Review of "Jane Eyre"

She is fragile, strong, anxious, angry, brave, broken, driven near mad, but never — you see it in her eyes, across her face — beaten.

She is "Jane Eyre," a character brought to film countless times, read in books, thousands, millions more.

Yet it's doubtful anyone has ever quite breathed the life into this abused orphan and damaged romantic that Mia Wasikowska has at the ripe old and completely appropriate age of 21.

Who? Mia Wasikowska.

Pronounce it "VAH-shee-KOF-ska." She's Australian by birth and appeared in two films last year. One was the best picture Oscar-nominated "The Kids Are All Right" (she was one of the two kids); the other was "Alice in Wonderland." She played Alice. The film earned more than a $1 billion.

VAH-shee-KOF-ska. Remember it.

Because with "Jane Eyre," the potential apparent in those earlier films reveals itself as a full-blown, wondrous thing.

Wasikowska has a face that can go from plain to dazzling in an instant; it can bring to life a complex range of reactions and then land on just the right one. She is beautiful and average and all things in between when she needs to be, and beyond that filled with both raw emotion and powerful sophistication.

In other words, this is one heck of a young actress. She doesn't play Jane Eyre. She makes Jane Eyre her own.

Not that this new production is filled with flash. Director Cary Fukunaga, working with a screenplay adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's novel by Moira Buffini, is certainly dealing with a classic look and sticking to the story.

But unlike other directors, he neither broods over the tale's nightmarish qualities or gushes with romantic foppery. He lays it out as it is, relying on Wasikowska to carry the day. Good move.

The orphaned Jane is sent off to a boarding school by a cruel aunt (Sally Hawkins). There, she is kept under strict rule until she is old enough to work as a governess.

Then off she's sent to Thornfield Hall, to teach the young charge of the mysterious Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender), a mercurial sort who is both taken aback and intrigued by the striking honesty and plain beauty of his new employee. Jane and Rochester begin a bantering relationship, even though it can seemingly go nowhere.

Love eventually blossoms in its repressed, clumsy British way, only to be trampled by a near-literal ghost-in-the-attic. Jane, led astray, runs off across the foggy moors in search of either death or a new life.

She finds the latter with the help of an altruistic young preacher (Jamie Bell) and his two sisters. But even as good fortune mounts for her, she cannot forget Rochester.

The usual issues are raised by this production — the limits of propriety, the boundaries of love, the false distinctions of class and the illusion of comfort.

But somehow Wasikowska makes it all seem much more personal, more real. With her stark, starched dresses and blunt, elastic face, she draws you in, making both Jane's pain and incredible resolve tangible.

She doesn't make the old new again; she makes it good again, far better than you'd imagine.

There's unexpected fire in this "Jane Eyre." One can only imagine — and look forward to — what heat Wasikowska will bring elsewhere.