At the moment, there’s just no stopping Michael Fassbender.
The X-Men: First Class and Inglourious Basterds star has just attended the Venice film festival, where he was promoting two films, not one. Those were Shame, director Steve McQueen’s hugely anticipated follow to Hunger – another virtuoso Fassbender project – and Steven Soderbergh’s A Dangerous Method, in which Mr Fassbender stars as Carl Jung alongside Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley.
He has also had a busy summer in the Scottish highlands filming Ridley Scott’s science fiction epic Prometheus.
Now the German-born Irish actor is in London for his latest film Jane Eyre, where his brooding and doleful Mr. Rochester runs smack into Mia Wasikowska’s timid but fiercely feministic Jane.
“I started reading, I was like ‘God for me he comes across as very bipolar,’“ Mr Fassbender said. “He can be so distant and sort of closed off and isolated really, even in a room full of people, and then he could be so connected and so sort of emotionally excitable, I thought that was something that could be played with.”
Set in Yorkshire, in the early 19th century, Charlotte Brönte’s classic tale of the young governess who falls hopelessly in love with her employer has been told countless times. In addition to scores of TV, radio and stage adaptations, there have been least 17 films, with the first full-length feature dating back to 1914.
Until now, the most famous Jane Eyre was the 1943 film starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, but American director Cary Fukunaga’s latest version may challenge that status. Mr Fukunaga’s film opened to widespread critical acclaim.
Mr Fassbender gives the credit to Mr Fukunaga, whose last film, Sin Nombre, about Central American immigrants trying to reach the US won the 2009 directing and cinematography awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
“Cary is someone that is really talented in terms of telling a story visually first and foremost,” he said. “His framing is exceptional.”
The starkness of the Yorkshire Moors and the ostentatious yet austere setting of Thornfield Hall are beautifully portrayed, but Mr Fassbender says Ms Wasikowska’s performance is what makes this version stand out.
“I do think that this is her film and she’s so exceptional in it, so young but so mature in her choices,” he says of his 22-year-old co-star.
Mr Fukunaga says he chose the Alice in Wonderland star after being “blown away” by her performance on the television show In Treatment.
“I never had either of them read or either one of them in the same room before I cast them. I just sort of, on blind faith, went with it,” he said.
Despite Jane’s hands-off manner towards her employer, Mr Fassbender and Ms Wasikowska sizzle on the screen, and Rochester’s brooding and explosive character gets an extra touch of humanity from Mr Fassbender.
“I really wanted to show how this sort of abrupt and harsh exterior is really hiding somebody who needs some help,” he said. “I really wanted to show how important Jane was to him and how much he actually needs her more than she needs him.”
Mr Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre turns the book on its head, opening with an adult Jane running away from Thornfield having already discovered the dark secret of the man she loves instead of Jane’s painful childhood at the orphanage.
“I don’t think that we were trying to do anything different just for the sake of doing it different,” says Ms Wasikowska. “It starts in a different place, and for people who don’t know the story or are not familiar with the book, it definitely opens with a mystery.”
“You have to kind of piece it together, which I think is really great,” she added.
Jane Eyre opened in the UK and Malta yesterday.