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Film: A surprisingly good "Emma"
Jul. 13th, 2020 07:06 pmMiddle Sister visited for the the weekend, being halfway through a longer trip to her in-laws, a bit less than 2 hours away. She provided company and I provided a guaranteed lie-in. I feel that I got the best of the deal given that she also did: the food shopping en route, the washing up and a good deal of the cooking, ALL my ironing - a veritable Everest of a basket, dug the garden, and helped hang a picture. As a result of which I ended the weekend feeling better than I had for a good ten days despite having a far sprucer house, as I'd been able to gently amble round putting things away a bit and no longer have to confront the ironing.* Also, Youngest Sister got a cat on Saturday, so we were glued to the family WattsApp group for updates.
We also watched the recent film of Emma, with Anya Taylor-Joy, a woman who would be perfect casting as Discworld's Verity Pushpram (AKA "Hammerhead"). Fortunately one does get used to the eyes. I stand by everything I said about the trailer, but notwithstanding this unpromising start, quite a few people seemed to have enjoyed the film, so it seemed worth a try. And I'm glad that I did, because it was really pretty good. Very different in tone from the general run of adaptations, and with a lot less focus on the core 'events' of the plot as events rather than settings for key interaction, but no less faithful to the novel than other recent adaptations, just a different set of choices in presentation.
Things that were very good: the casting was generally very good (see caveat below), with by far the best Jane Fairfax I've seen, and though not devoting much time to the relationship between her and Emma, capturing the point that for all Mr Knightley thinks "You are both women I like, you should like each other", anyone in Emma's position would dislike Jane Fairfax, anyone in Jane's would resent Emma. Mr Knightley was a real highlight, done in quite a different way to the usual run of Knightleys, with attention paid to fashionable hair and clothing (and, as been mentioned in many a review, we see him dressing), and a focus on friendship rather than moral preceptor to Emma, making his upbraiding her at Box Hill the more devastating. His horrified realisation both that he's in love with Emma and has taken himself out of the running before ever he realised it was excellent.
Things that were not so good: Bill Nighy's performance as Mr Wodehouse was fine, but he was too much a generic slightly fussy father rather than the closely observed portrait of the book, and I really disliked Isabella as basically a hysterical mother whose husband rolls her eyes at her.Rupert Graves should have been costumed as far more attractive as Mr Weston - my search for a really hot Mr Weston continues. Given the plot, Mr Weston could easily be only in the first half of his forties, and I'd love a portrayal of him as a handsome, energetic man who Miss Taylor has liked and respected, but not had particular hopes of, because these days he could clearly catch a younger, richer, more connected woman, and suddenly here he is proposing and it turns out that he's been hoping to establish a position to marry her for years. Emma's flippancy towards Miss Bates in general was also a bit overdone, and a point where there was an unnecessary loss of subtlety. But these are fairly minor caveats overall. It's really thoroughly enjoyable if you are in the mood for a light, funny, Austen adaptation.
*I had really never appreciated how physically demanding ironing could be until this spring, when two separate half-hour occasions proved Too Much and left me with aching muscles down my sides! It's normally my go-to household task to keep on top of when I've got a cold, because it can be done in front of the TV, and I had not thought of it as particularly energetic. But this turns out to be another area that even the worst cold is not Covid.
We also watched the recent film of Emma, with Anya Taylor-Joy, a woman who would be perfect casting as Discworld's Verity Pushpram (AKA "Hammerhead"). Fortunately one does get used to the eyes. I stand by everything I said about the trailer, but notwithstanding this unpromising start, quite a few people seemed to have enjoyed the film, so it seemed worth a try. And I'm glad that I did, because it was really pretty good. Very different in tone from the general run of adaptations, and with a lot less focus on the core 'events' of the plot as events rather than settings for key interaction, but no less faithful to the novel than other recent adaptations, just a different set of choices in presentation.
Things that were very good: the casting was generally very good (see caveat below), with by far the best Jane Fairfax I've seen, and though not devoting much time to the relationship between her and Emma, capturing the point that for all Mr Knightley thinks "You are both women I like, you should like each other", anyone in Emma's position would dislike Jane Fairfax, anyone in Jane's would resent Emma. Mr Knightley was a real highlight, done in quite a different way to the usual run of Knightleys, with attention paid to fashionable hair and clothing (and, as been mentioned in many a review, we see him dressing), and a focus on friendship rather than moral preceptor to Emma, making his upbraiding her at Box Hill the more devastating. His horrified realisation both that he's in love with Emma and has taken himself out of the running before ever he realised it was excellent.
Things that were not so good: Bill Nighy's performance as Mr Wodehouse was fine, but he was too much a generic slightly fussy father rather than the closely observed portrait of the book, and I really disliked Isabella as basically a hysterical mother whose husband rolls her eyes at her.Rupert Graves should have been costumed as far more attractive as Mr Weston - my search for a really hot Mr Weston continues. Given the plot, Mr Weston could easily be only in the first half of his forties, and I'd love a portrayal of him as a handsome, energetic man who Miss Taylor has liked and respected, but not had particular hopes of, because these days he could clearly catch a younger, richer, more connected woman, and suddenly here he is proposing and it turns out that he's been hoping to establish a position to marry her for years. Emma's flippancy towards Miss Bates in general was also a bit overdone, and a point where there was an unnecessary loss of subtlety. But these are fairly minor caveats overall. It's really thoroughly enjoyable if you are in the mood for a light, funny, Austen adaptation.
*I had really never appreciated how physically demanding ironing could be until this spring, when two separate half-hour occasions proved Too Much and left me with aching muscles down my sides! It's normally my go-to household task to keep on top of when I've got a cold, because it can be done in front of the TV, and I had not thought of it as particularly energetic. But this turns out to be another area that even the worst cold is not Covid.