Watching: Emma

[white_hart]

Unlike the other adaptations of classic novels we've seen recently, Autumn de Wilde's new adaptation of Emma closely follows the plot of the novel. While I know several people who prefer more faithful adaptations of this kind, I often find that in the absence of anything new I am more likely to compare the film unfavourably to the pictures in my head, and in this case I certainly felt that Knightley was entirely wrong: blond instead of dark, scruffy instead of suave, and he looked far too close to Emma in age (though that may just be a sign that I have reached the age where everyone under the age of 40 just looks like a Young Person). That aside, though, it is an incredibly beautiful film; Anya Taylor-Joy's Emma looks like a Botticelli angel and has just the right mix of awfulness and charm, and the sets and costumes are gorgeous. Bill Nighy is fabulous as Mr Woodhouse, and while Miranda Hart is much too tall for Miss Bates she's so perfect in every other way that I'm happy to overlook that. Certainly worth seeing, though I think I preferred both Little Women and The Personal History of David Copperfield.

Comments

[callmemadam]

I've never yet seen a Mr Knightley to please me!

[girlyswot]

I was very fond of Jeremy Northam in the role, though I didn't love Paltrow in that film. Sophie Thompson was a wonderful Miss Bates. I can imagine that Miranda Hart is also very good, if too tall.

[white_hart]

I'm not sure I've actually seen any of the previous adaptations, but I definitely think Jeremy Northam would have been better.

[ankaret]

Mark Strong had the right kind of presence in the Kate Beckinsale version, though he did have a rather obvious wig.

[lilliburlero]

I'm contemplating making a list of men who once seemed improbably elderly matches for the heroine who are now younger than I am - Mr Knightley is on it, of course, and Prof. Bhaer, and I'm the same age as Maxim de Winter, which feels ominous. (edit: how could I forget Edwin Dodd! - though Karen isn't a main character in the same sense as the others...)

I think actors these days do just look younger - whatever combination of personal fitness regimes and advanced make-up, lighting and CGI retouching is going on there means that early 20s and middle to late 30s are often functionally indistinguishable. I was watching the early 80s Barchester adaptation recently and I was struck by how old the younger cast members looked, until I reflected that they were perfectly plausible as people in their mid 20s and early 30s, it was just the standard for actors had changed.

[(Anonymous)]

I think male actors are looking younger while female actors look older from a younger age (iyswim) which would add to the discrepancy between anyone cast as Emma and the corresponding Mr Knightley.

[white_hart]

I really liked Bhaer in the Greta Gerwig Little Women, because he made me realise that Bhaer only seems impossibly old from the perspective of a child.

Anyway, it's probably OK as long as you are still younger than Mr Casaubon.

*googles*

Oh, fuck, I am the same age as Mr Casaubon.

[girlyswot]

I don't think it's just the make up etc, I think it's also that tastes have changed, so that these days men who have more youthful looks (even adolescent-ish looks) are admired more than those who appear older and more rugged.

[lilliburlero]

Definitely: I think what was once the "teen heartthrob" sort of look has shifted to the standard, and then there's Timothée Chalamet.

[cmcmck]

The mystery for me when they do Austen novels as films is why they always make them aristocratic rather than middle class.

[white_hart]

I don't think this was aristocratic - certainly prosperous upper middle class with private incomes, but that seemed true to the book.

[girlyswot]

Oh, I know this one! It's because they want all the Americans who read romance novels set in the Regency period to go and see it, because there are a LOT of them. And all those books feature dukes. Occasionally earls, but mostly dukes.