New [Jane Austen] Emma mini on BBC
13 Oct 2009 03:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneSo, I both love and hate the new BBC Emma.
In the process of airing now - two of four have shown - is a beautifully and expensively-filmed version starring Romola Garai as Emma, Michael Gambon as Mr. Woodhouse, Jonny Lee Miller (formerly Edward to Frances O'Connor's Fanny in 1999's Mansfield Park) as Mr. Knightley, and Blake Ritson (formerly Edward to Billie Piper's Fanny in ITV's sucky 2007 Mansfield Park) as Mr. Elton.
This production is, in common with Pride & Prejudice (2005), truly beautiful. Gorgeous locations and lighting, brilliant colors, and modern cinematography that really breaks that old BBC Drama Boxy Room mold where you feel like you're stuck at knee height in a dim, grey room while all the actors move around you. There's sunlight and movement, and an energy to the physical direction that's really engaging. On the other hand, the director comes right out and says in this behind-the-scenes featurette that he wanted to use "modern body-language" in order to update the piece, and unfortunately, he and the screenwriter have both gone so far in their attempts to "update" that several scenes are... rather damaged.
On the one hand, a visually compelling piece, with top-notch, fun, innovative, playful acting and directing - and I think Romola's Emma is strongly reminiscent of Keira's Elizabeth, bringing out and emphasizing her youth with some teenaged mannerisms. On the other, classic lines butchered due to dumbing-down apparently in aid of mass appeal, occasionally requiring a huge extra suspension of disbelief. (These are the same strengths and weaknesses exactly that I find with P&P2005, by the way.) In the carriage proposal scene in this version, Elton actually says to Emma that he "couldn't care whether Harriet lived or died" - which I find pretty much impossible to buy for a clergyman of his era, at least as an utterance, though it was undoubtedly true!
I sympathize with the impulse to modernize, to an extent, because when you squint at Austen, it sometimes seems that it almost works in another context. Emma is a little princess, which made the valley girl element in Clueless apt. But Clueless didn't put the valley girl in the Regency - it put Regency (though not directly) in the valley girl. I saw The Taming of the Shrew at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival with a 1950's setting one time, poodle skirts and all, with the props and sets and all very cleverly updated a la Romeo+Juliet, but the dialogue kept the same, and that, I think, is much more insightful and clever, and functions much better. I would love to see Emma transferred in the same way to, say, England in the 1930s. Rather that than the sort of tweaks that make me scowl and say "Not period!" (This is why I hate reading Regency AU fanfiction. It's practically always got something wrong. Admittedly, Emma is not on the Fall Out Boy/Lost in Austen level of bad.)
On the other hand, though, I find this the most memorable and engaging and pretty Emma I've seen, and Romola Garai's girlish, sulky interpretation is fresh and exciting. It doesn't hurt that the script and director really put in space for visual sparks between her and JLM's dry, snarky Knightley, because this is something that I often find lacking in screen productions, and which is even a little unsatisfying on the page, but which a film version has an awesome potential to rectify. (Paltrow and Northam - the chemistry just wasn't there. Mark Strong in the Beckinsale version was smoldering and intense, but Kate's reciprocal attachment wasn't quite so convincing onscreen.)
In the process of airing now - two of four have shown - is a beautifully and expensively-filmed version starring Romola Garai as Emma, Michael Gambon as Mr. Woodhouse, Jonny Lee Miller (formerly Edward to Frances O'Connor's Fanny in 1999's Mansfield Park) as Mr. Knightley, and Blake Ritson (formerly Edward to Billie Piper's Fanny in ITV's sucky 2007 Mansfield Park) as Mr. Elton.
This production is, in common with Pride & Prejudice (2005), truly beautiful. Gorgeous locations and lighting, brilliant colors, and modern cinematography that really breaks that old BBC Drama Boxy Room mold where you feel like you're stuck at knee height in a dim, grey room while all the actors move around you. There's sunlight and movement, and an energy to the physical direction that's really engaging. On the other hand, the director comes right out and says in this behind-the-scenes featurette that he wanted to use "modern body-language" in order to update the piece, and unfortunately, he and the screenwriter have both gone so far in their attempts to "update" that several scenes are... rather damaged.
On the one hand, a visually compelling piece, with top-notch, fun, innovative, playful acting and directing - and I think Romola's Emma is strongly reminiscent of Keira's Elizabeth, bringing out and emphasizing her youth with some teenaged mannerisms. On the other, classic lines butchered due to dumbing-down apparently in aid of mass appeal, occasionally requiring a huge extra suspension of disbelief. (These are the same strengths and weaknesses exactly that I find with P&P2005, by the way.) In the carriage proposal scene in this version, Elton actually says to Emma that he "couldn't care whether Harriet lived or died" - which I find pretty much impossible to buy for a clergyman of his era, at least as an utterance, though it was undoubtedly true!
I sympathize with the impulse to modernize, to an extent, because when you squint at Austen, it sometimes seems that it almost works in another context. Emma is a little princess, which made the valley girl element in Clueless apt. But Clueless didn't put the valley girl in the Regency - it put Regency (though not directly) in the valley girl. I saw The Taming of the Shrew at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival with a 1950's setting one time, poodle skirts and all, with the props and sets and all very cleverly updated a la Romeo+Juliet, but the dialogue kept the same, and that, I think, is much more insightful and clever, and functions much better. I would love to see Emma transferred in the same way to, say, England in the 1930s. Rather that than the sort of tweaks that make me scowl and say "Not period!" (This is why I hate reading Regency AU fanfiction. It's practically always got something wrong. Admittedly, Emma is not on the Fall Out Boy/Lost in Austen level of bad.)
On the other hand, though, I find this the most memorable and engaging and pretty Emma I've seen, and Romola Garai's girlish, sulky interpretation is fresh and exciting. It doesn't hurt that the script and director really put in space for visual sparks between her and JLM's dry, snarky Knightley, because this is something that I often find lacking in screen productions, and which is even a little unsatisfying on the page, but which a film version has an awesome potential to rectify. (Paltrow and Northam - the chemistry just wasn't there. Mark Strong in the Beckinsale version was smoldering and intense, but Kate's reciprocal attachment wasn't quite so convincing onscreen.)
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