BEFORE: There's a reason why I program two specialty months each year, February and October - because otherwise I'd be tempted to mix up the romance films with the horror films, and then I might just end-up see-sawing between the two and having thematic whiplash. There are some actors and actresses who also seem to bounce between the two genres - Elisabeth Moss, for example, is also on my list for being in "The Invisible Man", "Us" and "Shirley", which all seem more suited for October's chain - so I have to find alternate links leading to and away from films like "The Seagull". Anya Taylor-Joy is another, she's on my list for appearing in "The Witch", "New Mutants" and "The Witch", which also seem more horror-based, so she's no use to me today as a link. But her appearance tonight is a reminder that I've been meaning to start watching "The Queen's Gambit", as apparently we can't even think of ending the pandemic before everyone has finished watching this show, it's like this year's "Tiger King" - so I'd better get to watching episode 1 tomorrow just so we can all get one step closer to normal-ish.
Two actors carry over from "Hope Gap", Bill Nighy and Josh O'Connor. This was planned as the middle of a three-film Bill Nighy section, but sometimes there's extra carry-over. Actually, it turned out to be three actors carrying over, not two.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Emma" (1996) (Movie #2,252)
THE PLOT: In 1800's England, a well-meaning but selfish young woman meddles in the love lives of her friends.
AFTER: It's been a long time since I watched the other version of "Emma", the one starring Gwyneth Paltrow - that was just about five years ago, in fact, and just over 1,500 movies back. So I'd better read up on the plot of "Emma", the Jane Austen novel, tonight on Wiki just so I have everything straight. But right off, I can tell you the biggest problem I have with this film, and as you might have guessed, it's Anya Taylor-Joy's eyes. It's not that they're too big, which everyone seems to say, but I think it's just that they're too far apart. She doesn't have those big, sad eyes like a Keane painting, there's just too much space, part of it's nose, but most of it's just face, between the two eyes. I want to reach out into the TV screen and put one hand on either side of her face and just push them together, but even if that were possible, I just don't think that would accomplish anything. But they're very distracting in that sense, and it made this film very hard for me to follow - and I just know this is going to bug me during every scene of "The Queen's Gambit", too, and if I ever get a chance to watch "The New Mutants", same problem. (That film is down to a $5.99 rental price on iTunes, so after Easter or perhaps when it gets a bit closer to Halloween I'm going to try to figure out how to work that film in to my chain, ASAP. I'd watch it tomorrow, only I don't think that film probably belongs in my romance chain...)
But I'll admit I don't know that much about England in the 1800's - maybe the look on a woman that her eyes are much too big for her own face was in fashion back then, along with Brits having horrible teeth and being "pleasingly plump". Emma is forced to make herself look better by hanging out with plainer girls, or at least that's what I took away from this story. After her governess leaves her service to get married, Emma needs a new friend, and she chooses Harriet Smith, who is, let's be honest, a rather plain girl. (If you want to look skinny, hang out with fatter people, if you want to look young, hang out with older people, it's just logical...). And Harriet soon receives a marriage proposal from Robert Martin, who is a tenant farmer of the brother of Emma's brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley (we'll get to him in a bit). Emma claims she's not interfering in Harriet's life, but she strongly implies that Harriet could do better. (She can't.). So Harriet rejects Robert Martin and then Emma falsely believes that Mr. Elton, the local minister, is in love with Harriet, and again, even though Emma promises to stay out of it, she can't help but set up Harriet with Mr. Elton, only to find that Mr. Elton was hanging around with the pair of girls in order to get closer to Emma herself. Emma somehow chose to hang out with the plainer girl, yet then is somehow surprised when Mr. Elton was more interested in the prettier girl? There's. a bit of a disconnect there.
Anyway, Emma's now bungled things for Harriet twice, and Mr. Elton goes on holiday for six weeks, then comes back to town with a wife, and the town is abuzz with gossip. Two other people also come to town - Jane Fairfax, the niece of the talkative Miss Bates, and Frank Churchill, who's the son of Mr. Weston from his first marriage. Mr. Weston, of course, is the man who married Emma's governess and set this whole crazy thing in motion in the first place. I didn't quite get why Mr. Weston's son doesn't share his last name, though. It wasn't really explained here - perhaps Mr. Weston's wife re-married and he was adopted by his step-father and took a new last name? (I'll check this out later in the plot of the novel. Ah - Frank Churchill was adopted by his aunt, there you go.). Anyway, Frank Churchill's a real hunk, and dances with everyone at the ball. Mr. Elton's there, and he refuses to dance with Harriet - too many bad memories, I guess - but Emma's friend Mr. Knightley does dance with her (this becomes important in a bit). Emma also dances with Mr. Knightley, and it seems they share a moment, they may be getting closer together....
But before Knightley can talk with Emma, Frank arrives carrying Harriet - it seems she was threatened by Gypsies or something on the way home from the ball, and he saved her after she twisted her ankle running away. In all the confusion of remembering how to call for the doctor, since the telephone hadn't been invented yet, Harriet tells Emma that she's fallen in love again - naturally Emma assumes she's in love with Frank, who saved her from Gypsies, but she's really fallen for Mr. Knightley, who did a kind thing and danced with her when nobody else would. This whole situation would be a lot easier if anybody during the 1800's could just come out and TELL somebody they had feelings for them, but that just wouldn't be proper, because Britain. Thus every romantic situation just turns into a big ball of confusion, and then Emma shows up to make it even worse.
Emma then sets up a picnic, so that Harriet and Frank can spend more time together, and Frank suggests a "party game" where everyone tells Emma what they're thinking about. But nobody likes this game, so they play another one where everyone is brutally honest with each other or something, and Emma ends up insulting Miss Bates. Yeah, Frank's kind of a big douche, but once again, Emma just made everything worse with her honesty and advice. Emma then has to make a round of apologies - to Miss Bates, to Harriet for screwing up her life twice, and then to Robert Martin, the farmer who proposed to Harriet way back at the start of the story. Once she starts apologizing, and thinking about other people instead of herself, things start going her way - is that the moral here, am I understanding this right?
Frank Churchill's sick aunt dies, and he no longer needs to care for her, plus he's now free to marry Jane Fairfax, and it turns out they've been secretly engaged all this time, he was never an option for Harriet or Emma. This frees up Harriet to marry Robert Martin, and Emma can follow up on the budding romance with her brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley. And if you're like me and notice the similarities here to the 1995 film "Clueless", where Cher ends up in love with her ex-step-brother, you may wonder how Jane Austen had the nerve to reach into the future and shamelessly borrow so many plot points from a film that was made 178 years after she died. JK.
I'm encouraged after checking Wikipedia - Jane Austen herself said that we're not supposed to like Emma, because she's spoiled, headstrong and self-satisfied, over-confident in her matchmaking abilities, and blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives. OK, so, great, I didn't like her - mission accomplished. I also just re-read my review of the 1996 movie, and it seems I was able to follow the plot a lot better while watching this version - so this one's clearer, but is it BETTER? I'm not sure. My other complaints about the 1996 film were that Austen pulled the "man meant for Harriet falls for Emma instead" bit twice in the same story - yah, but now I see that they were very different situations - one time the confusion was based on the man's love for Emma instead of Harriet, and the other time it was based on Harriet's love for the man, who wasn't even interested in her. Also, I'm reminded that the "mysterious benefactor sends a piano as a gift" was used by Austen in both THIS story and also "Sense and Sensibility", so what gives, Jane?
But all in all, it seems this 2020 film version stayed a little more true to the original novel, only they added that pesky period in the title. For god's sake, WHY? We've all accepted by now that book titles and movie titles are not to be treated like sentences, even if they are. They're just phrases, and need no ending punctuation. Though I suppose if Hollywood had it's way, every title would end in an exclamation point, like "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest!" or "Always Be My Maybe!" Thankfully, things just are not usually that way.
Also starring Anya Taylor-Joy (last seen in "Glass"), Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth (last seen in "Suspiria"), Miranda Hart (last seen in "Spy"), Callum Turner (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Amber Anderson, Rupert Graves (last seen in "A Room with a View"), Gemma Whelan (last seen in "Gulliver's Travels"), Tanya Reynolds, Connor Swindells, Oliver Chris (last seen in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"), Chloe Pirrie (last seen in "Youth"), Myra McFadyen (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Esther Coles, Suzy Bloom, Suzanne Toase (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2"), Nicholas Burns (also carrying over from "Hope Gap"), Lucy Briers, Anna Francolini, Christopher Godwin (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Vanessa M. Owen, Isis Hainsworth, Hannah Stokely (last seen in "The Duchess"), Charlotte Weston, Rose Shalloo, Angus Imrie (last seen in "The Kid Who Would Be King"), Letty Thomas.
RATING: 5 out of 10 traditional folk songs
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