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Published: 8 September, 2011

Directed by Cary Fukunaga
Certificate 12a

Rating: 3 Out Of 5 Stars

Our Victorian forefathers had a tough time of it when it came to the juice that oils our relationships – so many unsaid things, so many social strictures to adhere to, so much worry about what the neighbours would say. It’s a wonder our great-great-grand-gramps got to procreate at all.

The machinations of love and duty are writ large throughout Charlotte Brontë’s classic, and this adaptation has the actors to carry you along with the painful straitjacket that their emotions were swaddled by.

There is clearly nothing wrong, nor bad about this very faithful, carefully handled film, though it’s not much of an improvement on the 1996 version starring William Hurt and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

It’s just that it is so gloomy, candle-lit and historically spot on that you feel a horribly Victorian burden weighing you down throughout.

What a miserable and joyless period, you can’t help thinking as our characters softly shuffle about, scared of saying boo to the mice that run about the Gormenghast-like corridors of Thornfield Hall.

For those who have never read Jane Eyre, the episodic nature of the tale means it doesn’t easily sit in film form without some chronological tricks.

Published in 1847, it tells the story of pale-skinned orphan Jane, banished to live with her horrible aunt and bullying cousins, after the untimely death of her parents.

She eventually frees herself from the dominating yoke of her nasty relatives and then we follow her as she becomes a school governess, falls in and out of love with her sponsor, Rochester.

He employs her as a governess for a child in his charge, and they go through various hoops to find true love, all under the intense pressure of the social mores of the period.

This hefty manuscript is well handled by director Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska is a super Jane Eyre.

England’s moorlands have never looked quite so sodden and it is a mark of respect to the director that I sat there with my coat pulled close to me to ward off the chills.

But this also meant that when the saga finally came to a conclusion, I was happy to step out into early September sunlight, relieved to be a great-grandson of this austere era, a world where stiff upper lips make for grand misunderstandings and the power of an imaginary all-seeing being means one step out of line and it’s a fiery ever after for you.

Finally, I hear there are a plethora of hair salons in Yorkshire called Jane Hair, a giggle-inducing fact for those who like silly shop puns.

I thought of this as I marvelled at the series of outlandish hair-designs our sparrow-like heroine sported throughout.

Some of the plaits she wears are truly works of art.