Emma carries her slightly haughty mien with the grace of a fancy hat worn on derby day. She’s a woman with definite opinions about her place and everyone else’s in the class system. “If you’re very poor, I might be useful to them in some way,” she says. The context of her remark is that associating with someone above destitution (noblesse oblige) but below gentry is unthinkable. She’s tirelessly trying to arrange the lives around her as if she was the sun and they, the planets.
The latest version of the Jane Austen novel is called Emma.—the unprecedented period a marketing ploy to indicate that it’s a period costume picture (lame). Although Eleanor Catton’s screenplay generally follows the novel, Autumn de Wilde directs with a decidedly light touch compared to the 1997 Emma (sans punctuation) starring Gwyneth Paltrow.
Perhaps de Wilde’s scheme is to make plain Austen’s sense of humor, half-hidden to contemporary readers behind the Regency English of her prose. If so, he’s guilty of overdoing it. During the first hour or so, Austen’s story is bracketed by ironic quotation marks as if today’s audience is somehow superior to her characters’ social navigation and the triangulation of economics and emotion that makes for a successful marriage. The larking musical score sets a comedic tone.
The film eventually finds a better groove, especially as Emma (no period after her name) begins to understand the damage she thoughtlessly causes. Emma begins to see herself through the eyes of others and is shocked.
The art direction sets the story in a Wedgewood pottery world of neo-classical ornament and bright color. The cast are all familiar names or at least faces from British television and film. Anya Taylor-Joy fills the title role, imbuing her character with an acute snobbishness Paltrow’s Emma lacked. Mia Goth plays her best friend Harriet, a good tempered if slightly simple and out of place girl dominated by Emma’s admonishments. Veteran actor Bill Nighy plays Emma’s father as a grumpy eccentric and Josh O’Connor overplays his role as the unctuous vicar.
Emma. is available on Amazon Prime.
