about self-preservation.)

I downloaded the book to my iPad, and will read it next. I wonder if Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann has ever read ... Na, not a chance. A-