Becoming Jane

The movie was well done, with a bittersweet flavor that was not unexpected, since it was based on Jane Austen's life, and we know she did not have a happy ending romantically like she gave her characters. The last bit of the film reminds me of Possession and in a way of The Age of Innocence as well, in that we don't have a totally Hollywood ending.

I don't mind endings where everything works out well, and would hardly like Jane's stories to begin with if I did. At the same time, it's nice to have some stories where things are not perfect, but there is not total heartbreak either. Given that I'm currently on course to mimic Jane's fate rather than Elizabeth's, small comforts are nice.

I read somewhere or another recently that Anne Hathaway almost did not do the film because of the pressure involved in the subject, and I'm glad she did. I'm rather beginning to like her performances, and hopefully she can continue the excellent work she has been doing recently. The rest of the cast was good also, and I was reminded that I want to watch the House of Cards trilogy with Ian Richardson again.


Upon further reflection, I'll toss in a warning to those who are intimately familiar with the history of Jane herself. It's a Hollywood film. If you can't suspend disbelief on it and forget about such things, you may want to pass, but then again, if you were paying attention to what they said they were doing while making the film, you'd already know that the film was a riff based on certain convenient bits while totally ignoring certain other bits. Jane has been big in movies recently, and something like this was pretty much inevitable. It's done now, there won't be a sequel, and we can move on and hope they come up with something based on her works again.