Movie Review: Emma 2020

I’m a big fan of Jane Austen’s novels and their various adaptations. I loved the 1996 adaptation of Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam. It had sparkle, panache, simmering flirtation, and real heart. Sadly, the 2020 production of Emma is all style and no substance. The good parts: stunning costumes with beautiful and meticulous attention to detail. The sets and the scenery were also quite wonderful, although much of it came across as moments or vignettes one could only look at and I never felt the characters actually lived in any of the houses/locations. They seemed to ‘pose’ in various screen moments so the audience could look at them. The colour palette, however, was also picturesque and quite lovely.

Of all the characters only Mr. Woodhouse (Bill Nighy - you can't go wrong there) and Miss Bates (the incredible Miranda Hart who managed to steal every moment of any scene she graced) were appealing. Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) came across as pert, self-satisfied, meddlesome, selfish, completely divorced from the reality of life, and only interested in people as playthings. She had a sharp, foxy look as well. Miss Smith was as thick as a plank and boring. Mr Elton was oily but the new Mrs Elton was hideously vivacious and quite watchable. Johnny Flynn played Mr. Knightly like a ruffian and he had absolutely no grace and charm, and no chemistry at all with Emma – unsurprisingly as her character was interpreted as only capable of being in love with herself. The whole Frank Churchill brewing scandal went absolutely nowhere. I think the actors were misdirected. I also think the producers had a shallow approach that did not justice to the other themes. A big disappointment. 3/5

 

Loving and Leaving Mr. Darcy

Mr. Darcy. Need I say very much more? The name instantly conjures up an image of the reluctantly delectable Colin Firth, brooding, handsome, desirable … a man torn between social mores and his heart. A simple enough story and one that’s been told over and over again. Fast forward to The King’s Speech. Another simple story. This time it’s about a man with a terrible stammer who has to deliver a very important speech. Again, not much to it … so it seems. What do these two seemingly simple stories linked only by the excellent Colin Firth in the leading roles have in common? I give you the simple answer: these are two great stories. Again one wonders why this is so.

Translated to film, none of the stories have any special effects; there are no terrorists,hi-tech gadgetry, 3-D (already beginning to pall with audiences), Avatar-like computer graphics, elaborate sets or gimmicks. In effect, Pride and Prejudice (a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813) and The King’s Speech, a film released 198 years later, emphasize the timeless goal that every writer should aim for: is your story a good story. Nay, is your story a great story? Pride and Prejudice has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, and receives considerable attention from literary scholars. The King’s Speech, a low-budget movie, has swept the boards when it comes to accolades and is sure to stimulate interest in King George the Sixth, his brother’s abdication that thrust him so suddenly into the limelight, and of course the war-torn background to this history. Aha! See? Already this seemingly simple story has grown into a fully fledged drama, gripping viewers.

A good story can be found in the most unlikely places. I have just spent the afternoon watching (out of sheer laziness) a low-budget movie on television called A Perfect Getaway. With a ‘ho hum’ attitude I settled down and prepared to laugh my way through bad acting and a preposterous script. With a byline reading: ‘Two pairs of lovers on a Hawaiian vacation discover that psychopaths are stalking and murdering tourists on the islands’ I expected Saturday afternoon drivel. It wasn’t like that at all. It was a good plot, with twists and turns designed to take the viewer by surprise; the setting was simple (how much simpler can a paradisiac island be?); the acting was excellent. A good story. No, it did not garner awards, and was judged by some to be slightly above the average slasher film. The New York Times referred to the film as a “genuinely satisfying cheap thrill.” The point is … did it hold my attention? Was I surprised by the end result? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes.

Worlds apart, the three titles I have discussed have achieved what we all aim for: a product so compelling that our audiences/readers keep coming back for more. Isn’t that what this is all about…?

Are Book Trends Killing Your Creativity?

When I receive posts from literary agent blogs I always check to see what’s hot and what’s not. One year it was boy wizards; then no one wanted any more Hogwarts lookalikes. Then it was vampires; suddenly no more vampires, please. Ditto werewolves. Currently in favor one finds angels (both good and bad varieties) topping the list, along with dystopian YA, and Swedish detectives and girls with tattoos. Zombies have held their own, with extra help from a few variations on a Jane Austen theme. Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has a compelling first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” I just had to put that in. Back to the list—I think vampire hunters will break into the closed circle with Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by (you guessed it) Seth Grahame-Smith. (Personally I prefer Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing)

So, on the serious note with which I began … when you write, are you writing for the trends, or are you writing because you have passion for a story that must be told?


To be honest, Michael Crichton brought about this post. Yes, since I recently confessed to loving Clive Cussler’s rollicking adventures (along with his delicious heroes), I might as well go the whole hog and add Michael Crichton to my list of commercial fiction favorites. I really enjoy his blend of scary fact with even more frightening fiction. Jurassic Park farfetched? Well, now that nanotechnology is all the rage, who’s to say extracting dino DNA from flies trapped in amber gazillions of years ago can’t happen in the future? It was actually the sequel to Jurassic Park, i.e. The Lost World, that made me think about how literary trends might dictate writers’ output.

Here the bit that sparked my brain:

“I think cyberspace means the end of our species … Because it means the end of innovation … Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s McDonalds on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap cross the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees.” (So says a character named Ian Malcolm, iconoclastic mathematician)

(The Lost World, Ballantyne Books, 1995, pg 339)

That was published in 1995. Have we disproved this author? Are writers turning out books at the rate of knots that explore a wonderful world of diverse, challenging, fantastic, and moving literary concepts and ideas? Or, when something becomes fashionable do people immediately copy it? Will there suddenly be a plethora of Swedish detectives and quirky tattooed female sidekicks following after the success of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

The question I’d like to ask is: are writers brave enough to plow on with their original ideas, or are they bowing to trends? Of course, I’m not saying The Development of Knitting Patterns in the Outer Hebrides Since 1865 will be a bestseller, but what I am suggesting is that writers should have enough faith in their writing not to think, “Oh gosh, I’d better write a book about boy wizards/angels/demons/dystopia/vampires/Swedish detectives.…

The literary world needs unique ideas to continue to be fascinating and challenging. Let's not lose our intellectual diversity.