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99% inspiration, 1% perspiration

Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen in Becoming Jane
  • Posted at 4:34pm
  • 11 April 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

As someone who spends much of his working day writing, I can vouch that it's not a cinematically appealing occupation. Thanks to computer technology, there's little that's visual about it. You can't even yank a sheet of A4 from the jaws of a typewriter, screw it up in writerly frustration and throw it in the general direction of the bin.

But the film industry still seems obsessed with the great literary figures from history. Admittedly, these biopics tend to steer clear of the act of writing itself, and concentrate on the trials of the author's private life. And they keep on coming out: the Brontë sisters will spring to life in Charles Sturridge's Brontë at some point this year. Maybe it's the fetching costumes.

In Becoming Jane, the action takes place before Jane Austen was famous, caught between an arranged marriage to a suitable suitor and her passion for a bit of rough (relatively speaking). There are scenes of star Anne Hathaway scratching away at her desk with pen and ink ("the most disagreeable, insolent, arrogant . . . "). But director Julian Jarrold doesn't dwell on the craft, rather on the picturesque inspiration.

Cast as debauched 17th-century poet John Wilmot in The Libertine, Johnny Depp might as well be playing a rock star in the court of Charles II, so heavily does the emphasis lie on his whoring, boozing and drug-taking. Depp's more family-friendly spin as Peter Pan author JM Barrie in Finding Neverland was almost all about inspiration – and unrequited love. Equally, Oscar Wilde's private life takes precedence over his famously self-declared genius in Wilde. Thankfully, Wilde was visually striking, and never short of a witty epigram.

Whether it’s a playful bard (Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love) or a perverted Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush in Quills), the literary stars of yesteryear hold a seemingly permanent allure for film-makers. And yet in reality writing is often a dull, solitary profession that attracts many without social skills.

At worst, as with Beatrix Potter in the twee Miss Potter, it allows a grown woman to talk to drawings of woodland creatures, who wink back at her. Now there’s a sheet of A4 one screenwriter should have chucked in the bin.

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