Actor-turned-director Frances O’Connor’s hauntingly beautiful and dazzlingly ethereal Emily is a highly speculative portrait of the famed author’s turbulent path to writing the literary classic “Wuthering Heights”. And yet, it taps into a rare, visually poetic vein that wonderfully captures the bracing truth of her experiences, even though much of what’s depicted didn’t happen.There is a playful wonder to the film’s portrayal of the trials, tribulations, and aching romances that honestly underpin the classic writings we have all come to know. With this stunning debut, O’Connor suggests that only the emotive truth of the prose is what matters, not the mere facts of what transpired. While the real Brontë may not have been on screen, this vibrant tale acts as an indelible shadow-truth that will endure long after the facts have turned to dust. [...]Evoking the painterly lens of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, the film’s sonic and visual design is brilliantly layered in its composition, lending a decadent and epic sheen to its tale of heartbreak, self-discovery, and familial strife. Moreover, the lush imagery also imbues its depiction of the West Yorkshire moors with a melancholic quality that is only emboldened by its gorgeous natural lighting. This in tandem with the witty, lyrical, and utterly moving dialogue creates a singular and completely enthralling experience that gracefully moves towards its conclusion with a sweeping tide of earned emotion.While the film is sophisticated in its evocation of Emily Brontë’s tumultuous life, it is distinctly funny, bursting at the seams with wit and slyly eloquent humour. Despite it relying on the framework of a traditional bio-pic (at times too heavily), O’Connor taps into the same verdant beauty and romantic ripostes that inspired her subject, allowing for an experience that both excel as a swooning romance and as a powerful exploration of a woman attempting to realize her vocation. [...]Emily is a dazzling debut from Frances O’Conner. It finds immediate and stirring truths in speculation while it unconventionally enthralls and immerses you into its lamenting vision of a life spent seeking the impetus for artistic creation. Midway through the film, the adage “freedom in thought” makes a lasting impact not only on Emily’s trajectory but also on our own. As we hope to find the same kind of liberation in our own personal reflections. (Prabhjot Bains)
In her editor’s note to the novel Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë described the book as “moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath.” She attributed its nature to its author, her sister Emily, being “a native and nursling of the moors.” Emily, the biopic of the younger Brontë sister, feels similarly informed by the moors that it is set on. Frances O’Connor crafts a story about a brilliant young woman on a difficult journey to find herself and her creative voice while experiencing love, heartbreak, and loss in a world that continually asks her to make herself milder and meeker. It’s an appropriately haunting gothic tale but also at turns romantic and humorous, never veering too far into one genre to feel unlike real life. [...]Mackey is absolutely transcendent as the prickly, but passionate Emily who doesn’t know how to deal with new people and can’t seem to help but question everything about her world. Mackey brilliantly brings Emily’s inner turmoil to life, but also her vibrant spirit, particularly as her brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) encourages her wild side, leading her to partake in alcohol, drugs, and late night roaming over the moors. Hers is an Emily that you can easily imagine creating characters like Heathcliff and Cathy.While there is certainly speculation about Emily’s life involved in the film, it actually adheres shockingly close to historical accuracy even including little details like the portrait of the Brontë sisters that Branwell painted being in the background of a shot. There are minor inaccuracies, like the fact that it shows Wuthering Heights being published under Emily’s own name and not her pen name, but nothing that fully detracts from the stories. Michael O’Connor’s gorgeous costumes perfectly fit the Victorian era, as do the makeup and hairstyles. We often see Emily’s hair left down, but it’s clearly meant to emphasize how little she fits in with the standards for womanhood placed upon her.One of the greatest things about O’Connor’s beautiful and stirring screenplay is how she constructs the bonds of family between the Brontë siblings. While the film certainly contains romance, it is the family that is at the heart of it. From the haunting presence of the mother who died when they were young, whom Charlotte refuses to speak of to Branwell’s own struggles to find his calling, Emily is clearly shaped by those closest to her. The sisterly antics are hilarious and give an idea of a close knit family, but their fights are painful to watch.It’s an incredibly impressive directorial debut for Frances O’Connor, who is herself no stranger to starring in period dramas in her career as an actress. From the steamy hot sex scenes to the wigged-out opium sequences, she excels at crafting the atmosphere for each turn of the film. The filmmaking, from the lighting to occasionally shaky hand cam, often reflects Emily’s emotions. Her creative shots and editing are ambitious for a first feature, but overall work astoundingly well. The rest of the craftwork complements O’Connor’s vision perfectly from Abel Korzeniowski’s gothic score to Nanu Segal’s cinematography, loaded with sweeping shots of the moors.Similar to how Greta Gerwig’s Little Women leads up to Jo March writing Little Women, Emily culminates in Emily writing Wuthering Heights. But Charlotte calls it base and ugly, demanding of her sister, “How did you write Wuthering Heights?” Perhaps Emily itself is a bit like that: somewhat coarse around its edges, but filled with a passion that highlights its strange beauty. (Nicole Ackman)
Cousin relationships pop up all over literature as well, from Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" and "Pride and Prejudice" to Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights." (Mary Elizabeth Williams)
Wilde describes Where You Left Us as a “gothic Wuthering-Heights-meets-Evermore” that focuses on the two Prince sisters (Scarlett and Cinnamon), two romantic interests, one family mystery on a cliff by the sea. The immersion into the Gothic is something that she wanted to try her hand at for a while, and was a creatively different endeavour to her first novel, Henry Hamlet’s Heart.“I read a lot of Gothic books and obsessed a lot about evoking that signature Gothic feel. I love place as a character, so the Gothic setting ended up feeling very natural and vital as an extension of that for this particular family,” Wilde states. (Christine Lai)
Now he’s getting his own travel show for More4, featuring him touring the nation investigating some of our most famous myths and legends. [...]The four-parter will see chat show host Jonathan journey from pubs to castles uncovering some of the country’s most fantastic fables — a few well known, others long forgotten. [...]Among the stories Jonathan looks at is Tabitha Aykroyd, the housekeeper to the famous Brontë literary family of Haworth, West Yorks.She was obsessed with fairies, read supernatural books and heavily influenced the writing sisters — particularly in the creation of Cathy’s ghost from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Will-o’-the-wisp in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.As part of his trip to the area, Jonathan went to Haworth and was treated to a ride on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, which still operates majestic steam trains. (Rod McPhee)
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