Emily – Review
130 Minutes, Rated R
Written and Directed by Frances O’Connor
**NOTE: you can also enjoy Mark’s audio take on Emily using the player below. Enjoy!**
Synopsis:
EMILY imagines Emily Brontë’s own Gothic story that inspired her seminal novel, “Wuthering Heights.” Haunted by the death of her mother, Emily struggles within the confines of her family life and yearns for artistic and personal freedom, and so begins a journey to channel her creative potential into one of the greatest novels of all time.
Ah, yes: Bronte…The name which is the scourge of every literature student ever.
This time, instead of the author’s version of a maudlin, gothic romantic fiction, we get a fictionalized version of the author’s life told as a maudlin, gothic romance.
So there’s that…?
I guess.
I suppose my chief problem with Emily, aside from the fact that maudlin gothic romances aren’t really my thing, literarily speaking, is that this trend of fictionalizing a real person’s life to account for… something… is become more and more prevalent and agenda-driven by the creatives who create such… I hate to call them adaptations, rather, I’ll call them modifications.
Not a fan.
Emma Mackey is pretty darned good here as Emily Bronte, though. In fact, most of the cast here is pretty impressive, with solid performances all around.
It just feels, in the end, as though they took a perfectly good, maudlin gothic romance and tacked on to the Bronte name for the exposure. Do they not trust the story otherwise? Their cast? What drove director Frances O’Connor to make such a leap into truly fictional territory?
I just don’t get the need to “adapt” (“modify”) fully realized and REAL people in ways that are disingenuous to their actual existence, simply to satisfy the appetites of someone else.
It seems rude.
It’s as if you’re saying the actual person wasn’t really worthy of being examined cinematically. Rather, they need to be pumped up or adjusted because otherwise the audience just won’t care.
Just imagine telling your own, personal, favorite historical figure that their lives, their accomplishments simply aren’t enough to warrant a film unless you “add” or “embellish” just a bit… a bit which favors fantasy over the reality which was so compelling you felt the need to create the film in the first place.
So very, very rude.
Despite that, Emily is certainly worth the watch if you’re a fan of–you guessed it: maudlin gothic romances.
Or very fine performances. Either way.
Emily goes wide in theaters on February 24th and stars Emma Mackey, Fionn Whitehead, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Alexandra Dowling, Adrian Dunbar, Amelia Gething, and Gemma Jones.
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