'The film captured the spirit of Emily so well'

Emily will have a limited release tomorrow in the US and so we have several reviews of the film today. Los Angeles Times  has a lengthy review which comes with a pun in the headline: 'Wuther true or false, ‘Emily’ weaves a passionate portrait of a Brontë sister'..

“Emily,” a passionate and imaginative new drama about the author’s short life and enduring work, deftly waves aside this and many other details: When we see Emily (a superb Emma Mackey) cracking open the first edition of her one and only novel, it proudly bears her actual name. Whether this is an act of feminist reclamation or simply an expository shortcut, it suits a movie that delights in hurling caution and historical fidelity to the Yorkshire wind.

Written and directed by the Australian actor Frances O’Connor, making a vibrant feature filmmaking debut, it will surely madden sticklers for accuracy, which is all to the good. Those who demand strict conformity, at least in this absorbing and unapologetic fiction, are precisely the kind of people the fiercely independent-minded Emily can barely stand. [...]

The camera (wielded by director of photography Nanu Segal) has an unnerving habit of locking Emily center frame, allowing her and us no escape. Seated quietly in a pew at church, her dark hair concealed by a bonnet and her eyes cast downward, she affects a posture suggestive less of prayer than of defiance. Freely wandering the wind-battered moors, her eyes taking in her surroundings and her hair now flowing past her shoulders, she is a woman liberated, wholly if momentarily at one with a gloriously untamed world. [...]

Even without that playfully bawdy montage, Brontë historians would likely object most strongly to this particular narrative liberty, armed with the widespread belief that it was Anne Brontë, not Emily, who was the object of Weightman’s affections. To these eyes, however, the potential problem has less to do with historical inaccuracy than artistic reductiveness. “Write what you know” is splendid advice, but it can also perpetuate an unfortunate canard, namely that great literary accomplishment can be born only of direct, autobiographical experience. [...]

Her alternately tense and tender rapport with Charlotte, whom Dowling invests with intricate layers of disdain and sympathy, is especially moving in that regard. At one point, Charlotte cruelly dismisses “Wuthering Heights” as “an ugly book … full of selfish people who only care for themselves.” It’s another liberty; the real-life Charlotte, though a frequent critic and arbiter of her sisters’ published work, was hardly blind to the beauty of Emily’s masterpiece. The same can be said of O’Connor’s movie. Far from suggesting that art imitated life, it ends with the bracing suggestion that the Brontës, like any of us, could scarcely appreciate one without the other. (Justin Chang)

The Atlantic deems the film 'A Sensitive Movie About a Literary Oddity'.

 Although the film traces Emily’s life leading up to the publication of Wuthering Heights, the movie isn’t a conventional biopic. There is no on-screen text informing the audience of the year being depicted, no flashbacks to her childhood, no gesturing at larger world events to contextualize her place in society. Instead, we get daring sequences that blend the natural with the supernatural, fact with fiction—a film “that kind of moves between,” O’Connor said. She wanted to capture the spirit of Emily’s work, not the truth of her biography.

Watching Emily thus feels like reading Emily’s writing; it’s a vivid portrait of her mind that’s as romantic and haunting as Wuthering Heights. Rather than making a straightforward movie about Emily Brontë, O’Connor wanted to convey the transportive nature of the author’s classic novel. “I kind of disappeared into this world,” she recalled of reading the book for the first time at 15, absorbing the story on long commutes to classes. “I would get off the school bus in the middle of the city and really felt like I’d been somewhere.”

O’Connor’s interest in the author deepened with her poetry: “You can really feel her moving the pen across the page.” To her, Emily Brontë was a young woman who repressed her passions, someone whose creativity conflicted with who she had to be to others. “I feel like that is a common experience with a lot of women,” O’Connor said, noting the gap between “who they really are and who they have to present to the world.” Her unusually tactile film channels Emily’s heightened sensitivity. The handheld, subtly shaking camera makes the film feel as perpetually windswept as the Yorkshire moors, where Emily and her characters resided. The swelling, whooping score underlines Emily’s turbulent interiority. And the intimate soundscape picks up the rustle of every leaf and the undoing of every lace on her corset. When the new minister, William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), delivers a sermon about finding God “in the rain,” the camera zooms in on Emily’s face as the noise of raindrops crescendos. [...]

Emily fits into the subgenre of stories that reconsider misunderstood women in history through a strikingly modern lens, including the TV series Dickinson and The Great. But O’Connor’s film never indulges in anachronistic flourishes as those titles do; there’s no Billie Eilish on the soundtrack or Gen Z dialogue in the script. In never allowing Emily access to the 21st century, Emily comes off as only more emotionally charged. The character constantly seems caught between her mundane reality and her mind, in which she’s stored her most profound feelings of lust, anger, and fear. Emily is therefore a balancing act, as O’Connor put it, “between the real and the gothic,” and an examination of how Emily’s remarkably contemporary ideas of morality, faith, and love excited and tormented her in equal measure.

Emily has already irked Brontë purists, thanks to how liberally it alters many facts about the family. In real life, Weightman was never romantically linked to Emily, Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre was published before Wuthering Heights, and Anne—poor, perennially overlooked Anne—also wrote. But O’Connor, a Brontë scholar herself who gave her cast a list of biographies to study, notes that her changes were made purposefully, to express Emily’s fierce view of her loved ones. Besides, she added, “Emily herself was kind of a provocative character.” It’s only right that a film about her challenges—and maybe even disturbs—its audience in turn. (Shirley Li)

From The Epoch Times:

Recalling the visual style and spare storytelling acumen of Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, O’Connor’s film is among the most assured and daring debuts ever executed. Her level of confidence exhibited here is otherworldly. [...]

As any writer worth their weight in salt already knows, putting pen to paper isn’t a simple mechanical exercise. And for the next 100 or so minutes, O’Connor (also the screenwriter) masterfully depicts events in Emily’s short life that led to the creation of “WH.” [...]

The result differs slightly from the source material, but the intent is clear. O’Connor has essentially put herself into Emily’s head and hypothesized (with stunning believability) how one of the greatest works ever written began its gestation.

The stellar contributions of editor Sam Sneade, cinematographer Nanu Segal, and composer Abel Korzeniowski cannot be overstated here. This film is a true team effort, and it is to O’Connor’s deep and considerable credit to surround herself with collaborators and a cast that brought her vision to realization; there is not a single wasted frame to be found.

It is far too early to determine how “Emily” will ultimately sit with “WH” purists. For some, the novel is an entity unto itself with the life of Emily being a mere afterthought. For others, it will be well received and embraced as an absolute godsend, however hypothetical and far-fetched some might consider it to be.
One thing that any possible naysayers might consider: All of the characters depicted in this film are nonfictional, and all of them had some part in what went into Emily’s novel, most importantly Emily herself.
In an era when it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate artists’ work from their private lives, something like “Emily” comes along and suggests that timeless art, for better or worse, is often an offshoot of an artist’s own experiences.
Sometimes, but not always, an artist’s work is an extension of his or her own life. “Emily” might not be thoroughly historically accurate, but it is completely believable in a “what if” context.
O’Connor’s version of Emily’s life is as equally engrossing, enthralling, and mesmerizing as anything found in “WH.”
In the full-circle ending, with Charlotte ultimately putting “pen to paper” with the words of her own first novel, O’Connor ties up the production with a perfectly uplifting and inspirational coda. (Michael Clark)

The film is also featured on Collider, WSVN... And The Luxury Editor recommends staying at Broughton Hall, one of the filming locations.

The Yorkshire Post features the new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum: The Brontës and the Wild.

Whether it’s the evocative image of Wuthering Heights standing cold and alone over the bleak moor, or Jane Eyre escaping Thornfield across the countryside, there are perhaps no authors more closely associated with the landscape than the Brontë sisters.

Anne, Charlotte and Emily – as well as their brother Branwell – knew the moors, hills, waterfalls and rock formations surrounding their home at the Parsonage in Haworth intimately, taking daily walks among the flora and fauna, with the landscape serving as inspiration for their works.

And their connection to the outdoors is now being celebrated in a new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage, The Brontës and the Wild, bringing together artwork and manuscripts all associated with the landscape. associated with the landscape than the Brontë sisters.

“The wild really comes through in the novels, particularly when you think of Wuthering Heights and its inspiration, Top Withens” explains Sassy Holmes, programme officer at the Parsonage.

New Exhibition ‘The Brontës and the Wild’, will run throughout 2023 at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. Ellen Dando the Visitor Experience Deputy Manager looks at Needle Case with a Birds Nest sketch on by Charlotte Bronte 1829-1832. Picture by Simon Hulme 7th February2023

"It’s so central to Cathy and Heathcliff’s story, the landscape almost comes through as a character.

"You can feel what the Brontës wrote as soon as you stand on those moors or walk up Haworth’s main street. It’s so atmospheric.

"Emily in particular talked about how nature was almost God-like and showed her the wonders of the world.

"They lived and breathed it on a daily basis.”

A new acquisition to the Parsonage’s collection takes pride of place in the exhibition: The Brontë family’s annotated copy of Thomas Bewick’s ‘A History of British Birds’, recently acquired by the Museum from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.

"It means an incredible amount for the Parsonage to bring this item home,” said Ms Holmes. “The items from the Honresfield collection join lots of dots for us. We’ve had illustrations for a while of birds the Brontës had drawn, but now we know they’re actually copies and tracings from the book they had.

"It’s a beautiful thing to have and show our visitors and such an exciting moment.”

Other key items on display included Charlotte Brontë’s drawn needle case, crampings which belonged to her father Patrick Brontë, and The Evening Walk – one of Charlotte’s famous ‘little books’ created in miniature.

Also on show is a costume from the recent biopic Emily, which according to Ms Holmes has brought a new generation of young fans to the Parsonage.

"It was a fantastic way of engaging a new audience. The film captured the spirit of Emily so well.

"The beauty of adaptations is they capture the Brontës in a different way. I think Emily was the most wild sister of them all – so it links with our exhibition in a thematic way too.” (Victoria Finan)

According to Her Campus, Jane Eyre is the first Wattpad story.

If you were a teen or tween browsing the Internet in the 2000s and 2010s, you may have stumbled upon Wattpad. Infamous for its bizarre fanfiction and original works, Wattpad is a website for writers to publish their work and has been running since 2006.

Though, whenever the website is brought up now, former users associate it with a certain plotline: a main (usually female) character with a tragic backstory, the insane scenarios that they encounter, and most importantly, the most unbelievable male leads (with strange behaviors). Most of us don’t even associate these kinds of tropes with older literature. However, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre reflects this and she could even be considered the Mother of Wattpad. [...]

The Troubled Past

Jane Eyre begins in Gateshead Hall, where 10-year-old Jane lives with her cruel aunt and cousins, who constantly degrade and punish her for no good reason. At last, she gets a chance to go to boarding school and grow as an educated woman. However, she does experience humiliation from the headmaster and the death of her best friend. Like a Wattpad main character, she has conflicts in most areas of her life at the story’s beginning.

The Bizarre Situations

If you didn’t think Jane’s life was tough enough, she faces more punches as an adult. She leaves boarding school to work as a governess under Mr. Edward Rochester. She eventually falls in love with him and they arrange a small wedding, only to learn that he is already married to a woman who has gone insane and lives in his attic. Jane chooses to run away and stumbles upon her long-lost cousin, a traveling missionary. He proposes to Jane, stating that they will live a modest life in India, and she (rightfully) refuses. She returns to Mr. Rochester, finding him severely injured from a house fire, and they live out the rest of their lives together. Like Jane Eyre, many Wattpad stories contain sweet endings, but they also come with sharp twists and turns.

The Odd Love Interest

Last, but certainly not least, is Jane’s main love interest: Mr. Rochester. Her employer and a man of pride and power, he takes an immediate interest in Jane and shows his feelings in a unique way. From disguising himself as a fortune teller to know Jane’s true feelings to asking her if she thinks he’s handsome (she says no), he makes it a point to try out the weirdest advances. Much like Wattpad stories, he’s not the ideal lover, but in Victorian England, he would have to do.

With all of the classic Wattpad fanfiction elements within Jane Eyre, I think it’s safe to say that it was truly the first Wattpad story. (Jolina Jassal)

Sakshi Post (India) interviews writer Aashisha Chakraborty.

6.    Who are your favourite writers? Is there a book that left a lasting impression on you?

This is an unfair question for seasoned readers because they cannot choose. There is an asteroid belt of writers in my favorite writers’ galaxy and Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Salman Rushdie, Ruskin Bond, Ayn Rand, Jostein Gaarder among others occupy pride of place there. Similarly, loads of books changed me as a person, be it ‘Gone with the Wind’ or ‘Jane Eyre’ or ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’. Books make me emotional and are my raison d’etre. 

Seven Days recommends the film The Quiet Girl.

Perhaps no story line pulls at our heartstrings more reliably than that of the abandoned and unwanted child, whether it's the plucky orphan heroine of Anne of Green Gables, Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, or the abused and despised young Jane Eyre. We root for these kids to win over their adult caretakers and put the lie to everyone who underestimated them. (Margot Harrison)

According to a columnist from The Local Reporter,

Muhley grass has always reminded me a bit of Jane Eyre, who suddenly blossoms when Mr. Rochester falls in love with her; this grass is downright homely until it begins to do its own thing in the early fall. (Kit Flynn)