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The directorial debut of actress Frances O’Connor, who we remember from her painstaking adaptations of BBC classics like Madame Bovary, has made it to the domestic box office. This Victorian drama of impossibly creative characters unexpectedly reveals something in common with modern Russia.
Emily, as the title suggests, is the story of the brief and extremely sad life of writer Emily Brontë, whose contributions to eternity are limited to Wuthering Heights and passionate love lyrics. Emily was the middle of the world famous triad of sisters, as well as the most miserable and most talented. The details of her biography are practically unknown to posterity. The bulk of the evidence was left by her older sister Charlotte, the author of Jane Eyre, a work of much more modest artistic merit than Wuthering Heights, and, judging by the general intonation of the film, director O’Connor clearly does not trust her, suspecting, it seems, of elementary writer’s envy. One thing is certain: Emily Brontë died suddenly at thirty of tuberculosis. How exactly she spent the time allotted to her by God – under the heel of a religious fanatic father who served as a pastor in the Yorkshire wilderness, where rains give way to fogs, and depression with tantrums, whether she was in a hurry to live, was in a hurry to feel – one can only guess. What, in fact, is O’Connor doing.
Of all the scenario strategies, she chooses the most obvious – to fill in biographical gaps with novel twists and turns. According to the principle of “from what rubbish.” That is why almost half of Emily’s on-screen adventures are borrowed from the characters she invented: Heathcliff, Lintons, Earnshaw. From half-childish pranks – nightly peeping at the measured life of respectable neighbors – to forbidden passion in an abandoned gatehouse, a mortal sin that turned into deadly consequences. The rest of the time, the characters, as is customary in the tradition of British costume cinema, wander around the wet moorlands, drink fragrant tea, clinking painted porcelain, and also dream of something more than stolen kisses or a stolen life, it’s how you look. After all, too much in fate depends on our optics: bucolic pastoral or provincial vise, family nest or the dictates of patriarchy, vocation or sentence, god or devil.
The main message of the film, repeatedly voiced by Emma McKay, who plays Emily Brontë in approximately the same key as Maeve Wiley from “Sex Education”: do not be afraid to be a fool, live. And he will be rewarded a hundredfold – whoever makes a mistake during life will unmistakably recognize eternity. Had Emily not dared to argue with her older sister, who had chosen the dull but honorable path of a country teacher, had not gotten involved in extramarital relations with the father’s ruddy assistant, had not taken a sip from an opium bottle, she would never have become the author of Wuthering Heights, published in London a year before her death, but read and revered almost two hundred years later. Only now the trajectory of other characters who fell just as early and under the same pessimistic circumstances into the abyss, alas, without the right to posthumous fame, proves the opposite. Emily was taught the freedom to be a fool and live by Brother Branwell, who also aspired to be a writer. However, neither opium, nor extravagant sex with married women, nor studies at the Royal Academy of Arts brought him one iota closer to his goal. He was undeniably incompetent. The younger sister Ann also tried to find her way in art, and her lover Emily Whiteman also wanted to expand her horizons, composing his sermons with an eye on poetic laurels. But this “stupidity” or “thirst for life” did not bring them anything but fruitless suffering.
Unfortunately, the moral of “Emily” is not at all in the promotion of freedom as the highest necessity. After viewing, completely different conclusions arise. In addition to freedom, one must have talent – perhaps the most mysterious phenomenon of nature. Why Providence endows some individuals or entire nations with talent, while ignoring others, for more than a thousand years of human thought, no one has been able to convincingly explain. This does not mean that one should not try or hope one day to come face to face with the specter of freedom. This means that, having met freedom, one must have at least a couple of talented questions for it. To paraphrase a culture hero from a former life: when you face freedom, what do you say to it?
In theaters from November 17
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