Opinions on Brontë

Variety recently confirmed what BrontëBlog knew by announcing that Bryce Dallas Howard and Evan Rachel Wood had been cast as Emily and Anne respectively in the forthcoming film Brontë.

With many news sites echoing this news and their readers commenting on it, we have plenty of things to discuss and - erm - to correct too. The main feature of every article is the fact that three American girls will be playing the British siblings. Apparently faked accents are not welcome.

From The Daily Mail.

Bronte will be directed and written by British filmmaker Charles Sturridge, who recently directed the Lassie remake.

Slight correction where credit is due. Angela Workman was the person who gave birth and toiled hard on this project. Charles Sturridge may be making ammendments to her script but the IMDb page for Brontë still credits Angela Workman as the writer. Unless the script is totally changed the credit should go to both, or to anyone else who collaborates.

The Bronte sisters created fantasy worlds for themselves while growing up as children in Yorkshire. They created pseudonyms in their earlier works to get published.

Not just earlier works. Villette, the last novel Charlotte saw published, still gave her pseudonym, Currer Bell, although by then her real name was quite well-known.

The comments on this article show that people are somewhat reluctant to see yet more American actresses playing eminently British writers and characters. People also worry that these actresses might be too beautiful for their roles. We will just wait and see. Makeup and dresses can make miracles. Good acting too.

From The Telegraph.

Michael Prodger, the literary editor of The Daily Telegraph, said: "There must be lots of talented Yorkshire actresses who could play the three Brontës. It does seem a slightly bizarre choice. It will be interesting to see how they pull off the Yorkshire accent." (Laura Clout)

It will. Hopefully it will be as natural as possible.

But he added: "If it gets more people to read the books then so much the better." (Laura Clout)

Oh, definitely. Only we will keep our favourite biographies handy just in case they finally pull a Becoming Jane on us!

Richard Wilcocks, the chairman of the Brontë Society, said he hoped the film would dispel some of the myths surrounding the sisters and take account of the wealth of modern scholarship. (Laura Clout)

Don't we all? We gathered that from what Angela Workman told us last summer, so we will see how it fares. We think the treatment of the Brontë men - Patrick, Branwell, Arthur Bell Nicholls - will decide that for us as accurately as possible. And we hope they won't overdo Emily's mysticism, Charlotte's personality or Anne's shyness. Just keep it real and three-dimensional.

From the Yorkshire Post.

And yesterday a spokeswoman for the Screen Yorkshire said it was not clear if the film would even be made in Yorkshire, although negotiations were ongoing. (Joanne Ginley)

We heartily hope it will be, though. The only possible background for a Brontë biopic is Yorkshire, there's simply no replacement for it.

Richard Wilcocks also comments on this in The Telegraph & Argus.

Richard Wilcocks, chairman of the Bronte Society, said he hoped the movie would remain true to the spirit of the Brontes and he expected Michelle Williams to be excellent as Charlotte.
He hoped the film makers would take into account how important location and atmosphere were to the inspiration of the Brontes. He said: "I would prefer if it they filmed on the Yorkshire Moors, and I'm sure they would be welcomed to film at the Parsonage where the women did their work." (Clive White)

Producers of the film - listen to him! Besides, there are few places on earth where people are treated more kindly than in Yorkshire, you know.

And so on and so forth. Many more newspapers report the news but they don't have any other mistakes insights worth commenting on. It's the same old statement from Mr Sturridge and the same old details. But don't fear, this is only just started :)

Categories: In the News, Movies-DVD-TV