There may be a further departure a director could take than Cary Joji Fukunaga going from his Mexican immigration thriller Sin Nombre to tackling Charlotte Brontë’s timeless coming-of-age novel Jane Eyre, but it certainly shows how important diversity is to the filmmaker who first made waves at the Sundance Film Festival two years ago.
For his second feature film, he got Mia Wasikowska to play the lead role, fresh off her stints in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right with Michael Fassbender playing her boss-turned-lover Edward Rochester and a fantastic ensemble cast that includes Dame Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins and Simon McBurney.
This isn’t the first time Brontë’s novel has been adapted to the screen, far from it, but adapted by Moira Buffini, the film finds an ambitious way of condensing Jane’s expansive life story into a tight two-hour film that focuses on her time at Thornfield Hall, but doesn’t skimp on her childhood either.
Oddly, the last time we spoke to the filmmaker (an interview you can read here), Fukunaga had lamented how most of the best scripts and projects go to A-list directors, but clearly he ranks among them now to have gotten such a prestigious gig.
In the following exclusive video interview with Fukunaga, we discuss:
* How he went from Sin Nombre to this project
* What he wanted to do different with his version on the story
* How they came up with the non-linear way of telling the story
* Casting Mia Wasikowska as Jane
* Whether he had to face conflicts being an American filmmaker telling the story
* How he was able to immerse himself into the time period for accuracy
* Going for a far more muted color scheme
And more!
Jane Eyre opens in select cities on Friday, March 11. You can read our previous interview with the film’s Rochester, Michael Fassbender, here.
