Bitch Slapped by Michael Fassbender

I watched Jane Eyre starring Michael Fassbender as Edward Rochester. It was such an atmospheric, sexy version of Charlotte Brontë's novel with Fassbender playing Rochester as enigmatic and passionate. I've been crushin' on him ever since, so I Netflixed two more Fassbender movies.

The first one was Hunger. Here's the Netflix synopsis: ...depicts the events surrounding a hunger strike staged by a group of IRA prisoners during their 1981 incarceration in Britain's Prison Maze. Led by IRA volunteer-poet Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). Not bad, right? Michael Fassbender plays a rebel poet ...Mmmmmmm! All I can tell you is, if you know nothing about this issue, look up Bobby Sands on Wikipedia or you will not understand what the hell's going on. In the beginning a prisoner enters his cell for the first time and the walls are covered in brown smears. "Surely, that's not what I think," I thought. It was. Everyone is really, really dirty. Including Bobby Sands until the screws beat him up, hack his hair off, and scrub him down. Then the hunger strike begins. Fassbender ate nothing but berries and a few nuts until he got down to starvation weight. It's hard to believe there wasn't also some CGI involved. If you want to ogle him, this isn't the movie for you. But it was thought-provoking. So much so that I Googled and Wikipedia'd Bobby Sands. I read his prison diary. I read articles about the "blanket men" depicted in the film and about the issues the strikers tried to force England to address. I also YouTubed documentaries on the IRA. I don't agree with the prisoners' protests but I'm glad Hunger goosed me to get educated. My shallow ass.

Fish Tank was the next movie, a contemporary fiction set in the British projects. Fassbender plays Conner, the new boyfriend of Mia's alcoholic mother (Kierston Wareing). Mia (Katie Jarvis) is 15, a rebellious and friendless girl whose only joy is hip hop dancing in the solitude of a vacant flat. She's no match for Conner, who begins seducing her with kindness, encouragement, his innate sexiness, and increasingly inappropriate attention. Fish Tank is a beautifully shot film filled with light and stark spaces. Its story is devastating because it doesn't use melodrama to distance you from its depiction of life. Each actor is so absorbed into his/her character that I actually felt like I was in Mia's cramped apartment watching ordinary people work each other over. It felt so real and so sad. Michael, I'm sorry I thought you were just pretty! And Katie Jarvis' Mia, with her skinny bod in a tight tee and baggy track suit, is so cool dancing her hip hop. I have never and will never be that cool.

Amazing, Underrated Anne Brontë

Anne Brontë

I'm almost done reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by the youngest of the three famous Brontë sisters. Her work has survived under the shadow of Emily's and Charlotte's bestsellers, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, respectively. What I find truly fascinating (and tragic) is that her obscurity resulted directly from her sister's betrayal and the fact that, during her lifetime, she had to defend her writing to the world. That is such a shame. Of the three books -- Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall -- Anne's is the one that modern women can find most relatable. Over a century after it was barred from reprinting, the story still feels fresh and real.

The novel's focus is Helen, a woman who married Arthur Huntingdon, a handsome bad boy who swept her off her feet. Although she sensed his effusive passion for her was all on the surface, she hoped for the best. Arthur's shallow nature, innate cruelty, and self-centeredness creep into the new marriage but really shift into hyperdrive once a season of London debauchery and raging alcoholism kill his infatuation for his wife. The birth of a son only pisses him off more; it takes her attention away from him and besides, he can't possibly love the baby till it's old enough to show some love for him. It gets worse, not in the explosive gory way of a Stephen King novel, but in incremental stages from disappointment to despair and then desperation.

Charlotte Brontë wrote of Wildfell Hall, "it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." The public was so openly derisive of the novel's plot that for its second printing, Anne wrote a lengthy defense of it as a forward. Yet Wildfell Hall was a runaway bestseller, sold out six weeks after its debut. Hmmm ...why was that?

Could it be that readers secretly felt Anne Brontë had spoken directly to them? Women had no legal rights as individuals. A bad marriage was for most an inescapable trap. Acknowledging this reality not only challenged the assumption that a woman's rightful and most exalted state was that of matrimony, it challenged British law. We have many options today, but once you reach a certain age, you've probably had the chance to feel dismay at realizing a man (or woman) you love is not worthy of it. You may have struggled to eke out some sanity and peace in a chaotic home ruled by your partner's unchecked addiction. You may have thought you could help your loved one become a better person over time. You may have singlehandedly tried to save the relationship by being perfect. You may have secretly started planning an exit strategy for yourself and your children. This was the situation around which Anne Brontë wove her plot. And she sure paid for it. After Anne's death in 1849, Charlotte Brontë refused to allow republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights catapulted Emily and Charlotte to literary immortality. Anne became a footnote.

Consider yourself vindicated, sister.