Jane Eyre

Cary Fukunaga (2009’s Sin Nombre) has made the best I've yet seen of the twenty plus film and TV adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s literary classic.  Clearly knowing that this kind of film will live and die by the strength of the actors, Fukunaga doesn’t try anything fancy and just allows his terrific leads, Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, to inhabit their roles to exquisite perfection.  Moira Buffini’s adaptation of the novel is also quite special--her cuts to the narrative don’t diminish the story but rather make it feel more immediate and credible.  Genuine feelings of love, loss, fear and regret are conveyed with inimitable treatment by these filmmakers who wisely never try to make this into anything more than the good story that it is.