Battle of the Emma Adaptations

emma woodhouse handsome clever and rich with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little to distress or vex her based on this initial description of emma woodhouse i don't think anyone would be quick to label her as the most relatable character in fiction jane austen herself was even convinced that emma would not be a very popular character amongst her readership before publishing the novel jane austen once said of emma i am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like and for what was probably the only time in her life jane austen was completely wrong emma has endured over the years and gone on to become one of her most popular novels and most well-loved characters emma has remained so popular as to spawn numerous television and film adaptations and today i want to take a look at those adaptations and decide definitively who did the best job at bringing emma and the whole of highbury to life and thus begins the first round of the battle of the austin adaptations coming in in the last place we have the 1972 series now i do not necessarily subscribe to the belief that newer is better but when it comes to this adaptation i'm afraid that sentiment very much rings true this adaptation suffers from a lot of technical failures there were so many moments throughout the series where uncomfortable silences would just sort of hang in the air there were so many times that the camera would zoom in on a character's face with no accompanying music and when you have episodes that only last somewhere from 35 to 40 minutes you cannot waste an entire minute following a character entering a room my main gripe with this show is that it felt so staged and rehearsed when we as the audience are watching a movie or a television show we want to feel transported we want to feel like we're watching real people live their authentic real lives and the camera just happened to be pointing at them and i never felt that way with this adaptation i was keenly aware the entire time that i was watching actors on a set deliver their lines and do so rather robotically it felt like all the actors were just standing there waiting for their cue and weren't doing the work to really embody and inhabit these characters and even when it seemed like a character was trying to express a genuine emotion it just never came off as authentic the scene in which nightly confesses his love to emma was just so flat and emotionless and those are definitely not the adjectives that you want to use when describing a romantic declaration of love this kind of stilted acting also meant that a lot of the humor and liveliness of the source material was totally lost emma is a comedy austin is a master of wit and there are so many characters in this novel who are so hilarious because they are so ridiculous take the character of mr elton for example he compliments and heaps praise onto emma to the point of ridiculousness and he thinks and speaks so highly of himself and yet does not have the self-awareness to understand that he is actually just embarrassing himself in front of company he's a very humorous character but in this adaptation i didn't find myself laughing at his antics at all i just felt uncomfortable watching him also the actress who played emma was just so uncharismatic emma is a difficult character to play she can be unlikable vain manipulative at times extremely judgmental but even when she is being all of these things we as the readers and the audience can't help but have a soft spot for her and that is entirely because of her charismatic and witty manner and the woman who portrayed emma in this series just had absolutely no charisma or presence at all her performance only heightened emma's flaws without showcasing any of her likability and strengths the character of emma is also redeemed through her love and friendship with harriet smith and yet in this adaptation it seemed like emma didn't really like harriet at all and in fact could barely tolerate her presence this actress's facial expressions and posture her wide unblinking eyes and her constantly clasped hands it made her look downright evil in some scenes and if you can't get emma right then the entire adaptation just kind of falls apart right there in fourth place we have the only non-blonde emma on this list and that is kate beckinsale's 1996 made for tv film one thing i must say is that this film went by far too quickly scenes felt far too rushed and it seemed like characters didn't even have a moment to breathe in between their lines and because of this fast pace a lot of the pivotal and important scenes seem to be glossed over no character really stands out here and honestly how could they with such a fast-paced script that seems to rush past all of the emotional beats of the story now i think it's time that i confess something to you all and that is that i'm not a huge fan of nightly as an austin hero for the majority of the book he is always there as this kind of older brother figure and then suddenly emma has a romantic epiphany about him at the end and they're in love i'm just not particularly invested in their love story so it takes a lot for me to see nightly as a viable romantic lead in these adaptations and that brings me to my next point which is that mark strong's nightly just didn't do it for me at all he was just very off-putting and angry all the time whenever he would criticize emma he came off like a father scolding his daughter he was generally just far too harsh in everything he said and did and the very worst moment of this adaptation occurs when nightly right before kissing emma for the first time talks about how he remembers holding her in his arms when she was a baby i held you in my arms when you were three weeks old do you like me as well now as you did then it completely ruined the ultimate romantic climax of the film one thing i really did like about this adaptation that i thought was a good addition were these romantic daydream sequences emma would have emma would fantasize about frank churchill or imagine this very dramatic scenario between jane and mr dixon i think these scenes did a really great job positioning emma as a hopeless romantic who just wants to see her fantasies realized and it also shows us that she often views people as characters in a story that she's telling and not as people with their own autonomy and free will in third place we have the other 1996 adaptation featuring gwyneth paltrow i think the introduction to this film is something really special because it really grounds the audience in the reality of these characters it shows us that this town and its small community is like a world in and of itself everyone in highbury knows one another and thus mundane gossip actually have really big impacts on these people and the smallest of scandals can really feel like the end of the world i think this version definitely had some standout characters for example miss and mrs bates were an absolutely hilarious duo i also thought that harriet played by the absolutely incredible tony collette was a real highlight of this film in a lot of adaptations harriet is either completely meek and is almost like a doormat who does whatever emma tells her to do or she's just very stupid and this version of harriet is none of those things she's intelligent she thinks for herself harriet is just overly kind and a little bit naive she believes that emma has the best of intentions for her and thus listens to what she says and follows her advice i also think this movie did a really great job showcasing emma's development through her matchmaking skills at the very start of the movie we see that emma already has a plan of setting mr elton up with somebody and when she meets harriet she just kind of throws those two together we see that emma is only matchmaking for matchmaking's sake and is doing it to satisfy her own whims rather than genuinely find a match that would suit either harriet or mr elton but then later on when mr elton reveals his true nature emma's perspective shifts at this point and she is genuinely trying to find a match for harriet that she believes will bring her happiness also i think ewan mcgregor as frank churchill was an amazing casting choice whoever made that decision hats off to you he was so charming at points in this film that i genuinely forgot what a terrible person he is when it comes to knightley and emma i enjoyed their chemistry i definitely think it was there i could tell that some of their interactions were definitely meant to be flirtatious all in all this adaptation was fine it was cute and fun there were many things that did well but those same things i believe other adaptations did even better our runner up is the 2009 bbc mini series this series will always kind of hold a special place in my heart because it was the first emma adaptation that i ever saw and i've loved it ever since and to this day i believe that romula garai's emma is one of the greatest performances i've seen in any austin adaptation ever she is overflowing with charm she is so vivacious and lively she brings this character to life in a way that all the actresses i've previously mentioned just weren't able to do even when she's portraying emma's worst traits her vanity and her selfishness you can't help but love her one reason this adaptation is so great is simply because of its longer form in other adaptations storylines felt rushed and the most poignant scenes were never given the time to sit and marinate in this series the pace slows down and we really get to sit with these important moments and watch these really pivotal scenes and we even get some extra moments that really elevate the story this adaptation also does something very different from all the others which is that it casts frank churchill and jane fairfax as secondary lead characters in the very first scene of the first episode we get to see frank emma and jane in childhood and draw a lot of parallels between their stories and how they grew up i actually really liked this change because it meant that the revelation of their secret relationship later on just felt that much more impactful also because frank was given so much screen time he had ample time to really piss me off i don't think i've hated frank churchill so much in any other adaptation of emma and because we see so much of him and we also are so invested in jane as a character his betrayal and his mistakes just hurt that much more i think this version also did a really great job showing the audience that frank's presence had a really big impact on emma and brought out the worst in her it is in her attempt to impress him and because of his goading that she insults miss bates that she gossips so often this series also showed us the true intentions and desires behind emma's matchmaking emma really wants love for herself but she feels like she can never have it because she has decided that she is going to live and take care of her father for the rest of her life and so she turns her attention away from herself and tries to find love for others and more importantly than this as much as emma wants love she doesn't really understand what it entails she doesn't know what real love looks like which is why she keeps getting her matchmaking wrong i do have some issues with this adaptation the main one being harriet because frank and jane are elevated to a higher status and are such prominent characters in this series harriet's character definitely suffers because of that she takes a bit of a back seat to them and honestly you guys she's kind of an idiot in this version it wasn't like she was just very naive or overly kind she was just kind of stupid and once again we have my recurring issue with nightly i've said it before i'll say it again in this version he felt far too much like a chastising older brother and that last minute realization of love from emma just didn't seem believable to me like i said this is probably just a me issue overall i think this adaptation is stellar and it is worth a watch just for romela garai's interpretation of emma alone and now in first place the adaptation that is taking home the gold we have the 2020 emma film this adaptation takes the number one spot for one very crucial reason and that is because it is the only adaptation that has made me genuinely fall in love with emma and nightly the thing this movie did so well is that it put emma and nightly's romance at the forefront of the film and it also pushed up their romantic timeline in the book and in all subsequent adaptations emma only realizes her feelings for nightly towards the end of the novel after harriet tells her that she is also in love with nightly in this adaptation that really crucial dance scene between emma and nightly at the westin's ball is framed as incredibly romantic the camera focuses on their hands and the subtle touches between the two of them and right before our eyes we get to see their feelings for one another transform by having emma and nightly realize the romantic attraction for one another early on it only elevates the tension between them for the remainder of the film it especially adds to the confrontation scene between the two of them in previous adaptations whenever nightly would chastise emma to me it always seemed like he was an older brother or father figure here though we see a man who was just deeply disappointed that the woman that he loves could do such a thing and is not really the person he thought she was emma's heartbreak in this scene is even more painful because she's let down and disappointed the man that she loves this adaptation was really all about the pining especially on mr nightly's end and you know what that is what makes a good period romance the yearning and the hand touches this film also really really leaned into the comedic aspects of emma in a way that no other adaptation has done previously every character was perfectly cast and wonderfully ridiculous from mr elton's self-congratulatory posturing to emma's father and his eccentricities and his constant obsession with the draft in his home oh and how could i forget to mention the set designs and the costumes were stunning in this film this movie was a feast for the eyes as well as the mind in the 2020 film we also get a far vayner meaner more self-centered emma than we've ever gotten before and i personally loved it i think we've reached a point where we as an audience don't need a woman to be likable in order to recognize her as a great character so i think the world was really ready for a far meaner emma than we've seen previously i think this also just made her character development in the movie that much more pronounced we start off and it is apparent that emma is exceedingly judgmental she holds herself in extremely high regard thinking of herself as almost superior to all around her she believes that she knows best always and she doesn't allow anyone she loves to make their own decisions and we get to see her realize the error of her ways and then actively seek forgiveness from the people that she's hurt a really great thing they did was have emma be the one to bring harriet and robert martin together in the end of the film and we also get to see emma put aside her more classist beliefs by inviting harriet's father to her home i have had a letter from my father he is a tradesman he comes to highbury next week on purpose to meet with me then i hope you will bring him to heartfield the 2020 emma film is as close to perfection as it can get and for all these reasons i've mentioned and more it truly does deserve the title as the best emma adaptation so that's it for me today you guys i hope you enjoyed this first round of the battle of the austin adaptations yes i plan on making this a series and i'm very excited to continue with it don't forget to like subscribe and comment down below let me know how you would rank these adaptations and which one is your favorite i'd really love to know as always you guys can find my social media links in the description below so go ahead and check those out if you would like and i'll see you guys next time [Music] [Applause] bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: FullofLit

Views: 84,530

Rating: 4.8248653 out of 5

Keywords: emma jane austen, jane austen, emma 2020, emma 1996, emma 2009, emma kate beckinsale, jane austen emma, emma adaptations, emma adaptations ranked, ranking jane austen adaptations, emma 1972, emma movie, emma gwyneth paltrow, emma romola garai, emma anya taylor joy, emma 2020 review, emma movie review, emma woodhouse, mr. knightley, mr knightley, emma and knightley, booktube, book to movie adaptations, jane austen adaptations, book vs movie

Id: AQYr3dOUW7Q

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020