Advanced warning: I’ve never read Emily Brontë’s now-classic gothic novel Wuthering Heights.
I do feel as if I know it, though. I know of the isolated manors stacked on the Yorkshire moors, I know of the mad Heathcliff, and I know of the widespread disgust felt by many reviewers who were shocked by Brontë’s penchant for emotional cruelty threaded throughout the novel. I suppose at some point in my life I must have wondered how Emily, the sister of Charlotte Brontë of Jane Eyre fame, wrote such a polarizing novel years ahead of its time — so much so that it’s now considered one of the greatest books ever written.
This question clearly intrigued actress Frances O’Connor (forever best known to me as the troubled mother in Steven Spielberg’s A.I., Artificial Intelligence). In the new film Emily, O’Connor makes her feature debut as a writer/director. In the film, she imagines the emotional trauma suffered by Emily Brontë (played here by the fantastic Emma Mackey) with an eye toward what led her to pen the controversial novel. As a Wuthering Heights neophyte, I can’t help but think that Emily feels a bit like a literary and entirely serious in-joke. I appreciate the sensitivity and effort that went into making the film, but I couldn’t help but feel it would have resonated more had I read the novel first.
O’Connor starts the film near the end of Emily Brontë’s life as she collapses due to breathing issues. Kneeling by her side, Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) senses this may be the end and asks Emily how she wrote Wuthering Heights. That kicks off what is essentially a backstory of young Emily’s life as she negotiates a sheltered, secluded childhood into young adulthood. Introverted and socially awkward, Emily essentially becomes home schooled in French by the new curate William Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Naturally, Weightman initially repulses Emily, but they do eventually embark on a scandalous love affair, heightening the internal torment Emily already felt and will obviously channel into her novel.
O’Connor orients us confidently within the period through authentically stark visuals. Look, if you’re going to make a movie about Emily Brontë, then directors absolutely have to get the Yorkshire landscape exactly right, and O’Connor does just that. We’re treated to several scenes of characters dashing through the heather with seemingly endless vistas of hill-covered landscape and appropriately grey skies, constantly reaffirming Emily’s inner torment. I’m quite impressed with O’Connor visual sense of space both in the open moors and within the dark and claustrophobic manors of the period. Since the story explores classic gothic archetypes, the script feels a little overly familiar, but it does shape Emily and Weightman as well-formed and interesting characters.
What elevates the film beyond a traditional BBC-type experience is Mackey’s hypnotic performance. She’s in nearly every scene, of course, and yet you crave more. I’d seen her briefly in Sex Education and in Keneth Branaugh’s Death on the Nile, but this performance has the air of a major acting statement. She expertly navigates, perhaps leans into, what is essentially Emily’s core strangeness, weirdness, that sets her apart from her contemporaries. She breathes life into Emily and avoids a traditional period performance that we’ve seen a thousand times. Somehow, Mackey is able to convey an entire subtext of borderline madness strictly through physical actions. Her eyes, her body, and her posture all underscore the intense emotional trauma that O’Connor’s vision holds. It’s a startlingly strong performance, one that will lead to many great things for the actress.
in the end, I did begin to understand a bit of what within Wuthering Heights that attracted O’Connor to the story. And I’ll admit that, by just watching the film, I’m fascinated to read the novel and to experience Brontë’s single literary masterpiece. I suppose that speaks to some success within the film itself after all.
Emily is now playing in theaters nationwide.
