Jane Austen wrote a total of six novels, all published in the early eighteenth century. I’ve read the best known of them, Pride and Prejudice, more than once, and I did get around to Sense and Sensibility at one point. The rest? Probably on my literary bucket list. But Austen’s works have inspired some fun movies.
And now, we have another version of Emma starring actress Anya Taylor-Joy. Will it be as generally delightful as other past versions, including Clueless?
Opening text, probably from Austen’s book, tells us that Emma Woodhouse (Taylor-Joy) is clever, handsome, rich, and never had anything to fret over for the 21 years of her life. She lives with her cranky old father (Bill Nighy), a cranky old man who doesn’t want anyone to ever leave and fears constant drafts. The movie opens with Emma’s longtime governess leaving to get married to a well-off widower. Emma, for her part, never wants to get married, but doesn’t mind playing matchmaker with others.
Now, much of Austen’s work is essentially a comedy of manners type of thing, where clever young women eventually pair off with clever young men while dealing with all manner of self-important and foolish people. Director Autumn de Wilde populates her movie with various fools for Taylor-Joy to drop acidic looks at. She keeps her thoughts much to herself, but her problem is clearly she thinks of people as cogs in a machine for her to plug in to do as she thinks they should. The human heart doesn’t really work that way, and her neighbor Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn) is generally there to try and remind her of that. Emma isn’t really a bad person; she’s just doesn’t seem to see the more foolish around her as anything other than an annoyance. She is someone out to help, but she also can’t help look down her nose at some people as she does so.
Is this Emma an all-time classic? It has a moment, late in the movie, when Emma finally realizes she’s been wrong about many of the things she does, but truthfully, I found Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility a but more lively. De Wilde tosses some odd physical comedy in here and there, and her movie’s protagonist seems more like a sarcastic Millennial stereotype, but when Taylor-Joy’s Emma realizes how bad she’s been, we see a new take on the character, one who learns from her mistakes and opts to use her well-meaning impulses to actually do well. This Emma is fine, but not going to be one of my favorites.
Grade: B-
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