Ranty review: Emma (1996, McGrath)
Emma (1996)
Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam
Warning: high levels of vitriol and hypocrisy abound!
Caps from grandecaps.tumblr.com
I feel for older or longer-standing fans of Jane Austen’s novel Emma. In the days before Sandy Welch’s excellent four part adaptation in 2009, with Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller, Gwynnie’s shiny happy Hollywood version was the best of the bunch. The original 1972 BBC dramatisation is doggedly faithful to the text but also desperately dull, and the other 1996 Emma, with a younger, pre-orthodontist Kate Beckinsale and glowering Mark Strong, is dark and miserable. So the only light, colourful and visually pleasing screen translation of the novel for many years fell to Doug McGrath’s chirpy chocolate box abridgement, and Austen fans are nothing if not loyal. They love the eternal summer and pastoral fakery of Ye Olde Englande, think Gwyneth is suitably elegant for a Regency heroine, and are willing to forgive the many inconsistencies because fitting a 400 page novel into a two hour film obviously requires that the plot be sacrificed.
Even though this
was the film which introduced me to the story, I am not one of those diehard devotees, sorry to say. I watched the film, read the book, then watched the 2009 miniseries and immediately saw the error of my ways. Doug McGrath’s film is a pleasant sequence of soft focus scenes from the novel, instantly recognisable but lacking any form of continuity. Critics of Sandy Welch’s adaptation like to harp on the lack of Austen’s dialogue in the screenplay, but this is no more than a collection of the best known quotes from the novel glued together with awkward exposition and asinine fillers (‘I am in the perfect state of warmness’). I still love Juliet Stevenson as Mrs Elton (‘my friends do say...’), but the rest of the cast is decidedly underplayed. Mrs Weston (Greta Scacchi) looks too much like the hale and heaving Jane Fairfax (Polly Walker), Mr Woodhouse has been stifled for your viewing pleasure, and Frank Churchill (a woefully miscast Ewan McGregor) could be the bastard son of the Mad Hatter. Never mind, though - Gwyneth is pre
tty, despite headache-inducing hair and a grating voice, Jeremy Northam is ever handsome, and there’s a wedding at the end. If you want more, read the book (or watch the 2009 series!)
What grates the most, apart from Gwyneth, is how fans are willing to overlook the many baffling deviations from the text in this film, while slamming Sandy Welch for interpreting Austen differently in the miniseries. Mr Woodhouse suffers most from McGrath’s Bowdlerising - instead of a fussy hypochondriac who keeps Emma tied to his side, Denys Hawthorne is wheeled out to play a gentle old buffoon with no objection to
losing his daughter to Mr Knightley. Everybody smiles and chuckles whenever he recites a line from the book, but he poses no real obstacle to Emma’s future happiness. He even randomly takes the place of John Knightley in the carriage with Mr Elton (Alan Cumming), smiling benignly at the unctuous vicar making eyes at his daughter! (John is a nonentity in this film, blandly announcing at Randalls that ‘The weather is distressing your father and he wants to leave’, instead of winding the old man up with reports of a snowstorm which will keep them all from getting home.)
Frank and Jane’s secret engagement, and Frank’s flirtation with Emma, are equally neglected to the point where Mr Knightley has to explain his frustration at the Box Hill picnic, and the most surprising part of Mrs Weston’s shock announcement to Emma is that Emma should even care what Frank does. I had to laugh at the scene where Frank joins Emma in a duet at the Coles’ party, because he suddenly bursts into song - from the back of the room, where he is sitting with the rest of the audience! He should be standing at the front, turning the music for Emma at the piano.
Polly Walker talks smoothly and fills a dress very well, but she is hardly ‘a very, very fragile creature’ who cannot sta
nd a walk to the post office in the rain. In fact, she also comes across as rather slick and insincere, which better suits Frank Churchill’s other half, but is hardly the delicate and demure young woman of the novel.
A few more plot holes. Why is Emma and not Miss Bickerton walking with Harriet when the gypsies attack - and they do attack in this version! - thereby getting in the way of Frank’s romantic rescue? Shouldn’t Mr Woodhouse have something to say about Emma driving herself around town wearing little more than a nightgown? The strawberry picking at Donwell Abbey and picnic at Box Hill are so seamlessly merged and reduced that a key scene in the novel becomes merely another pastoral wet dream, filled with golden sunshine and symbols of fertility. And after Emma’s cutting remark, it is the generous Miss Bates who inconsistently refuses to receive Emma, because Jane cutting her rival would make no sense in this abbreviated screen version.
The casting of Gwyn
eth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam makes more sense than the screenplay, but only on a purely aesthetic level. Gwyneth looks great on a poster, posing with a teacup or a bow and arrow, but the real measure of the fan comes when she opens her mouth. If you can stand two hours of adenoidal whining, listening to the occasional line from Austen delivered around a mouthful of marbles, then Gwyneth is the leading lady for you. She looks beautiful, if a little undernourished and surprised, thanks to the tight pinning of her hair, but oh that voice! Ouch. Jeremy is at least an English actor and therefore sounds the part, but his Mr Knightley is more of a dandy than a gentleman farmer. I suspect his take on the character is that Mr K has remained an eligible bachelor for thirty seven years because he’s been waiting for the right man. Possibly Oscar Wilde. His hair is also very impressive, compensating for the lack of volume in Gwyneth’s severe style with a bouffant that grows gradually grander throughout the film. When he takes his
hat off before the proposal scene, he is verging on a beehive. He does deliver the treasured line ‘Brother and sister? No indeed!’, but only sounds even more like a predatory old roué when he does. In exchange, McGrath makes a cock-up of Knightley’s goodbye to Emma, having Northam actually kiss Gwyneth’s hand, before going on to profess his love in a surprisingly fancy speech for a man who ‘cannot make speeches’. Romantic, appealing, satisfying, but not Knightley.
Emma and Mr Knightley both live in suitably imposing stately piles, contrary to the descriptions of Emma’s welcoming house and Mr Knightley’s rambling abbey in the book, and the decor of both houses is suspiciously gaudy and brightly coloured, like Disney Victoriana. (The sets are dressed with strange red ‘sculptures’, like carved tables, wooden candelabras, and ornamental fish bowl stands.) Emma and Harriet read Robert Martin’s letter of proposal in the middle of Quality Street, where the Bates live in a thatched cottage and the poor dwell in rustic almshouses, and the weather is always suitable for sitting outdoors in a very brave state of dishabille. Don’t even get me started on the butterfly catching in the middle of an orchard.
Compared to the pre-Welch competition, Emma with Gwyneth and Jeremy is not a bad film - short and saccharine, with an attractive cast and a fairytale spin on Austen’s novel. Every scene is filmed in a golden haze, whether sunshine, sunset or candlelight, and all is well within the front parlours and verdant countryside of Regency England. McGrath keeps the content light and frothy, scrapping subplots, diluting tension and ramping up the romance, resulting in a shiny but shallow adaptation which says nothing in a whiny voice. Emma is a great introduction to the novel, which is the best recommendation of any film, but lacks the necessary length and depth to properly translate Austen’s genius to the screen.