‘Well, this is not historically accurate. What are we doing?'

Slice (Canada) interviews Emma Mackey about playing Emily Brontë.

“She’s a deeply anxious person, but she puts that anxiety to the service of her intelligence and her creativity. And a lot of people don’t do that,” she says of Brontë’s quirks. “And it’s very easy to get sucked into your thoughts when they are dark and it’s very easy and comfortable.”

“So I think a good exercise is to exercise your brain and read as much as you can and then use whatever dynamics you have in you and whatever shifts you have. And you put them to the service of art and put them to the service of whatever it is you like,” she says. “But I think this particularly for this story, it’s okay. It makes sense that she put it all into her writing.”

Mackey is a force in the role. Her facial expressions transform from cheeky glee to desperate longing with simple nuances; you can feel the Brontë whimsy when she lets loose — quite literally, as her character twirls around while on opium in the lush, sprawling moors — and you descend with her into moments of madness, entranced by her will to carve out a life she wants. It’s partly why she hopes viewers will be transported into Emily’s world.

“I think we create a real universe there. And visually, I think [the film] has its own signature. And I like that,” she says. “It’s always kind of in movement. The camera’s always in movement, and we use only natural lighting. There’s no artifice to it at all.”

There are scenes filled with sunshine and blooming botanicals, and others with looming rainclouds and dark skies. But it all informs the environment in which Brontë stepped into her own.

“It’s obviously so formative of that family and how they existed because they were just [in] a tiny village in the north of England and surrounded by death. Like surrounded by death,” she says. “Emily’s actual room at Haworth Parsonage looks out to a graveyard. Her whole life, she woke up to graves.”

“She must have been so happy and so chilled in her life,” Mackey jokes.

Aside from the film’s mise en scène, she hopes viewers will “go on a journey” and “get swept away by it.”

“And I also don’t want them to overanalyze it in the same way that Wuthering Heights should be overanalyzed, because I would, you know what I mean? I don’t want people to be like, ‘Ugh, I don’t really know what it’s trying to be.’ I think that’s the point,” she says. “Don’t try [to] superimpose a formula onto it, it won’t work.”

“Just let it happen to you, I think,” she adds.

“I don’t think this film was made for necessarily just Brontë fans — that would be, you know, too restrictive. And I think hilariously, I think people who are like, proper Brontë nerds would be like, ‘Well, this is not historically accurate. What are we doing?'” she laughs.

“But I think that’s the whole point. And it took me a while as well, because… I’m not Cartesian, but I like facts and I like history and I like, you know, sticking to the script. And so it took me a while to kind of untie that in me and just let the story happen to me and figure that out with Frances and let our imaginations run wild.”

“It’s about a life, that’s all. And a rich one at that.” (Natalie Harmsen)

Exclaim reviews the film.

Veteran actor turned debut director Frances O'Connor slightly oversells both the romance and the Romance, bringing a poetic melodrama to the screen that isn't always plausible but nicely fits the gothic mould of its subject. The stunning setting and the stately, occasionally thunderous score by Abel Korzeniowski do a lot of the tonal heavy-lifting, to great effect, while Mackey conveys Emily's erratic tendencies while channeling the smirking wit of someone smarter than everyone around her. Particularly in the first half of the film, she's closer to Elizabeth Bennet than a Brontë character, and the Emily depicted here is actually less volatile and withdrawn than the existing accounts of her.

Inevitably, a movie like this will beg the question: did any of this actually happen? Well, no. There's no evidence that the famously isolated Brontë had a grand love affair, and the filmmakers take extreme liberties with the timeline to say the very least. For example: Jane Eyre came out slightly before Wuthering Heights, which isn't at all what's suggested here. (The timeline of the deaths is similarly rewritten for narrative effect.)

In all likelihood, Emily Brontë's novel was inspired by nothing more than her own imagination. That makes it perhaps an even more incredible literary achievement — but it would be a far less interesting biopic. (Alex Hudson)

The Globe and Mail looks at some of the films with female leads at TIFF.

Corsage and Emily, on the other hand, are willing to let their heroines be flawed characters, convinced that the interest in their stories lies in the way a patriarchal society made room for neither their talents nor their eccentricities.

Mackey’s Emily is both paralytically shy outside the family circle – her career as a teacher ends when she is found hiding in a closet – and aggressively rebellious, roaming the Yorkshire moors with her dissolute brother Branwell. Today, we might suspect the budding novelist was on the autism spectrum; in 19th-century England she was merely odd. The script gives her a passionate love affair with a handsome young curate to explain where she got the idea for Wuthering Heights, but also makes clear that her literary imagination is a crucial escape hatch in a society with little room for creative women. (Kate Taylor)

The film is also one of The Star's Hot Takes from TIFF.

Emily: Actor turned writer/director Frances O’Connor starred in a “Mansfield Park” adaptation; she knows literary drama. Now she what-ifs the birth of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” with Emma Mackey giving a smashing title performance that exceeds the film’s limits. (Peter Howell)

More cinema as Evening Standard points to the Brontë connection with film director Jean-Luc Godard, who died yesterday.

Weekend / Week-End (1967)

Weekend is a black comedy about a bourgeois couple who both have secret lovers and who are both conspiring to kill each other. The perfect premise for a fantastic French thriller.

Then imagine model-turned-actress Mireille Darc and actor and director Jean Yanne starring as the couple, that Godard is behind the camera, and that the plot goes on to include a country house, a dying father, inheritance, car accidents and vignettes of literary figures including Emily Brontë. In true Godard form, it’s quite mad. All we know is that it’s worth a watch. (Elizabeth Gregory)

Northern Life looks at the northern landscapes that inspired several authors.

JANE EYRE WI’ CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Although much more associated with Yorkshire, The Brontë sisters actually spent much of their lives in Lancashire walking from their family home in Haworth across the South Pennine Moors. Charlotte and Emily Brontë are thought to have frequently visited the picturesque Wycoller near Colne and in particular, the isolated ruins of Wycoller Hall. It was supposed to have been Charlotte Brontë’s inspiration for Ferndean Manor where Jane Eyre finally found Rochester, injured and blinded by the Thornfield fire which his mad wife had started. Wycoller is set in a wooded valley, surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside, between wild moorland and brooding Pendle Hill. What remains of Wycoller Hall now are ruins, however, there is a haunting yet romantic splendour about the place and its surroundings. Very Brontë-esque. Lancashire is proud of its relationship with the Brontës, even if it has to play second fiddle!

Seven Miles of Steel Thistles posts about Villette.