Emma.

Autumn de Wilde's Emma, with Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn, is not my cup of tea, I'm afraid. My review might be influenced by how much I love Jane Austen's novel and how many times I've watched the 2009 miniseries, but I always give every adaptation a try. And I can't really judge if what I was watching would make sense to an Austen virgin, shall we say, so what seemed disjointed and rushed to me might work perfectly for others.

I'll start with the good: I loved the costumes and the interiors, which were sumptuously beautiful. The wood-shaving ringlets on the women and the high collars on the men were distracting, though. And of course Anya Taylor-Joy made for a quirky and regal Emma (Austenites will be pleased to note that she has perfect posture.) I also loved how Anya Taylor-Joy and Amber Anderson as Jane actually played the pianoforte during the Coles' party (but could have done without Mr Knightley's contribution, when Frank Churchill is supposed to be singing with Jane). BUT. The music was horrendously jarring, alternating between Hanna Barbera cartoon incidentals and freakish folk music. The supporting characters suffered once again - I couldn't honestly tell the difference between Mrs Weston, Mrs Knightley and Mrs Elton, except that Isabella was for some reason a complete cow in this version, and Mr Elton and Frank Churchill were also interchangeable (perhaps that's why Elton never seemed to be without his dog collar, to help tell them apart). Bill Nighy's Mr Woodhouse was a weird combination of fusspot and Edwardian fop, and Johnny Flynn's Mr Knightley strayed way off character by stripping off in his first scene and never really recovered for me. (Apparently, that was a way of 'humanising' the character because he is always 'mansplaining' - very woke.) Anya wasn't kidding when she talked about the focus being on 'bodily functions', by the way - not only are we 'treated' to Knightley's backside, but Emma hitches up her skirts to warm her bare arse by the fire, and the 'cannot make speeches' proposal scene is a bloody mess. Literally. The script leans so heavily on lines from the novel that I think Eleanor Catton thought she was writing an essay for an English Lit exam - Austenites will be happy, but there was no feeling behind any of the grand words. When Emma and Mr Knightley argue, they constantly shout over each other, for instance, instead of the usual playful back and forth.

The whole film felt like a weird mashup between a stage musical and a Victorian farce, with choreographed servants and slapstick humour. There was also a lot of 1996 Emma in there, taking pastel and pastoral scenery from the film and Andrew Davies' wearisome obsession with wealth from the television two-parter. Not on a sliding scale of Emma and Miss Bates, but in how Mr Knightley's strawberry picking party turns into a National Trust promotional video for Wilton House, Salisbury. There's also a lot of emphasis on servants dressing their masters and mistresses, presumably to fit in more scenes of 'natural nudity'.

I went, I watched, I did my duty to Emma. But I think I'll stick with the 2009 miniseries.

This was the last movie my wife and I saw in the actual theater-- back in March 2020 -- just days before covid-19 lockdown began. As of July we're wondering when we'll ever get to see another. In the meantime we've acquired a big UHD TV and subscriptions to a bunch of streaming services. But there's still nothing to match watching on a big screen with a packed audience of engaged viewers.

Anyway: long before there was "Mean Girls" and "Clueless", there was Jane Austen's novel about a good-hearted but manipulative, un-self-aware young woman who has a great deal of learning to do about real people. This most recent version of "Emma" is very nice and certainly worth seeing in whatever format. I think it's neither better nor worse than the good 1996 version (the one with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role) -- they both have fine production values and fine casts, just different emphases, shadings of the various characters, and the choices for cuts made to the story to make it fit into a normal 2-hour run time. Anya Taylor-Joy is not only a good, distinctively featured young actress but she also *looks* as young as Jane Austen's heroine is intended to be, about age 20. She has the (often baseless) self-confidence arising from a privileged, untroubled upbringing, but a journey of self-discovery awaits her, and that's what makes the story.

Other standout characters include Mia Goth, who plays friend/protegee Harriet Smith as even more of a hapless stooge than usual; and the incomparable Bill Nighy as Emma's father Mr. Woodhouse. Is he really just a hypochondriac always fussing over cold drafts and fireplaces? It becomes clear that he knows and sees a good deal more than his loving but blithely unobservant daughter gives him credit for. And Nighy can steal scenes without saying a word, just by body posture and a raised eyebrow. He's a cinematic treasure. Johnny Flynn as Mr. Knightley is fine but a bit forgettable in the end.

And the scenery. It's so lush and green and bright that you have to consciously shake yourself to realize that no, the English countryside is really NOT always warm and sunlit as it is here. But this is fiction, and it just helps us settle in and enjoy the comfortable ride through this classic tale. For the best screen version of Emma out there, though, I happily recommend the 2009 TV miniseries starring Romola Garai. She's perfect for the part, and its 4-hour length lets the full story expand and breathe the way it should.

I saw this before seeing the Queen's Gambit, so I wasn't yet won over to the brilliance of anya taylor joy. This film did not win me over at the time. I thought she came across as overly haughty and disconnected. You may say that Emma is meant to be an un-likeable character, and that may be true, but I think a truer version of Emma would be of a young woman whom we know has lost her way and who is treating people less than honourably, but who is doing so because of her own fears and insecurities and who journeys through the course of the story to understand this more and to endeavour to be better in the future. There should be an empathetic and redemptive aspect to her despite her meanness. This was wholly lacking in this. And I now think it is far more about the production than taylor joy's portrayal. The film was overly focussed on looking good and missed connecting the characters with the audience. It reminds me of Bridgerton in that all the time and effort was spent on making things look great but the characters are pretty lifeless. Johnny Flynn was the best I thought he got the personality of Mr Knightley really well, but again the production didn't allow this to come through as well as it might. I really respect the attempt to bring Austen to modern audiences, I am not a purist, however this just regretfully isn't a great adaptation of the story nor a great movie. Watch the Romola Garai version of Emma.

This recent film rendition of Jane Austen's Emma (curiously here called "Emma." With a period) enjoyably carries the opulence of the 19th century landed gentry with a modernist modicum of biting satire. This vintage Austen is critical of the heavy-handed social manipulations toward marriage while it exudes Austen's own marriage to the time. As Virginia Woolf said, Austen "had no wish for things to be other than they are."

Slyly played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Emma's major duty in life seems to be placing her loved ones in the right marriage, occasionally delighting in a working-class connection. To her credit she seems to value love even above wealth, though her being poor herself is never an option as long as her wispy father (Bill Nighy) is responsible for her welfare: "Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's." (Emma)

Taylor-Joy brings a sly smile to most interchanges, as if it were Austen herself enjoying the charades and deceptions that she knows her story will set right as she sets right the appropriate human connections. The audience is always in the know as young director Autumn de Wilde gives the feel of Austen's signature style, Free Indirect Speech (FIS), a form of third-person narration which goes gently in and out of a character's mind.

More importantly, the mansion and its grounds are about as lush and painterly as ever has been shown on a period piece, and the costumes are beyond breathtaking. If you are put off by the high rhetorical style, your eye will be fully satisfied with a sumptuousness rarely seen in cinema.

When all is said, however, its live that defines this kind of romance. Johnny Flynn as George Knightly, Emma's close buddy and potential suitor, is real enough in a Steve-McQueen way to bring that modernist cadence to the stiff upper-crust motif. He and Taylor-Joy are well matched, youthful, beautiful, and hip.

De Wilde and writer Eleanor Catton have done Austen well, carrying the aura of 19th century upper-class reserve into our cynical times, attractive enough to make us think that love can be organized and life made simple. The women in Emma., even when foolish, are worthy of affection:

"Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives." Mr. Knightly

I felt quite tired at the start of this film; it enters with a lot of sweeping movement, fast talking, and grand sets and costumes which offer far more detail than can be taken in. It had been a long day for me, but it did feel like it was a film trying to do too much. I was wrong in this first impression, but the approach of movement and pace did continue, and it gave the film a feel of being superficial and relying on pace and energy. To be fair, it makes this approach work and it is moves and looks delightful. It offers lots of nice touches that make it more than this, but it is ultimately not anything shockingly different from what you'd expect (which it probably shouldn't be anyway).

The delivery of Emma as having more of a sharp edge is a nice touch, as it lets the viewer see what is charming about her, but also that she is not aware of the negative aspects of her own character, and thus does not control them. This adds a lot to the narrative that others do not, and Taylor-Joy does very well with the role. She is supported well, although mostly by those doing one or two things really well (eg Nighy and Hart). The design of the film is wonderful - great costumes, and locations throughout. In the end it does have a fast and breezy tone that I did take a minute to get into, but in the end it was cheering and quite lightly delightful as a film.