Emma 2020 - Pretty as a Picture



I had a blog planned for this week, dealing with Corona and the lockdown, but honestly, when it came right down to it I just didn't have the stomach for it. I'm fast approaching Corona and lockdown saturation and maybe some of you reading this are too. So instead I'm going to tell you about a delightful little movie that is helping to keep me upbeat during these strange times.

I think most of you who read this blog know what a big Jane Austen fan I am. I also love period movies in general. But when I heard that Jane Austen's romantic comedy Emma was getting a remake in 2020 I was skeptical, to say the least. There have been many very good adaptions of  Emma in my lifetime and I wondered if one more version was really needed.

I finally got to see this movie just before the lockdown and I found it...very pretty, but as I told a good friend at the time I found the story on the slight side. Since then I've watched this movie twice more and discovered that this version is fast becoming my all-time favorite. It is wickedly funny, gorgeously filmed and very romantic. I do believe Miss Austen herself would have approved of Director Autumn de Wilde's quirky take on her timeless novel.


Jane Austen famously declared as she was writing the novel  ''I want to write a character only I  can love.''  Jane Austen never wanted or expected her audience to like Emma. She expected her readers to see her heroine as flawed, spoiled and just a bit naive. None of the other versions of Emma I've seen ever dared to portray the character as she is shown in the book, but the 2020 version does exactly that and in doing so provides a very satisfying character arc for its titular character.

Anya Taylor-Joy does a tremendous job in bringing across all the nuances which make the character so fascinating and complex.

I've mentioned how pretty this movie is, but really 'pretty' does not even begin to cover it. This is by far the most beautifully stylized period drama (comedy) I have ever seen, everything from the scenery and locations to the fashions and minute details combine to create an utterly gorgeous extravaganza that is a feast for the senses. 

The Village of Highbury
 
The Interior of Emma's home, Hartfield

Bill Nighly plays Mr. Woodhouse, Emma Woodhouse's neurotic, hypochondriac father

In a film filled with memorable performances, Bill Nighly as Emma's father often steals the show. 
 He hams it up for the role in true Bill Nighly fashion (as I expected him to do when I first learned that he landed this role) but he also manages to unearth a thoroughly human side to a character which in every other version of Emma came across, to me at least, as rather pathetic and selfish. This time around I finally realized: "Oh, he's the male version of Mrs. Bennet! She has her 'poor nerves' and he has his 'cold and sickly drafts.' "

Johny Flynn is Mr. Knightly...oh my word is he ever!

I've always considered myself a 'Darcy' girl. Mr. Knightly was nice enough but no real competition for the one and only Mr. Darcy, or so I thought until Mr. Knightly 2020 stepped onto the screen and promptly shed his clothes in a scene that made that infamous 1995 Darcy lake scene slink away into oblivion. (I only paused the scene once, okay twice, but who's counting?)

Johny Flynn's Knightly is a joy, his smile is just perfection and those eyes! At last, at last, a sexy Mr. Knightly!

Finally Emma and Knightly bring chemistry and some heat!

In The Jane Austen Book Club one of the characters raises a common complaint about Emma and Mr. Knightly when she says and I quote: "I don't know. with Emma and Knightly, you just never...feel the sex."

Until this week I tended to agree. The previous versions of Emma, however, superbly cast and acted they were, there was never much chemistry between this fictional pair, especially not when compared with Elizabeth and Darcy. But in the 2020 version, Emma and Knightly bring the heat with a dance so hot, it made me blush and the couple's first kiss is in a word, adorable! 

If you are an Austen or period drama fan this gorgeous, charming and funny movie may be just what you need to make you forget about COVID-19 for a while.

(The Soundtrack is great too!)

Regards

Freeda Moon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Little Deaths and Letting Go

Image
Last night I had a nightmare. I dreamt I had cancer. It was so vivid, so real that I woke with a rapidly beating heart and a huge sense of relief when I realized it was, in fact, just a dream. The big C has been a huge fear of mine ever since I was a very young child. In my late teens, I watched my dad succumb to the dreaded disease and later still it claimed my aunt as well as the youngest of my half-sisters. Once I was ready to tackle the day I googled what dreaming of cancer might mean, I read the first explanation: A part of you is dying... Oookay then. The next explanation popped up and seemed to leap off the screen at me: Dreaming of cancer often denotes the end of one life-cycle and the beginning of another... An unwilling smile tugged at my lips as I looked at the computer screen. Of course, I thought wryly, of course... Have I mentioned that it is less than a fortnight until my 45th Birthday? That puts me firmly in the middle-age bracket. How strange when in my...
Read more

The Dark Night of the Soul and Making Space

Image
 I must admit that it feels strange to be back after all this time. I've been going through a 'Dark Night of the Soul' When I left this blog a few months ago my life was in the process of changing dramatically. I anticipated these unwanted changes to be inhibiting my ability to write and so it has been. Many writers find that the location they find themselves in not only influences how they write it also influences what they write. In my case, I moved from a place where I'd been happy and content with my life to a place I truly do not like. The town in which I currently reside is not a place where I want to live or grow old and it is certainly not the place where I want to die. It is however the place where I am for the time being. For the last few months, I've been blaming 'the wheelchair' for my current situation. After all, so a part of me reasoned these past few months, if I had been 'able-bodied', I'd have a real, paying job and I'd be a...
Read more