You can read how the director and the actors would like to approach their characters. Brian Cox, Patrick Brontë, with a King Lear-like quality; Natalie Press, Emily Brontë, using her own Yorkshire background; Emily Barclay, Anne Brontë, she sees almost everything and admits nearly nothing -- such an astute observation by such a young actress. And so I've developed that sense of secrecy within the role of Anne for her; Ben Chaplin, Arthur Bell Nichols, his loneliness for home and his heroic heart; Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, embodies the character of Branwell to an almost alarming degree: his beauty and vulnerability, his enviable gifts and talent; Hugh Dancy, George Smith, who is so eager to play the role of the publisher George Smith, is the perfect embodiment of this youthful, brilliant, shining young man born to a higher class than the other young men in this story, and for whom Charlotte develops an enormous passion against every sensible instinct.In the many years in which I have worked on this film as both its writer and director, the world of the Brontës has emerged most clearly as a story illuminated by contrasts and opposites, its paradoxical themes played out in sensual, almost tactile images, colors, and sounds - witnessed by the defiance of death on every side, by the light hidden within the dark, by what's real verses what is only imagined, by truth buried within a heart of lies - giving not only our actors but every designer a wealth and depth of material with which to make the Brontës' whole world manifest before our eyes. (...)
My collaboration with the Brontë cast has begun. (...) Michelle Williams, my Charlotte, spoke to me of the character's interior stubborness, her feral desires and her fierce will; we realized that Charlotte, like all the Brontë girls, resembles a little animal in the way she moves through the world, her rough, raw temper, her instinct for survival. I've encouraged her to play the role almost unconsciously, with her needs bared and open and almost physically driven forward (...)
The Director of Photography, Andrew Dunn, who sent me a letter asking to shoot the film, will have a veritable feast to work with, the paradox of opposites: the vivid darkness of the Parsonage on a rainy night, and the ferocious light and scope of the moors where the children escape to play. The austere simplicity of home and the baroque elaboration of London. The contrast of the softened light of Belgium and the unexpected heartbreak that brings. The story is a tale of light and dark, life and death, interior and exterior, myth and truth -- of what we are taught to expect from ourselves, slamming against the truth of who we become by the end. The world outside and the world within.And something about the music.
Sound, light and texture are extremely important to the telling of this tale. The secret whispers of the children, meant to keep the outside world at bay, will become entwined within the musical score, which will use classic, mercurial tones of piano, oboe, flute and viola. A theme for Charlotte will play in variation throughout the film, like a touchstone to our ears and heart, returning us always back home again.We are a little bit puzzled with this ending paragraph:
By film's end, we will feel the triumph of the Brontë story as characterized by Charlotte in her final moments with her new husband, the beloved hero Arthur Nicholls. Having found each other at long last, their passions bound forever in our hearts, they'll disappear into the throngs and streets of London and into history, leaving us with Branwell's haunting family portrait, still hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, and with the books of the Brontë sisters - arguably the most well read, most well loved novels in the history of literature - and penned by the most unlikely of heroes.It's this a dream-like sequence? We will have to wait for future posts to know more. The Brontë Parsonage Blog promises more :).
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