Emma is not about very much except the utopian espionage of a limited clique of people who will all basically have to marry each other at some point, if they haven't already. Either you are on a wavelength with this material or you are not. It may be that the majority of my generation, in a lenient time, do not have much to immediately relate to in a movie in which an aristocratic matchmaker spends her days scheming to couple reluctant contenders for marriage. But what is timeless is Emma's personality. I'm sure everybody's met a busybody drama queen who's so sweet and likable, even crush-worthy, but somehow conflict is everywhere apparent when she's around. We don't want to accept that she doesn't really care as much about us as she so convincingly seems to and probably believes she does herself, but instead is just very talented at manufacturing drama that she can appear in the middle of to mediate and make peace with those opposed. How sweet.
Gwyneth Paltrow shimmers in this title role, as young Miss Emma Woodhouse, who feels a need to be puppetmaster in her own petite township of England. Paltrow is pitch-perfect as we see her eyes tending the room, deliberating on whose lives she can control, or make better, which is more the way she sees it. She undertakes Harriet Smith, played by Toni Collette, who evokes humble sympathy as an honest young woman of flawed breeding, standing firm that she marry the Rev. Elton, played by the cheerfully foolish Alan Cumming. Miss Smith would much sooner marry a provincial farmer. Emma won't permit it. When the meager cropper sends Miss Smith a letter of proposal. Miss Smith is so unsure of herself that she rejects the farmer, just to find that the Reverend doesn't love her. He loves Emma. This should be a helpful example of the uncontrollable nature of people for Emma, who in her mind feels capable of controlling everyone. But, like most people who live in their head, she'll need more than one.
Plots like this are about etiquette, detail and the manner in which genuine personalities strain against the strait-jacket demands of the social order. In an age when transportation was significantly limited and entertainment was predominantly confined to community affairs, three-volume novels and church services, rumors were the favorite leisure activity. Neighborhood personas were precious, as they gave you someone about whom to speculate and judge, and this Austen farce has its allotment, most enjoyably Mrs. Elton (Juliet Stevenson), who commends herself constantly by quoting others.
Other community intrigue is supplied by Miss Bates and her deaf mother, Mrs. Bates. They are played by Sophie Thompson and Phyllida Law, who are Emma Thompson's sister and mother, both sharing the great writer-actress' understatedly quirky Brit sense of humor. Miss Bates says everything three times and Mrs. Bates never hears it, and when Emma is disgracefully mean to poor Miss Bates it is the honorable Mr. Knightley, her brother-in-law, in a warm and observant performance by Jeremy Northam, who rakes her over the coals, giving her a hard-line lesson on her moral duties under the class system. Emma views Knightley as a brother. She is not by any means attracted to the Reverend. There is a dapper young bachelor in the community, Ewan McGregor with an essential flirtatious glow, who appears destined to be her squire. However, he has other intentions as well, and in due time Austen sees that everyone gets what they have coming, or for Emma maybe a bit more.
The movie tapers the crevice between deftly manipulated social satire and soap opera, but it feeds on a spry intellect and a resilient comic tone. Writer-director Douglas McGrath, who wrote the immaculate Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen and moved from Saturday Night Live to Jane Austen with uncanny dexterity, is snug letting the comic features of Austen's work dominate its scholarly heritage. Realizing the broad comic prospects of Emma and the humorous facets of an embellished ceremonial pace, McGrath boasts competently good humor. If this Austen adaptation is ultimately less affecting than, for example, Ang Lee's atmospherically ornate adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, it is more fit to deliver an unexpected sight gag or an audaciously contemporary touch.
Gwyneth Paltrow shimmers in this title role, as young Miss Emma Woodhouse, who feels a need to be puppetmaster in her own petite township of England. Paltrow is pitch-perfect as we see her eyes tending the room, deliberating on whose lives she can control, or make better, which is more the way she sees it. She undertakes Harriet Smith, played by Toni Collette, who evokes humble sympathy as an honest young woman of flawed breeding, standing firm that she marry the Rev. Elton, played by the cheerfully foolish Alan Cumming. Miss Smith would much sooner marry a provincial farmer. Emma won't permit it. When the meager cropper sends Miss Smith a letter of proposal. Miss Smith is so unsure of herself that she rejects the farmer, just to find that the Reverend doesn't love her. He loves Emma. This should be a helpful example of the uncontrollable nature of people for Emma, who in her mind feels capable of controlling everyone. But, like most people who live in their head, she'll need more than one.
Plots like this are about etiquette, detail and the manner in which genuine personalities strain against the strait-jacket demands of the social order. In an age when transportation was significantly limited and entertainment was predominantly confined to community affairs, three-volume novels and church services, rumors were the favorite leisure activity. Neighborhood personas were precious, as they gave you someone about whom to speculate and judge, and this Austen farce has its allotment, most enjoyably Mrs. Elton (Juliet Stevenson), who commends herself constantly by quoting others.
Other community intrigue is supplied by Miss Bates and her deaf mother, Mrs. Bates. They are played by Sophie Thompson and Phyllida Law, who are Emma Thompson's sister and mother, both sharing the great writer-actress' understatedly quirky Brit sense of humor. Miss Bates says everything three times and Mrs. Bates never hears it, and when Emma is disgracefully mean to poor Miss Bates it is the honorable Mr. Knightley, her brother-in-law, in a warm and observant performance by Jeremy Northam, who rakes her over the coals, giving her a hard-line lesson on her moral duties under the class system. Emma views Knightley as a brother. She is not by any means attracted to the Reverend. There is a dapper young bachelor in the community, Ewan McGregor with an essential flirtatious glow, who appears destined to be her squire. However, he has other intentions as well, and in due time Austen sees that everyone gets what they have coming, or for Emma maybe a bit more.
The movie tapers the crevice between deftly manipulated social satire and soap opera, but it feeds on a spry intellect and a resilient comic tone. Writer-director Douglas McGrath, who wrote the immaculate Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen and moved from Saturday Night Live to Jane Austen with uncanny dexterity, is snug letting the comic features of Austen's work dominate its scholarly heritage. Realizing the broad comic prospects of Emma and the humorous facets of an embellished ceremonial pace, McGrath boasts competently good humor. If this Austen adaptation is ultimately less affecting than, for example, Ang Lee's atmospherically ornate adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, it is more fit to deliver an unexpected sight gag or an audaciously contemporary touch.