I always find it curious that “Emma” was the last novel Jane Austen wrote before her passing. “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” always felt more mature, wise and insightful. They’re also less gleeful and spry. It’s important to note that the title of the film by Autumn de Wilde, tackling Austen in her feature debut, is “Emma.” with a period at the end of the title. One might think it’s to not to be confused with the 1996 version staring Gwyneth Paltrow, or maybe to simply inform cinema-goers that this is the definitive celluloid (well, digital) version – period! However you take it, de Wilde’s vision of 19th century English countryside is a rich one, rooted in details, period dress and the title character’s ever alluring array of earrings. One astute detail is the use of folding panel draft screens, each a piece of period art in their own right, positioned by the help to keep their wealthy estate owners warm as they relax in the living room gabbing and imbibing a cordial or, more mundanely, reading. In one scene, Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) instructs the helping hands to move two such panels to exact locations to keep her father (the indomitable Bill Nighy) warm. The hyper (draft) sensitive effete is certainly snug and happy, but what Emma has more intentionally done is create space for her and her next-door neighbor (fields and sculpted gardens away), the overly solemn Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), to whisper privately about affairs of the heart.
Emma, it turns out, is a master manipulator, ever so prim on the outside but inside scripting the love lives of the young and unsuspecting roaming the quaint confines of the bucolic burg just a day’s jaunt from London. Those caught up in her matchmaking, besides Knightley, are her tag-along of lower social station, Harriet (a wonderful Mia Goth), Robert Martin (Connor Swindells), a sensitive, hardworking farmer with a square jaw , the prideful world traveler Frank Churchill (Callum Turner) and Emma’s de facto social rival, Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson). Most of Emma’s semi-well-intentioned plots (most with a modicum of personal gain attached) backfire with a dour muffled cough. Nothing in Austen’s very staid land ever erupts outwardly, though Flynn’s brooding Knightley feels like a bull in a narrow stall looking to explode. It’s a Heath Ledger-esque performance, understated yet thoroughly compelling. (Interestingly, Flynn in is slated to play rockers David Bowie and Ray Davies in upcoming projects.)
It’s hard to pick a shining star in de Wilde’s opulent period piece. Goth, Nighy and Miranda Hart as Miss Bates, a nonstop chatterbox as sweet as she is annoying, all add perfect bits of garnish to the Knightley-Emma Woodhouse tug-of-war of emotion and desire. Mark one thing: “Emma.” lifts Taylor-Joy over the top as a serious young performer in the ranks of Thomasin McKenzie (“Leave No Trace,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird,”“Little Women”). Coincidentally, the name of her occult young woman in her breakthrough, Robert Egger’s “The Witch” (2015), was Thomasin, and she’ll star this year with McKenzie in the Edgar Wright (“Baby Driver,” Shaun of the Dead”) project “Last Night in Soho.” And as much as Joy-Taylor lifts the film with her ebullient, wide eyes that mask mixed feelings, credit for a work that feels like both a fairytale and a master painting goes to de Wilde – amazingly, at nearly 50, notching her first-time shot. The script by “The Luminaries” novelist Eleanor Catton, like Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” metes in just the right amount of modern female gaze without unsettling a single apple in Austen’s cart. Flynn and Taylor-Joy have their trajectories mapped, but it’s de Wilde (who got her detailed eye making videos for Beck and Jenny Lewis) that’s the eye-opener here, and the new hot one to watch.
The pursuit of Eden (in the fictional town of Arkham, which Lovecraft situated in our fair state and used often in his tales, though the film’s not shot here) doesn’t last long. Nathan’s attempt at growing tomatoes isn’t going so well – he’s a Gardner who can’t garden – though his alpaca endeavor seems to be doing marginally better. Then there’s Nathan’s wife, Theresa (Joely Richardson) who’s wildly unhappy with the spotty Wi-Fi and can’t work, while their daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) practices Wiccan rituals in the woods.Rounding out the nuclear-plus clan are big brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) who gets stoned while tending to the woolly creatures in the barn and the youngest, little Jack (Julian Hilliard), something ofmama’s boy who becomes drawn to the voices he hears in the old well out front.
John’s old life rages outside his front door. First, a gold-toothed gang banger runs over John’s dog – then threatens to shoot him because the dog gets blood all over his Escalade. Next, a den of gangsters who all don white jumpsuits (they’re Devo ridiculous, and there’s no perceivable purpose other than to make them easier to pick off) gets wiped out. Those behind it are two illegal immigrants there to free their Latina kindred, enslaved ostensibly for sex trade. One of the girls (Jamila Velazquez) ends up hiding under John Henry’s house and is later granted sanctuary. John can’t speak a lick of Spanish, but his loquacious, wheelchair-bound father (scene stealer Ken Foree) can, providing the communication bridge and the film with a meted current of comedy (Grady from “Sanford and Son” would not be a stretch). “Berta” is later joined by her brother Emilio (Joseph Julian Soria), one of the two behind the trigger in that shoot-up. “How many did you kill?” John asks. The answer is seven, and that’s the number Hell (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) will require to even the score. You know where this is going, sledgehammer and all.
For What it's Worth 