Product: Becoming Jane [Blu-ray] (2007)
Rating: 5.0
Enter The White Queen...
As with her performance in Tim Burton's 'Alice', Anne Hathaway brings her otherworldly magic to this adaptation of the life of Jane Austen.Yes, it bends the events and time periods, but it remains a delightful film that gives the viewer some insights into the life and times of a classic female writer.No, Austen did not have the modern Gothic boldness of the Bronte sisters who followed her - Austen's most Gothic novel was a satirical pastiche - Northanger Abbey - and her tendency to include weddings and happy ever after scenarios has been a source of criticism for eons. However, the film captures the reality of a woman struggling for recognition in the dark ages of patriarchal domination, and the irony whereby Austen never allowed herself the ultimate happy ending. No Mr.Darcy coming across the fields, no Colonel Brandon riding to the rescue...Ending as it does, the film does not really capture the final phase of Austen's life and her development as a person and as a writer - the significance of Persuasion, her elegiac final novel, and her the 'life imitating art' final passing, with her head in her sister Cassandra's lap - a death worthy of the Brontes themselves...Definitely worth a viewing.