I arranged to have yet another adaptation of Jane Eyre sent
to the Mount Pleasant Branch at Kingsway and Main as a reason for visiting
there one very sunny afternoon. This turned out to be an interesting tactic, as
dvds placed on hold are not put out on the hold shelves at Mount Pleasant
Branch, but rather are kept behind the circulation desk. It took me an inordinately
long time staring at the holds shelf trying to find the item supposedly there
for me before I spotted the very clearly placed sign telling me about the dvd
holds. The lady at the desk told me that so many dvds were stolen out of cases at
that particular branch that they started placing at least the on hold dvds behind the desk
so they would be in the case when the patron came to pick up their hold.
Despite what that little story may bring up in your imagination,
this is actually a relatively snazzy library branch, though not much to my own
taste personally. It is located in a well-appointed community center and is a
pretty good size including some well-lit seating by a corner full of windows at
the back. A wall literally divides the room down the center with mostly
children’s and YA materials on one side and adult and non-fiction stuff on the
other side. Amusingly the sign over the non-fiction books on the “adult” side
of the library labeled them as “Information Books.” There is also a zine
section in this library by the adult graphic novels, which is not
something I've spotted anywhere else but at the Central Branch before.
Meanwhile, the children’s side also has ESL materials and some tables for
working or reading at, which made for an interesting mix of patrons in that
area, children, young adults, and several mostly elderly adults.
I found signs listing a Teen Manga and a DIY Button Making
event for teens which sounded neat. But further observation made me realize
these were not events local to that library, but rather events occurring generally
across the library system or at the Central Branch downtown. I wonder how many
events actually occur within the small branch libraries embedded within local
communities of VPL versus at the large central branch downtown which has the
space and resources for events. It seems like a kind of unfortunate tension
between where the people are and where the resources and space are.
The version of Jane Eyre I snagged this time was the 1996 2-hour
movie with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. For those who might be
interested, a young Anna Paquin plays the childhood Jane Eyre in the early
scenes, which sadly I did not really like. I found those scenes lacked subtlety
and in that way assumed the audience wasn't intelligent enough to pick up on
the themes and emotional motifs on their own without having them bashed into their
faces in the most literal of ways. This tendency crops up again periodically
throughout the movie.
I cannot help but
find Gainsbourg an appealing Jane Eyre even though she definitely plays up the
isolated, quiet queerness of the character. Little Adele is actually fairly appealing
in this version which most certainly is not always the case. But the major
problem is William Hurt as Mr. Rochester who brings little or no drama to what is
supposed to be an intense role (and really the story makes no sense if there is no great tension in his character). Although, unlike some of
the earlier versions of Jane Eyre, there is a musical score, I find it is
rather ridiculous at times. The music when Rochester first appears is utterly
inappropriate to the moment, though really that whole scene is played with the
most amount of practicality and least actual character and drive or any of the
Jane Eyre adaptations I have ever seen. At least Jane's sketches are actually
fairly nice, because often they are really just terrible and over dramatic and
silly.
--Anna
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