Emily is a plausible account of Brontë family dynamics. Her father, the vicar (Adrian Dunbar), is stern but caring. Branwell (Fionn Whitehead) is a second-hand Byron, dashing and full of himself. The sisters lived in imaginary worlds of their own storytelling. The Brontës loved and clashed with each other.Wuthering Heights was eye opening, even scandalous when first published in 1847 for its frank exploration of romantic obsession. How does the film explore the inspiration behind the novel, a classic that not only spawned several movie adaptations but inaugurated a subgenre of gothic romance concerning troubled male protagonists (Daphne du Maurier-Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca)? Emily catches the rainy environs of the Yorkshire moors (some frames suggest John Constable’s drearier landscapes), the creative energy crackling between the siblings, the dreamy summer afternoons well suited for daydreaming—and hints at the household’s high degree of literacy. A forbidden love affair that culminated in tragedy? Perhaps. (David Luhrssen)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë (1853)The last novel published during Brontë's short life, Villette — the story of the deeply repressed Lucy Snowe, who leaves England for the Continent to teach at a girls' pensionnat — is superior to Jane Eyre, and the only book I've ever literally thrown across the room. I did it out of passion, not disgust.
Or take Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, whose titular heroine makes Rochester see past a humble origin story and appreciate her personal attributes, only to delay consummation until he is deemed legally eligible by circumstance. It’s a lovely, honest triumph of merit and integrity overcoming prevalent social dogma, but it is also a distinctly un-American method by which to make such triumph happen. Had F. Scott Fitzgerald instead been the one to write The Great Eyre, we would have seen Juliette Ecclestone emerge as a mysterious and wealthy heiress who pulls Rochester away and leaves Thornfield Hall to Antoinette upstairs. (Daniel H. Turtel)
Library takeover: Inside Charlotte Brontë’s wardrobe
Wednesday 1st March 2023 to Sunday 4th June 2023
Chawton House
Visit the Library this spring and find a beautiful artist’s takeover by historian, writer and illustrator Dr Eleanor Houghton. Brontë’s wardrobe is stunningly captured in eight original illustrations, displayed alongside Chawton House’s treasured piece of Brontëana, as well as contemporary fashion plates.
This exhibition, previously on display at the Brontë Parsonage, places focus on some of the remarkable garments and accessories worn by Charlotte Brontë. These brightly coloured, fashionable, even exotic items boldly challenge the preconception that Brontë and her famous protagonist Jane Eyre were, at least in terms of dress, one and the same. The illustrations draw attention to both Charlotte’s ordinary and extraordinary lives but also remind us that she was an active participant of the fast-changing mid-nineteenth century.
Further information in Fine Books & Collections Magazine.
Emma Badame: The three Brontë sisters are often referred to or treated as almost a single entity, as opposed to individuals. But they are so different, and their work is so unique. What was it about Emily, in particular, that drew you to her story and where Frances O'Connor: I read Wuthering Heights before I read Jane Eyre and I just really loved that book. I’ve always felt like Charlotte, and Mrs. Gaskell, edited Emily in a way that was just like ‘this is who she was, and she’s here but now let’s go on to the main star’, which is Charlotte. I mean, I love Charlotte, and she’s an amazing artist. But I strongly identify with Emily–I’m an introvert too. Sometimes introverts do get sidelined because they’re not demonstrative. So I guess it felt like bringing her into the light and just experiencing what is it to be an artist who’s introverted and has a lot of energy and power underneath that. That felt very evocative to me, and it could be a great story. So that was the opening idea. [...]E.B.: I think Emma does such a good job of capturing all those different elements of the character. I wondered if you could talk a bit about how she became your Emily Brontë and how you worked together to bring your vision to the screen.F.O'C:She was one of the first people who auditioned. I didn’t really know her work, and when the casting director suggested her, I was open to it, but I didn’t quite know what to expect. She just blew me away in the room. There’s something just about who she is. I think she’s just very authentic. Have you met her yet?E.B,: Not yet. But she’s so interesting to watch. Really riveting in everything she does.F.O'C: She’s riveting, exactly. She’s so intelligent, but she’s also very much her own person. A lot of the time with actresses, we just want to be loved. But she doesn’t really. There’s something about who she is where she’s just like, “I am myself.” Also, it helped that she also loves Emily Brontë. She was also a geek. So I felt like we both had something to say about her.E.B,. I knew I liked her.F.O'C: [laughs] Exactly. I knew I liked her too. She’s also just an incredible actress. Her presence on screen is pretty electric, I think. Then working on it together, it wasn’t at all prescriptive. We just talked about it and kept talking about it, and then when we were on set, we just kept exploring. We tried to keep it really fresh and moving and not telegraphing things like, “We’re heading for here.” We wanted to keep it really alive. That really helped me with the shooting style and everything too, I think. Because the main objective was to try and make her as real as possible. It’s not historical. It’s relatable. [...]E.B, Like you were talking about earlier–feeling it as opposed to viewing it through glass like a historical artifact at a museum.F.O'C: Yeah. You’re in there with them, and it feels very real. Then Abel [Korzeniowski, the film’s composer] and I talked about the music reflecting Emily Brontë’s mood and her emotion. If it’s really big, then go with that. Then you have these quite brutal cuts in sound to complete silence.E.B, Speaking of going big: There’s one scene in particular that comes to mind in terms of Emily’s intensity of feeling. The scene where each character takes a turn wearing an old mask as a sort of game. Each person’s go-round is quite comical until Emily puts it on and things become quite serious and dark. Can you talk about filming that scene? I imagine it was maybe one of the more challenging ones to do, both because of the intensity and because it’s quite intricately shot.F.O'C: I knew it was one of the big set pieces. It felt very ambitious, and you’re right, there were a lot of shots plus all of the sound and music. The balance was going to be really crucial. We really did a lot of prep for that scene in terms of Nanu [Segal, the cinematographer] and I working out exactly what the best way to shoot it was, to tell the story we wanted to tell. We rehearsed it a lot too with the ensemble until it was really firing on all cylinders. My ambition was to create a very long scene. I love long scenes. Where you think it’s one thing, but as it progresses the characters and the audience realize they’re in a different scene altogether. So it was a challenge, but it was actually one of our favourite things to work on. [...]E.B.: Charlotte was so young when she had to take charge of the family too. Because their mother was gone and someone had to take on the responsibilities. She felt constrained too, but in a different way from Emily. But they were both victims of expectations.F.O'C: She was always the one who said, “We’re going to need to make some money to support ourselves.” Whereas Emily really just wanted to live in the house with her imagination. So that had to be very tough for Charlotte. But I slightly push the narrative there in terms of showing Charlotte as being more controlling because I think it helps this particular story. The narrative became its own thing where it had its own requirements.E.B.: It definitely helps to reiterate Emily’s unique connection to the house, Haworth, and to the land. It was clear that her friends were her family and the house was where she needed to be. As an introvert, it seems to be where she got her energy and her creativity. She couldn’t survive being apart from that. I wanted to ask a bit about the location too because it is so essential to her story–and to all the Brontës. All of their books speak to their love of the Yorkshire moors, in particular. How important was it to find the perfect place to film? And where did you finally choose?F.O'C: We did actually shoot in Haworth, in their town, and near the parsonage. But the moors around there are quite trampled now. So we went to a place called Dent, where it’s still very wild and beautiful and how you would, in your imagination, think of Brontë Country. But it also presented some challenges in terms of shooting. But it was so worth it. It was very important to create an environment that felt very evocative, and that could make you feel like you were really there. To do that, we looked pretty hard to try to find places that were going to do all that for us. It was fun too because it’s so beautiful up there and you’re like, “Oh, my God. We’re so spoiled for choice.” But having to narrow it down to what was realistic for the shoot was tough.E.B.:I travelled to Haworth and to the parsonage when I was about nine. That’s when I really fell in love with the stories. But I was interested in the location you choose for the reason you mention, because the original area has so built-up in comparison.F.O'C: It’s still beautiful, though, right?E.B.: It’s absolutely beautiful.F.O'C: Then going to the parsonage. Isn’t that just a crazy moment when you go in there?E.B.: It was such an integral part of who they all were, so it really feels like you’re connecting to them directly.F.O'C: Like you’ve come in, and they’ve just left. [...]E.B.: What do you think it is about the Brontës that has captured people’s imagination for so long? It’s been 175 years since they passed, and there are still regular adaptations of their work and hundreds of websites and blogs dedicated to them. There are so few novels, to begin with, but the interest never seems to fade.F.O'C: They’re just brilliant stories, but also there’s something about them that’s just very real. There’s something in that I think, that you feel a connection. I think people feel like they know them and they feel a slight ownership over them too. The work feels very personal for something of that era. It’s surprising. I feel like that probably happened because they were quite isolated and didn’t have the influence of society. It was only after they published it that they realized, “Wow, we’ve actually done something slightly risky.” Something out there. Charlotte just went into damage control mode at the time as I’m sure you know. But that’s interesting too, I think.E.B.: It is interesting because Charlotte is the only one who lived long enough to see the real popularity of their work–the criticism too–under their own names and the celebrity that then followed.F.O'C: Yeah, to see famous people take an interest. But the Mrs. Gaskell biography was really an exercise in publicity, so the whole of Victorian society would realize, “Oh, look, she’s very decent.” (Emma Badame)
Perché Catherine e Heathcliff?Chi è qui dagli inizi lo sa già: Lace Beauty prende il suo nome dal parallelismo tra pelle e merletto e l’associazione è nata anche dalla mia passione del vintage, dei rituali skincare asiatici e del tè e dall’amore per i romanzi dell’Ottocento.È proprio da questi ultimi che nascono i nomi dei prodotti: cerco dei parallelismi, dei punti in comune fra i personaggi di quelle storie e le caratteristiche del prodotto. (Source)
Il modo migliore per celebrare San Valentino è farsi prendere dalla passione. Proprio per questo, Lace Beauty si ispira a Cime Tempestose, capolavoro di Emily Brontë, per dare vita a una sminare passionale e senza tempo. E, contemporaneamente, eliminare le imperfezioni grazie a una lozione riequilibrate e opacizzante come Heatcliff. (Beatrice Zocchi) (Translate)
Reviosinist but ravishing (...) Mackey brings that progress to life in an excellent performance. Emily is fierce and fragile simultaneously. The supporting actors, especially Whitehead, are superb as well. I’d also like to single out the score by Abel Korzeniowski, as it was particularly outstanding. The atmosphere in which this story can work so well depends on these things, and this film has them in place. Setting aside the lack of historical accuracy, the story is strong because it positions the central character as the anchor for all of the emotional momentum. Emily is not a history lesson but it is a good film, and it looks beautiful too. (Rachel)
Alexandra Heilbron: How important was it for you to film in Yorkshire where the Brontë family lived?Frances O'Connor: So important. Because it’s so different from other kinds of landscapes. Also I wanted for the actors to feel like they were really there. It was really helpful for the actors to be in that world. You’re surrounded by people who are actually speaking in the accent. It looked really beautiful I think, in how we photographed it. There are sheep on the moor and you know, all of that kind of thing. And why not? If you’re going to tell a story in Yorkshire, why not shoot it there?A.H,: Emma, what was it like filming in Yorkshire?Emma Mackey: It’s everything, it’s so key. In the same way that in Wuthering Heights, the landscape plays such a huge part and is its own alive character, it was obviously really important to film up there. It’s such a specific place, it’s so striking. It has a really particular energy to it, it’s quite lunar, it’s a very “moon-like” place. There’s a lot of rocks and the sky feels really close and it kind of feels really extensive and it’s quite barren. So you kind of get a sense of what it was like for those people living there. And then when you go up to the parsonage where the Brontës actually lived, you see Emily Brontë’s room looks out onto a graveyard. So her whole life, she woke up to graves, which kind of gives you a sense of where her mind was at, bless her. So it’s pretty morbid. But it has a real strength to it as well, it’s pretty informative and you really feel it when you’re up there, it’s quite haunting (laughs).
Another review can be found on Phaedra's Adventures. The film is also mentioned in NBC Palm Springs, KION 46, Tdg (Switzerland)...
Sandra walks into Tom’s shop and also has a love for all things Brontë, but naturally not everyone is as they appear. Caron pulls back the veils through different POVs, and while we get new information that changes the context of the narrative, much that goes on in “Sharper” feels like any one of the characters could easily unravel the ever-twisting ruse with a good google. Perhaps love, sex and Brontë makes them blind? (Tom Meek)
Indeed many poets, let down by the unreliability of exciting lovers, have penned how they were redeemed by dependable friendships. Emily Bronte’s famous poem ‘Love and Friendship’ conveys this sentiment well: “Love is like the wild rose-briar / Friendship like the holly-tree / The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms / But which will bloom most constantly?” (Debotri Dhar)
Nanny knows worst, English literature tells us, when she meddles in matters of the heart. If Juliet’s nurse and Wuthering Heights’ Nelly hadn’t freelanced quite so enthusiastically as relationship therapists, lives might have been saved and indeed lived happily ever after.
Nelly or no Nelly, the thing of Heathcliff and Cathy was doomed, and you know it.
Choosing what to study at university was a no-brainer and during my English Literature degree, I discovered the joys of Gothic literature, the Brontës and Shakespeare.
For Bedlam Theatre (NY), [Dr.] Musa [Gurnis] has dramaturged The Crucible, King Lear, and The Winter’s Tale. The company has a production of her new adaptation of Jane Eyre in development.
El barman Col sugiere en el film que nadie conoce los secretos del corazón humano. Pero hay verdades que, como la identidad de Dil, no pueden permanecer ocultas mucho tiempo. El ser humano es una criatura que no tolera que se le imponga quién debe ser. Como decía Charlotte Brontë en Jane Eyre: «No soy un pájaro, y ninguna red me atrapa. Soy un ser humano libre, con una voluntad independiente». (Marcelo Figueras) (Translation)
En abril cumplirá 40 años, pero se enamoró de los libros a los trece, cuando una amiga le prestó El largo camino a casa, de Saroo Brierley, con cuyo autor y argumento se identificó; le siguió el clásico Jane Eyre. ¿Sus favoritos? Lilian lo niega: “No tengo preferencias literarias, cualquier buen lector se place en la más mínima letra, como si es la de los diarios”. (Rubén Rodríguez González) (Translation)
Guillermo Balbona: ¿Cuál fue su primer amor literario?Alejandro Gándara: Emily Brönte (sic) . Primero y último. Nunca volveré a amar una novela como amé 'Cumbres Borrascosas'. (Translation)
Folkebladet (Norway) talks about the presence of Jane Eyre, as adapted by Eline Arbo, at the Brandhaarden Theatre Festival in Amsterdam.
Investigating the Canon: The Reader as Detective in Reworkings of Madame Bovary and Jane Eyre
Katie Jones
Modern Languages Open, (1), p.1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.274 Published on 30 Jan 2023
Since the 1990s, a trend towards adapting, rewriting, or otherwise engaging with the literary canon—especially the nineteenth-century novel—via the popular genre of crime fiction may be observed in both French and English. Taking as its main examples Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel The Eyre Affair and Philippe Doumenc’s Contre-enquête sur la mort d’Emma Bovary (2009), this article considers what is special about crime-fiction engagements with the literary canon and how they differ from other types of adaptation, in particular in the use of the central detective figure as a proxy for the position of the reader. Crime fiction and its subgenres—here, the whodunit and hard-boiled thriller—is a transnational genre which readily adapts itself to local contexts. I argue that both Doumenc and Fforde adapt their chosen genres in order to explore the nature and purpose of their respective national canons. Following a detailed analysis of the role of the reader–detective in each text, the article goes on to demonstrate how both texts engage in theoretical debates on canonicity, including questions of authorial genius, aesthetic value, and the pleasure of reading. By emphasising the position of a skilled non-academic reader, familiar with the codes and conventions of both “high” literature and genre fiction, crime fiction reworkings offer a non-hierarchical approach to the literary canon, presented as part of a shared cultural property and, above all, a source of enjoyment. However, while they acknowledge aspects of literary theory and academic debate, their orientation towards a mass-market audience and the conventions of their genre may also lead them to side-step the overt political engagement of recent academic debates on the canon.
Même rigoureuses, les biographies possèdent toujours une part de subjectivité, d’interprétation, voire, dans certains cas, de fiction. Le film Emily, qui revient sur la trop courte existenced’Emily Brontë, souscrit à cette dernière approche. Non que l’on ait envie de catégoriser ce premier long métrage de Frances O’Connor, tant celui-ci s’avère inspiré. (...) Il en résulte, dans Emily, une impression d’intimisme épique. À bien y penser, ce ne saurait être plus en phase avec l’oeuvre de l’autrice, que Frances O’Connor montre trouvant un exutoire dans la création, dans la fiction. Dès lors, le fait que la cinéaste eût elle-même recouru à une part de fiction pour tenter de mieux cerner l’insaisissable autrice pourrait être perçu comme un ultime hommage. (François Lévesque) (Translation)
Emily is visually beautiful, and puts Emily Brontë in the setting for her own novel. Shot on location in Yorkshire, there are many walks across windswept hills, often in the company of her doomed, wild brother Branwell. In this gorgeous, wild landscape, she frees her mind and embraces life without care for social restrictions on women or artists.Despite its departure from facts or what might be likely in her Victorian world, there is entertainment in Emily, a well-acted, thrilling fantasy of Emily Brontë with the constrains of her life loosened, with the boldness of her novel “Wuthering Heights” transferred to the author’s life. (Cate Marquis)
O’Connor has an honest sense of how a young woman of the period might have channeled her suffering onto the page into something like a purge. History tells us that Emily Brontë died at 30, only about a year after the book was published (and not even under her own name initially), so she wasn’t able to enjoy her success the way her sisters did. As much as Emily is a tragedy in many respects, O’Connor makes it clear that Emily’s final act of creation was on her own terms, with no compromise—something of a rarity in the mid-1800s. Despite its deliberate pacing, the film is a vibrant, passionate, and ultimately moving bit of biographical fiction. (Steve Prokopy)
For a movie so lovingly a tribute to words, much is shown without dialog, but instead in gifted faces and earthly sounds. The soundtrack relies just as much on crashing waves and thunder under lovemaking, the scratching of her quill and stifled sniffles and sudden thunderstorms that accentuate Emily’s moody extremes and eventually kill her as on the typical but sporadic and understated classical melodies so often associated with repressed period pieces. Emma Mackey’s Oscar performance is less repressed. (Simonie Wilson)
Des deux heures et quelques du film, à aucun moment on n’aura eu l’impression que l’histoire s’étire en longueur. Bien au contraire. On serait resté encore plus longtemps à contempler les paysages poétiques du Yorkshire qui s’étalent à perte de vue, et à travers lesquels nous entraîne à sa suite une jeune femme qui a osé défier ce qui était attendu d’elle pour vivre sa courte vie comme elle l’entendait. (Laila Maalouf) (Translation)
If the film as a whole disappoints, there are moments when Emily comes alive and reveals glimmers of what O’Connor is capable of. In one unforgettable scene, Jackson-Cohen paces toward a waiting Mackey across one of those windswept heaths. We see Weightman from Emily’s point of view, framed through a vertical window. She looks toward him, then away, then back, and away again, and back yet again — the young man, his eyes cast down, appearing closer each time and creating a sort of strobing effect that evokes Emily’s racing pulse as time flashes forward. (Jay Gabler)
Emily is a semi-fictional film portraying the life of English writer Emily Brontë (played by Emma Mackey). The filming took place across West Yorkshire, including in Otley and the village of Haworth. (Abi Whistance)
Expansion: Emily, from Bleecker Street, moves to 500 screens in week two. The period drama about Emily Brontë is directed by Frances O’Connor and stars Emma Mackey, who just won the BAFTA Rising Star Award. (Jill Goldsmith)
The film is also mentioned in Geek Generation (France), The Daily Record, The Seattle Times, Pasatiempo (Chile), Metro World News, Cinemáticos (in Spanish), Colorado Springs Gazette, North West Indiana, Syrie James...
In May, 1927, Sir James Roberts of Fairlight Hall, near Hastings, East Sussex, announced at the annual Brontë Society meeting that he proposed to buy the parsonage in Haworth and donate it to them for a permanent museum and library.The purchase was completed, and the parsonage was gifted to the society and formally opened to the public by Sir James on Saturday, August 4, 1928.James Roberts was a man of very humble origins. He was born in a cottage at Lane Ends in Oakworth in 1848 and was the son of a weaver. He was the seventh child of James Roberts and his wife, Jane Hartley, who had moved to Oakworth from Thornton-in-Craven shortly after the birth of a daughter in 1845. When he was about four years old the family moved to Haworth where he received a basic education at the schoolhouse next to the parsonage and recalled in later life seeing Charlotte Brontë and her father, Patrick. As his family were baptists, they were unlikely to have met the Brontës through the church, although in later life he claimed to have heard Patrick Brontë preach. (Alistair Shand)
In English-language fiction, a non-English tongue can provide a liberating alternative to conventional norms of behaviour. In Charlotte Brontë’s 1849 novel Shirley, French serves the dual English protagonists, Shirley and Caroline, as a means of resisting the claustrophobic grip of their patriarchal milieu. (Michael Ross)
I just love classical super villains. I love Chris Claremont's Magneto, or I love Heathcliff from "Wuthering Heights." (Ethan Anderton)
Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, despite being the first wife of Edward Rochestor, remained dehumanized and faceless until Jean Rhys decided to bring her to literary life in 1966 through her hugely popular work, Wide Sargasso Sea.Rhys recreated Bertha’s (Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea) childhood and youth as a Creolean heiress, her first meeting with a young Rochester and marriage to him, and her eventual breakdown, all vividly rest alongside vignettes of postcolonial racial and sexual exploitation. (Arunima Mazundar)
The accomplishments of Victorian engineering - enabling the train to squeeze through majestic hill cuts and fly across mind-dizzyingly high bridges - are almost as impressive as the Brontë-esque natural landscapes outside the window. (Lucy Kehoe)
Twenty minutes away, you can visit Haworth, where the Brontë sisters lived. It’s easy to see how the wild scenery surrounding the village inspired Wuthering Heights. One local tells me that what drew him back to the area after a few years in London was the ever-changing landscape. ‘One moment it’s overwhelming, the next it’s so light and uplifting.’ (SamarthPophale)
Olvídense de un universo como el de Pang, que aunque intrigante, como en la caja de un puzzle aparecía ya perfectamente formado: una estética surrealista a medio camino entre Emily Brontë, las cartas Magic the Gathering y realidad virtual. (Juan Carlos Sahli) (Translation)
Marnix Verplancke: Naar welk boek kijkt u uit?Karin Bergote: “Ik ben begonnen in Anjet Daanjes Het lied van ooievaar en dromedaris, gebaseerd op het leven van Emily Brontë, die je ziet door de ogen van een aantal mensen die door haar geïntrigeerd waren geraakt.
I den kommande boken skriver hon om Emily Brontë, om den livslånga följeslagaren Thomas Mann, om Eyvind Johnson och Philip Roth. (Translation)
The Brontë Society is excited to announce the open call for a Writer in Residence to work with the Brontë Parsonage Museum from April 2023 until March 2024. We are looking for a writer who will develop and deliver a programme of writing activities inspired by the landscape of the South Pennines and which will complement our 2023 exhibition, ‘The Brontës and the Wild.’For a fee of £3000, our Writer in Residence will engage visitors, local residents, community groups, staff and volunteers to create a piece of collaborative writing inspired by the wild moorland landscape surrounding the Parsonage. The Writer in Residence will also produce a new piece of work of their own, and will be offered an opportunity to share this online and/or in person.If you’re interested in working with the Brontë Parsonage Museum during 2023- 24, are based approximately within an hour’s drive of Haworth, and want to create work with people visiting and living in the South Pennines, then we want to hear from you.
There’s a bit of 19th-century Mean Girls in Emily, as well as some 1960s hallucinogens. The closest relationship Emily (an intense Emma Mackey) has is with her brother, Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), as they frolic in the countryside high on opium. She’s madly in lust with the handsome curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who has come to their tiny village to assist her father, an Anglican priest. The pair share a he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not passion common among high schoolers.It’s impossible to take a life even as short as Emily’s and tell its story in two hours, so some condensation of time is necessary. But O’Connor plays so fast and loose with the known elements of Emily’s life that the movie is less a biopic and more of a fever dream. [...]There are times in the film when camera angles make it seem as if the whole story may be taking place in Emily’s head. A shy outcast, she’s creating a more palatable version of her own life, because otherwise she’s no more than a hermit genius left to do housework — Cinderella with a quill pen and no prince.Thanks to Mackey, a solid cast, and a true sense of isolation, Emily works as a movie for fans of Victorian costume dramas who prefer grim to prim. But as a biography of Emily Brontë? Not so much. (Howard Gensler)
Her “Emily,” opening Friday here, is a gloriously filmed, impeccably directed, beautifully acted, and “sexed-up” life of Emily Brontë, who gave us one novel, the immortal “Wuthering Heights.” [...]It’s clear to all of us, that in order to properly juice up Emily’s story for the screen, O’Connor needed a good actor and one with slow, simmering eyes. She found both in Mackey, (also Netflix’s “Sex Education” now streaming). Good choice.Did I forget to tell you that O’Connor’s subject is not your grandmother’s Emily Brontë, who some critics say never loved anyone, let alone the dashing curate, and may have been a lesbian? In Yorkshire?But as Alfred Hitchcock famously said, “It’s only a movie.”It is indeed, and it’s a pretty good one.Abel Korzeniowski’s score, with dark choral passages is properly haunting.Nanu Segal’s camera loves Yorkshire’s greenery and Mackey’s eyes. You will too. (J.P. Devine)
The first great film of 2023, writer-director Frances O’Connor’s “Emily” tackles the short life story of the great English author Emily Brontë of “Wuthering Heights” fame. Originally published in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell, “Wuthering Heights” remains one of the greatest Gothic romances ever written. O’Connor, who played the female lead in “Mansfield Park” (1999) and “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001), has forged a gripping biographical film set in the Yorkshire moors, a windswept collection of heather-covered hills and dales. [...]Films about artists often concentrate on their personal lives, which tells us almost nothing about their art. O’Connor has decided to turn Brontë’s personal life into a version of “Wuthering Heights” in order to show us how the artist perhaps took the raw material of her own existence and turned it into a historical bestseller that continues to cast its dark Gothic spell over new generations. [...]O’Connor’s film argues that life is the leaden material that artists transmute into gold. Mackey is an undeniable wonder as Brontë. Like the classic novel, “Emily” turns life into a great Gothic thriller. (James Verniere)
Emma Mackey fully commands the screen in "Emily," playing "Wuthering Heights" author Emily Brontë and reinventing her myth.Or rather, inventing it from the ground up: Historically, not much is known of Brontë, who was said to be reclusive and lived a rather quiet life before her death at age 30. So actress and first-time writer-director Frances O'Connor ("Madame Bovary," "A.I. Artificial Intelligence") plays with the unknown and styles her Emily as a wild card: a passionate lover who gets high on opium and tattoos the words "freedom in thought" across her arm, things that almost certainly were not true but speak to the spirit of Brontë's words and the depth of her writing.O'Connor does this within the boundaries of a period biopic, without updating the setting, language or attitudes to modern times. Her approach is radical while still subtle, a sort of fan fiction approach to a literary hero.Mackey plays her with fire, her eyes piercing and her soul lit from inside. [...]O'Connor's swings — there's also an extended sequence with a mask that brings up themes of séance and possession — go a long way toward bringing Brontë to life in ways a straightforward biopic would not. It's a delicate balance and not everyone is up to such artistic reinterpretation. But here, O'Connor and Mackey together bring their subject to new heights. (Adam Graham)
In Mackey’s hands she is oddly intense in ways that can embarrass others – or destabilize them, the characteristic that does explain Weightman’s actions, even if Emily herself is so timid the affair’s consummation seems a stretch. In one of the strongest scenes, Emily puts on a mask and channels her dead mother to the increasing discomfort of Weightman and her siblings.Mackey is particularly well supported by Fionn Whitehead as the bohemian Branwell, the son to whom too much has been given and of whom too much expected. Creating a glib charmer, Whitehead reveals the artistic personality that rejoices in more enthusiasm than talent and, as life fails to deliver any success, gives Branwell’s descent into alcohol and opium the weight of tragic inevitability. He is also a useful character for O’Connor because he illustrates the physical and intellectual licence the brother enjoys in marked contrast to the sister (although you will have to forgive a rather silly scene where he encourages her to yell “Freedom in thought” at the Yorkshire moors.)Alexandra Dowling as older sister Charlotte is also notable, creating a well-observed maternal figure both caring and envious, generous in her best moments, pinched and judgmental in her worst. And, of course, there is no shortage of sweeping views over the chilly moors, thanks to cinematographer Nanu Segal.Purists are not going to be pleased with the historical liberties O’Connor takes with her ending, mixing up the publication history of the Brontë novels so that Emily can see her work published under own name in her lifetime and inspire older sister Charlotte to finally put pen to paper. (In reality one Ellis Bell published Wuthering Heights a few months after Charlotte, also writing under a pseudonym, had produced Jane Eyre.) But for the rest of us this fantasy does offer the satisfaction of witnessing the short-lived triumph of a fascinating character. (Kate Taylor)
O’Connor’s film — for which she also wrote the screenplay — is likewise mostly made-up stuff. So little is known about Emily’s actual life and times that the picture is free to indulge in thrillingly salacious speculations and semi-informed attempts to explore the roiling passions and mercurial contradictions that might have inspired our socially awkward wallflower to put pen to paper. It’s a very modern movie about the idea of being Emily Brontë, misfit of the moors. She’s played by Emma Mackey (from the Netflix series “Sex Education,” which I apparently need to watch) with deep-set eyes in a faraway gaze often interrupted by reckless, impulsive gestures. A head taller than her sisters and a good deal darker in both hair color and disposition, Emily’s a proto-Goth girl sitting off by herself in these Victorian church pews, bored to catatonia by the sermons of hunky new curate Mr. Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). [...]The real-life Weightman was actually linked with sister Anne, but why deny Emily — or us — the pleasures of a good, old-fashioned bodice-ripper? (I seriously wasn’t expecting the sexiest movie in theaters right now to be the one about Emily Brontë.) O’Connor gins up a randy melodrama of missed connections, undelivered letters and deathbed confessions. None of “Emily” has anything to do with the historical record, but it’s a fine tribute very much in keeping with the doomy, romantic sensibility of its subject, as well as the unfortunately unpopular idea that sometimes the most enduring stories are the ones somebody just made up. (Sean Burns)
“Emily” would likely not make it past the fact-checkers even before the scene where the Emily Brontë, 19th-century author of “Wuthering Heights,” gets a tattoo on her forearm. [...]“Emily” is an imaginative biopic that takes unabashed poetic license with the facts of Brontë’s life. While the real Brontë led a sheltered existence with her siblings on the Yorkshire moors, the movie infuses her (Emma Mackey) with the romantic spirit of her “Heights” characters, a wild spirit rebelling against the constraints of her time. [...]“Emily” slips back and forth between genres, sometimes a coming-of-age drama, sometimes a torrid romance, and sometimes a bit of Gothic horror. There’s a spellbinding scene where Emily puts on a mask of her dead mother’s face and begins talking to her siblings as if from beyond the grave. Her siblings are first amused, then terrified, then sobbing as they come to really believe they’re talking to their mother. Using her imagination, Emily is able to give her sisters and brother the one thing they want most in the world, something that reality can’t provide.It isn’t until the final minutes of the movie that Emily finally sits down to write “Wuthering Heights.” But by then we feel the full force of the passions inside her that propelled her to the page. O’Connor has taken the period piece, a venerable genre known for its reserve, and made it feel unpredictable and urgent. (Rob Thomas)
In mixing historical figures and biographical facts with imagined situations, O’Connor has created an absorbing and inspired portrait of a woman born before her time. Mackey is magnetic in the lead role, balancing Emily’s frustration with both herself and the world around her with a genuine need to express herself and become comfortable in her own skin. Neither O’Connor’s script nor Mackey’s performance aim to make the author particularly palatable or likeable. The resulting character is truly original, refusing to be easily labelled or categorized. She has elements of both Heathcliff and Cathy, and as the story progresses, audiences familiar with the novel will see it begin to take shape in her mind. [...]The supporting cast is likewise superb. As the eldest surviving Brontë daughter, Alexandra Dowling nails Charlotte’s dual nature. It’s a role that could read as a bit villainous on the page, but the actress imbues Charlotte’s every move–a constant war of sisterly affection and indulgence with familial responsibility and jealousy of her younger sisters’ natural, more carefree natures. Fionn Whitehead captures the tragic, lost nature of the sole Brontë brother, and Oliver Cohen-Jackson brings depth to his gentle country curate. His William is terrified by Emily’s wildness and by the strength of his feelings, seeing them both as obstacles to his religious calling.Unsurprisingly in any film about the Brontës, Emily is appropriately moody and atmospheric. Nanu Segal’s cinematography paints the surrounding Yorkshire countryside in arresting shadow and light, capturing both the muddy palette of Victorian England and the beauty of the natural world. Rain is ever-present, but the wild moors are just as appealing under stormy skies as they are under the rays of the sun.Like Alfred Newman’s critically-lauded 1939 Wuthering Heights score, Abel Korzeniowski’s score fits right in, echoing Emily’s ever-changing moods, uplifting and dramatic in turn. Interspersed with the score are quietly effective moments filled only with the scratching of the quill on paper, the creaking of the trees and the trill of the birds, or the rain and wind. A constant reminder of the author’s deep connection to her home and to nature.Viewers should come away from Emily with a greater appreciation for first-time director O’Connor, for Mackey’s riveting raw talent, and for Brontë herself. Engrossing suppositions aside, it’s clear that the author was gifted with far greater abilities and imagination than any of her contemporary critics, or even her family, were willing to acknowledge. (Emma Badame)
The eternal biopic dilemma is how much you owe to history vs. how much you owe to effective dramatic filmmaking, and actor-turned-first-time-feature director Frances O’Connor just can’t quite get the balance right in this attempt at a character study of writer Emily Brontë (Emma Mackey). The narrative tracks a fairly narrow window of time in Emily’s adulthood, including her close connection with her troubled brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead), her often-contentious relationship with sister Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) and a possible romance with William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), the new associate minister to her pastor father (Adrian Dunbar). Frances shows a facility for visual filmmaking, including a wordless sequence capturing Emily’s profound social anxiety, and the gothic intensity of a guessing game that abruptly becomes a kind of séance. In theory, though, a narrative of this kind should be about giving us a vivid sense of who Emily Brontë was as a person that informed her writing—and no matter how much screen time O’Connor devotes to close-ups of Mackey staring directly into the camera, she too often comes off like a chaotic mix of behaviors that don’t add up to a character. Maybe many of things are true, or at least truer than the timeline for the publication of Wuthering Heights. But while the truth is always an acceptable defense in a libel case, that’s not always enough to make for a successful story. (Scott Renshaw)
What screenwriter O’Connor does that her directing self relishes is to make us think that Emily’s life was a barrel of laughs. The movie is remarkably bright and breezy. Perhaps Emily thought she was actually writing a comic novel that people took more seriously than she expected they would; the upshot being that nobody laughed as much the Brontë girls. Oh that’s so wicked Emily, and the giggles ensue. [...]All of the film’s acting is exceptional, but special praise goes to Mackey for making a woman with astonishing intellectual talent wonderfully relatable. I appreciated her character’s ability to consume as much of the attention as she could in the context of a very competitive family. “Look at me, I’m Emily B.”O’Connor makes you care about Emily, even if a lot of the goings-on seem out of character for the tenor of the time. Her writing talent was prodigious. According to O’Connor, so was her passion for being in the spotlight.If you go see “Emily,” which is playing at the North Park Theatre, you will delight in the costumes designed by Michael O’Connor, especially all of the fabulous hats worn by women. Nanu Segal’s cinematography, which often glows with candlelight, is outstanding. You expect moody moors, but Segal gives them a special allure.“Emily” has an engaging energy that may belie the era in which it’s set, but it’s certainly enjoyable. There’s an intensity that we don’t often experience in far too many of today’s homogenized movies. It’s about a woman who is committed to her own understanding of freedom.O’Connor has delivered a story that lives and breathes in the best way possible. Her film not only has great style, it also has a wellspring of encouragement and respect for a young woman who had writing talent that helped change the literary world. (Michael Calleri)
What elevates the film beyond a traditional BBC-type experience is Mackey’s hypnotic performance. She’s in nearly every scene, of course, and yet you crave more. I’d seen her briefly in Sex Education and in Keneth Branaugh’s Death on the Nile, but this performance has the air of a major acting statement. She expertly navigates, perhaps leans into, what is essentially Emily’s core strangeness, weirdness, that sets her apart from her contemporaries. She breathes life into Emily and avoids a traditional period performance that we’ve seen a thousand times. Somehow, Mackey is able to convey an entire subtext of borderline madness strictly through physical actions. Her eyes, her body, and her posture all underscore the intense emotional trauma that O’Connor’s vision holds. It’s a startlingly strong performance, one that will lead to many great things for the actress. (Clarence Moye)
Director Bryan Rafael Falcón, who is also the company’s artistic director, said they are always looking for plays by female playwrights, particularly ones that explore the idea of what it means to be human and from where we get our identities.“For Brontë, we have these three sisters who are isolated on the English moors of northern England and Yorkshire and somehow these celibate women write some of the most passionate works in literature,” Falcón said.“We’re intrigued to understand where does this powerful storytelling come from? Where does this passion come from?”He was also attracted to this play, he said, because it is inherently theatrical. The play starts out at the Parsonage Museum, the actual Brontë home in Yorkshire. It’s a place where visitors can see their dresses, their dining room table, even the brush that Emily dropped into the fire on the night she died.“We were recreating that sense of place here,” Falcón said. “But over the course of the play, the actors put on the clothes of the Brontës and they step into the roles and lives of these women and we start to learn more about the facts around what went on in their life, what were their challenges, what were the tragedies they encountered, what were their relationships about.” [...]The play moves back and forth in time and space between different years from the present to the mid-1800s and through many locations in England.“Visually, the piece is intended to be more expressionistic than biopic,” Falcón said. “Everything on the stage has a metaphor, a meaning, a reason for being there. It’s very visually rich, beautiful.”The music director, Robert Lopez-Hanshaw, helps establish time and place for the audience. While lighting changes alert to moves through time and space, actors rarely have time to change costumes, so music and sound effects are being provided.“We have tried to ask ourselves, what does the world of Jane Eyre sound like? What does the world of Wuthering Heights sound like?” Falcón said.They have sounds for the Moors, sound for pirate tales, sounds for every location.Falcón, who did not read the novels of the sisters until he knew he was going to direct this show, said that audiences needn’t read the stories or even know much about the Brontës. The play, and the information they have in the lobby, will provide a crash course. The story, he said, is more about exploring a family of genius women and what inspired their work than a biography or literature lesson. (Bridgette M. Redman)
EDIT: Also the Nationaltheatret Norwegian production of Jane Eyre makes an appearance in the Brandhaarden Theatre Festival - Female Voices 2023:A Musical DramaMusik und Gesangstexte von Paul GordonBuch und zusätzliche Gesangstexte von John CairdNach dem Roman von Charlotte BrontëDeutsche Fassung von Sabine Ruflair(Deutsche Erstaufführung)Theater NordhausenKäthe-Kollwitz-Strasse 1599734 NordhausenFebruary 24, 19.30 hFebruary 26, 18.00 hMarch 12, 18.00 hMarch 18, 19.30 hMarch 19, 18.00 hAdapted by Juliana HirschmannMusic by Chenglin LinDirected by Ival AlboresiWith Eve Rades, Anne Kobayashi / Emmi Krauthöfer / Hannah-Fee Posselt, Jonas Hein, Maaike Schuurmans, Amelie Petrich, Rina Hirayama, Rina Hirayama.In der vergangenen Spielzeit hat das Theater Nordhausen die deutsche Erstaufführung dieses im Jahr 2000 erstmals am Broadway gespielten Musicals herausgebracht. Gäste, die dieses spannende Stück bisher nicht gesehen haben, bekommen in dieser Saison eine Gelegenheit. Das englische Waisenkind Jane Eyre erlebt eine schwere Kindheit im Hause ihrer Tante Mrs. Reed. Kaum besser hat sie es in dem Mädcheninternat, in das sie von der Tante geschickt wird. Eine glückliche Wende in ihrem Leben scheint sich einzustellen, als Jane als Gouvernante für ein französisches Mädchen auf Thornfield Hall, dem Anwesen des wohlhabenden Edward Fairfax Rochester, ihre erste Stelle antritt. Sie verliebt sich in Rochester, der ihre Gefühle erwidert. Doch in dem Haus gehen merkwürdige Dinge vor sich, und kurz vor der Hochzeit mit Rochester erfährt Jane die Wahrheit über sein wirkliches Leben.Paul Gordon und John Caird adaptierten für ihr Musical den englischen Erfolgsroman »Jane Eyre« von Charlotte Brontë aus dem Jahr 1847. Sie war die älteste der bekannten Brontë-Schwestern, die unter männlichen Pseudonymen als Schriftstellerinnen im viktorianischen England mit unkonventionellen Romanen zu Berühmtheit gelangten. Charlotte griff in »Jane Eyre« viele Themen auf, die sie selbst in einer Zeit umtrieben. Und so ist auch das Musical mehr als eine bewegende Schauer- und Liebesgeschichte. Es erzählt vom Streben nach Unabhängigkeit in einer von Männern dominierten Welt, von der Suche nach der eigenen Identität und von der Kraft, sich auf dem eigenen Lebensweg gegenüber vielfältigen Widrigkeiten zu behaupten.
February 24/25met Kjersti Tveterås, Thorbjørn Harr, Heidi Goldmann, Jan Gunnar Røise, Andreas Tønnesland, Helene Bergsholm, Hanne Skille Reitanregisseur Eline Arboscenograaf Olav Myrtvedtkostuum ontwerper Alva Walderhaug Brostencomponist en sounddesigner Thijs Van Vuurelichtontwerper Øyvind Wangensteenchoreograaf Ida Wigdelmasker Nina Koenigtoneelschrijver Njål Helge Mjøs
Played by Emma Mackey (“Sex Education”) with a beguiling combination of self-conscious reserve and feral intensity, O’Connor’s enigmatic heroine isn’t the reclusive, neurasthenic creature concocted by popular imagination (with the help of her older sister Charlotte, who took charge of the narrative when Emily died in 1848 at age 30). Here, O’Connor takes what little we reliably know about Emily’s life as the daughter of a Yorkshire clergyman and self-effacing sister to three artistically expressive siblings, and fleshes it out with generous helpings of speculation and outright fiction, using Brontë's one and only novel, “Wuthering Heights,” as a lens on her own inner wildness and longing. [...]O’Connor leans heavily into that fusing of the inner and natural worlds: There’s lots of twirling about in “Emily,” often amid drenching rainstorms while cavorting on those aforementioned dales. But for the sometimes hysterically pitched emotion of the movie — especially when the soaring choral musical score kicks in — “Emily” is at its best when it quiets down, allowing viewers to see Emily’s world as she might have perceived it. [...]Did it happen that way? The factual particulars are less interesting to O’Connor than the mystical gifts of her protagonist, whose native sensitivity tips into outright possession in one of “Emily’s” most powerfully effective scenes, when Emily conjures her late mother during an impromptu séance. What begins as after-dinner entertainment takes on the Gothically supernatural contours of “Wuthering Heights” itself, just as Emily’s choice to tattoo the words “Freedom in thought” on her inner arm presages the ungovernable intelligence of Cathy, her creation and, by O’Connor’s lights, her literary doppelganger.Dreamy and haunted, a product of hyper-dramatic atmosphere as much as the social and family dynamics of her time, the Emily of O’Connor’s telling emerges as a figure with spirit, magnetism and mystery. “Emily” is less a portrait of an artist as a young woman than the finding and freeing of a rebel heart. The movie may or may not be entirely true to Brontë, but it is surpassingly, and often deliciously, Brontë-esque. (Ann Hornaday)
Emily isn’t a straight biopic but, at its best, a suggestive and enjoyable exploration of a young, imaginative mind and its troubles — Emily is, from the start of the movie, a woman brushing up against the limits of decorum, increasingly so as the myth-building, wandering mind that sustained her and her three siblings in childhood persists, for Emily, into adulthood, when her siblings seem for the most part to be moving on to finer things, like love and their hunger for occupation.Emma Mackey (of Sex Education fame) plays Emily, and from merely the way she presents herself relative to her siblings — staring at her feet around others, with her long brown hair hanging down into her face in a gesture that comes off as both extraordinarily shy and slightly mischievous — she sets herself apart. This is one of those stories about a woman genius whose will and imagination are mitigated and contained by her era. She is fitful and idiosyncratic, to be sure, uncontrollable in her breaking of rules that feel arbitrary, not because she intends to be defiant, but because she is who she is. The movie begins with Emily in the throes of death (from tuberculosis) and leaps backward to trace the secrets and desires that are at risk of dying with her. [...]But Emily cannot be reduced to this titillating analog for Heathcliff and Cathy, or really to any one relationship in Emily’s life. Its strength is in finding ways to provide a fuller portrait, sneaking in telling and evocative details here and there that merge the pure satisfaction of good drama with the more intellectual pleasure of watching a story avoid the usual traps. The movie’s handheld camerawork is delicate, like the entire movie, going out of its way to capture the unspoken essences of every conversation, wielding the power of a glance when the story needs it. It’s a good movie about a woman before her time that doesn’t work backward from our knowledge that she’s an icon toward the details that would justify her reputation. This movie plays its hand differently. It feels more like an effort to make us curious about this woman, whether or not we know or care who she is. And from the moment we see her, we are indeed inclined to be curious. That’s how you know it works. (K. Austin Collins)
The author of Wuthering Heights, who died at the age of 30, is the most mysterious of the Brontë sisters, leaving little behind but the one (canonical) novel and the poems she contributed to a sororal anthology. This has given writer-director Frances O’Connor the freedom to speculate, resulting in a drama that aspires to the moody romanticism of Wuthering Heights and benefits from a captivating performance by Emma Mackey (Sex Education) in the title role.Unlike Dickinson, which freely and hilariously inserted modern slang and attitudes while riffing on Emily Dickinson’s life and work, Emily plays things straight, which frankly makes it difficult for those of us not schooled in the biographical facts to tell which parts are speculative and which aren’t. It seems as if the biggest leaps O’Connor takes involve Emily’s romantic relationship with her curate father’s assistant William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and her intense sibling bond with her dissolute brother Branwell (Fionn Whitehead). The thrust is that these two must have largely inspired the characters of Edgar and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.Emily herself is a misfit, chafing against the restrictions of her time and place, but most comfortable when spinning stories with her sisters or, as in the film’s most revealing scene, playing games of masquerade. Mackey is well-cast, bringing a wide-eyed intensity and a smirking derision to Emily’s generally awkward interactions with the wider world.As an effort to interrogate the story of one of English literature’s most enigmatic authors, Emily will be of most interest to those with a preconceived image of its subject. As an effort to capture the sorts of pressures and frustrations faced by a woman bursting with creativity in the Victorian era, it paints a vivid picture. (Marc Mohan)
Frances O’Connor’s fictionalized portrait of real-life literary legend and “Wuthering Heights” author Emily Brontë avoids the stoic, still-life cinematic portrait treatment. For her feature directorial debut, O’Connor puts her faith not in fact-checking Emily Brontë’s complicated history but in her own instincts and insights as screenwriter/director and established actor (she was terrific as Fanny Price in 1999’s “Mansfield Park,” a Jane Austen adaptation). That artistic license serves the film and its eccentric central character — a mid-19th-century social misfit with an observant eye — tremendously well.Infused with wit, rounds of intoxicating Gothic imagery (kudos to director of photography Nanu Segal) and an ethereal performance from Emma Mackey (Netflix’s “Sex Education”) this “Emily” covers what shaped and inspired Brontë’s lone work of creative genius. It also does a convincing job of illustrating how out-of-place Emily was in a world that would prefer to stifle such an independent-minded artist.O’Connor conveys Emily’s restless inner and outer worlds — including a romance with a strapping curate (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). She also brings to life the entire complicated Brontë bunch: Emily’s more tradition-bound but talented sisters — Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling), author of “Jane Eyre,” and Anne (Amelia Gething), author of “Angus Grey.” (sic) All are still caught up in mourning the loss of their mum, but it is their impetuous brother Branwell Brontë (Fionn Whitehead), a consistent and charismatic troublemaker who brings them both joy and grief, and even literary inspiration.For all these reasons, “Emily” is a bit of a radical period piece unto itself, a film that doesn’t want to be bound — much like its central character — to one genre or one overall conceit. And that lifts “Emily” far above other recent, more staid and comfortable “biopics.” (Randy Myers)
Emily is a well acted and often captivating film, though at least a passing familiarity with Brontë’s masterpiece makes a difference in appreciating Writer/Director Frances O’Connor’s vision. The accomplished actress, best known for Mansfield Park and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, makes an impressive auteur debut. Wheremany might have made the mistake of overplaying the gothic atmosphere of the story, O’Connor strikes a balance and portrays Emily’s formative experiences without going to the hammy extremes. O’Connor doesn’t underestimate what an interesting person Brontëmust have been but avoids making her life as colorfully melodramatic as the fiction she wrote.Mackey is wonderful in the title role, infusing Emily with a sense of mirth, playfulness and stubborn defiance that makes us love her and ache with her during her most difficult times. Whitehead’s boyish charms are perfectly suited to the character of Branwell, and O’Connor nicely captures the closeness between the brother and sister that is thought to have influenced the dynamic between the younger Cathy and Heathcliff. Dowling’s Charlotte is the most interesting character, and her interplay with Mackey is involving, frustrating.Emily is largely a film for fans of literature and costume drama, but it’s successful enough on that level to constitute one of the strongest mainstream releases of the year up to this point. Emily is an intelligent, insightful extrapolation of the life of an extraordinary artist, and it’s likely to be a significant chapter in the careers of both its director and its star. (Patrick Gibbs)
While Emily is not entirely fanciful, O’Connor’s film is clearly an exercise in speculative fiction. What if, instead of being inspired by gothic and romantic literature that she and her sisters devoured from childhood, Emily Brontë based her famous novel on her lived experience?Thus we have O’Connor’s version of Emily, played by the darkly beautiful French-English actress Emma Mackey (Netflix’s Sex Education, Death on the Nile). Here, she is a rebellious young woman ahead of her time, involved in a passionate transgressive love affair, having supernatural experiences, struggling with patriarchal rules, grief, trauma and sibling rivalry. [...]From the outset, O’Connor makes no secret of her revisionist approach. As the film begins, with Emily’s death from tuberculosis at the age of 30, the camera pans to copies of her newly published novel with her name proudly written under the title. (As O’Connor no doubt knows that the book was first published under the pen name, Ellis Bell.)No matter — moods are more important than historical accuracy or scene-setting here. Cinematographer Nanu Segal, shooting on the moors near the Brontë home in Haworth in West Yorkshire, avoids coffee table pretty framing, preferring dim naturally lit interiors and rushing handheld outdoor shots to suggest emotional urgency. Similarly, Abel Korzeniowski’s classically styled score ranges from moody piano arpeggios to manic violins. [...]Less persuasive is the rivalry depicted between the wild Emily and the more extroverted and pragmatic Charlotte who, in real life, survived all of her siblings before dying in pregnancy at 38. She is portrayed here as prudish, scolding, and envious of Emily’s genius, which seems unfair.The basis of this comes from Brontë biographers who note that, following, Emily and Anne’s deaths, Charlotte sanitized her sisters’ controversial reputations by portraying them as unworldly and naïve. (There’s also a persistent rumour that she destroyed the unfinished manuscript for Emily’s second novel.) But it goes too far to suggest that the author of Jane Eyre, a book never mentioned here, was the work of a second-rate, convention-bound talent.Overall, O’Connor’s revisionist depiction of Emily Brontë is a tantalizingly credible exercise in world-building thanks to the director’s commitment to her concept, and on a scene-by-scene basis by Mackey’s brooding performance.She communicates a kind of awkward physicality of someone caught up in their inner life, and suggests how Brontë’s small, close circle of relationships may have found their way into her gigantic work of fiction. (Liam Lacey)
Citing their history, O’Connor explained, “There was a period of time where it was Brantwell, Emily and Weightman kicking around the parsonage for a couple of years. I just thought, ‘Well what happens?’ I don’t think she had an affair, but she might have been watching these guys in terms of prototypes for Heathcliff and Edgar.“Weightman was a real person. He was an incredible flirt. Everybody fell in love with him,” she added. “He died when Emily went away to Brussels. For my story, it’s important that she connects to someone on her journey to become who she is.“And for her to fall in love with the patriarchy and the patriarchy to reject her and say, ‘There’s something ungodly about you!’ is just very helpful for what I want to say in the film.” (Stephen Schaefer)
How much of the Brontë sisters did you know about before you got cast?I knew who they were. I knew the books that they'd written. I'd read some of them when I was younger. So I had a bit of context, but I discovered most of what I needed to know through reading the biographies and doing the research when I got offered the part. I watched all of the documentaries I possibly could, and all the films that had been made, and all the adaptations that had been made of the said books.This film isn't a faithful retelling of Emily's life. It fictionalizes events in order for us to imagine what might have inspired her real-life work. Did you find the lack of restriction to historical accuracy to be creatively freeing? Or does it maybe pose its own challenges?It poses challenges. I got offered the part a year and a bit before we actually started shooting, so I went in there pretty fresh. When I started researching and realized that there were a lot of historical discrepancies and a lot of things weren't factual, I sort of had to re-habituate my preconceptions of what the Brontës' story was and what Emily's story was. I'm a little more classical. I think I'd thought it was a biopic, and then when I got in there, it wasn't. In the end, I had to kind of fight against my own preconceptions of what I thought I was doing.There's a different function of a creative story versus a documentary, even if some Brontë purists might be upset about the fudging of the timeline.Yeah, but, like, who cares? I get it. I mean, I was the same in the beginning, but in the end, it's, like, "It's just a story. Can we all just get over ourselves?" The problem is if it was ever pitched and sold as a biopic, that would be the problem. It's not a documentary, basically. If you wanna watch a documentary about the Brontës, there are loads and they're great. But this is a story and an interpretation. You just kind of have to roll with it and let it happen to you and just enjoy it in all of its imperfections and all the different rhythms and all of the broad strokes. You need to just follow it. That's the way you can enjoy it.The end result I'm quite happy with. It feels like it's not stuck in a specific structure or a specific kind of filmic rule system, which I like. I like that we pretty quickly, from the mask scene onwards, blur those boundaries quite intensely and play with the genre a little bit, go towards the more the supernatural side. (Chelsey Sanchez)
If there’s one thing I’d suggest for this work in progress, it would be more warmth, narrative kindness and a closer relationship with the people in the seats, the theater’s equivalent of the adoring Brontë reader.In some ways, director Tracy Walsh’s production is a deconstruction of “Villette,” a piece of theater that certainly finds the humor in the piece and is appreciative of the wry sensibility. The intent here, I think, is to universalize the story and not worry unduly about the original cultural specifics. The cast, which includes Mi Kang (who plays Lucy), Helen Joo Lee, Mo Shipley, Debo Balogun, Renée Lockett and Ronald Román-Meléndez are all vibrant performers who maintain their own identities rather than disappearing into their Victorian characters. That’s fair enough although a tricky match in places for this particular Brontë, who was so profoundly empathetic.No one here feels especially vulnerable to anything. So, in essence, the show concentrates on a structural critique of the situation in which Lucy finds herself and a celebration of her personal resilience. I found myself craving fewer, longer scenes, allowing the actors to dive deeper without being so interrupted by the sliding doors on Yu Shibagaki’s set, more elegant than functional. But Brontë fans will find plenty here to intrigue them. (Chris Jones)
Unfortunately, without a mad wife and other showy elements, “Villette” is more difficult to dramatize. The Lookingglass version is beautifully acted and staged, under the direction of ensemble member Tracy Walsh. But at times, it feels more like a book than a play.Mi Kang as Lucy narrates a lot of the plot, speaking directly to the audience. With her wonderfully mobile face, Kang is able to convey Lucy’s sense of humor, along with her feelings of hurt and longing. Artistic Associate Sara Gmitter’s script is witty and brings out Brontë’s sharp observations about the narrow choices faced by Victorian women. But some parts of Lucy’s story would have been better shown, in dialogue or action, rather than explained. In the book, Lucy can be fierce—she locks a student in a closet for acting up—and goes to confession though she hates Catholicism. In the play, she mostly talks.The wordiness of the play is reflected in the stage design by Yu Shibagaki—rooms and scenes are revealed using sliding panels decorated with Brontë’s handwriting. The stage furniture is minimal—a narrow bed, an armoire, an armchair, a bookshelf. As the feelings of the characters deepen, more of the back of the stage is revealed, with spring flowers and a wonderful display of hanging, illuminated glass bottles to represent the stars.[...]Lucy has two romantic interests—the handsome but bland and fickle Graham (Ronald Román-Meléndez) and a fellow teacher named Paul Emanuel (Debo Balogun). Prickly and eccentric, Paul sees in Lucy a fiery spirit she can’t see in herself. In a red-velvet tasseled cap and spectacles, Balogun plays him with droll charisma, though he’s an awful prude over Lucy looking at a nude woman in a painting. A lot of what we learn about him is through Lucy’s narration. There are gaps, and we have to make imaginative leaps to fully understand his appeal.Also excellent are Renée Lockett as Graham’s mother, a joyful woman comfortable in her own skin, who gives Ginevra a look that would wilt all her flounces if she’d only been paying attention. Helen Joo Lee as Madame Beck, the school’s owner, is icy and intimidating as a woman who has made her own way in a man’s world.Based on a novel more people should read, “Villette” is a show worth seeing. To paraphrase Elvis, a little less explanation and a little more action would have made it better. (Mary Wisniewski)
Hardwick had a sharp eye for the fit of pique, the minor taste or habit, that indexed a whole character. From literary reminiscences of Emily Brontë, she selected a scene where “Emily is brutally beating her dog about the eyes and face with her own fists in order to discourage him from his habit of slipping upstairs to take a nap on the clean counterpanes.” (Emily Ogden)
6 Edward Rochester (Jane Eyre)Also based on a classic love story, this time by Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre is a romantic period story about a governess who falls in love with a very wealthy and flawed man, Edward Rochester. While Rochester is classically known as a beloved romantic hero (aided by the fact that he's played by Michael Fassbender in the 2011 film adaption), he can also be very unlikable too.On that end, Rochester is moody, often very discourteous, and hides a dark secret - the fact that he pretty much keeps his ill ex-wife locked up in his estate. Despite all this, he does eventually win over the main female protagonist, Jane Eyre, albeit after a lot of complications in-between. Fassbender is magnetic here, but the character is representative of the Byronic hero as a whole — arrogant, a bit cruel, and kind of misogynistic. (Neville Naidoo)
