Yeah, no.

[selenak]

Good lord. Behold a review that’s meant to be glowing which confirms everything I was afraid of regarding the new Emily Bronte movie. Charlotte bashing! (There’s no “perhaps unfairly” about it, Bradshaw, if this movie villainizes Charlotte into a jealous mean girl, err, woman, it’s unfair. The biggest argument she and Emily ever had was about Charlotte wanting Emily to publish precisely because she thought Emily’s poetry rocked.). Anne marginalisation! Seriously, any movie that’s supposed to be about Emily Bronte and ignores the relationship with Anne was the central (human) one in her entire life both as a writer and a person completely ignores what few solid facts we know about Emily Bronte and therefore is not about Emily Bronte. At all.

…aaaand we get lots of sex with the Reverend Willy Weightman, who is driven “nearly mad” by his (entirely fictional) relationship with Emily? And somehow this inspires Wuthering Heights? Argh. It’s my least favourite kind of movie about a female writer, it seems, where she’s squeezed into some (watered down) version of the plot pop culture has osmosed about her most famous work. (See also: most stuff featuring Jane Austen as a character, with the glorious exception of Miss Austen Regrets.)

….Yes, it looks like the only actual fact which made it into this film is that Branwell was friends with Willy Weightman. (In rl they were friendly enough for Branwell to be at his death bed; Emily and Charlotte were in Brussels at the time, studying French with Monsieur Heger, and Anne was working as a teacher at Thorpe Green.)

As for reviewer Peter Bradshaw’s speculation Ted Hughes would have loved one particular scene in this movie (not a romantic one): mayyyyyybe, he was into that, but otoh he grew up near Haworth and had enough Bronte opionions of his own to write a poem about Emily (which ships Emily/the Wind, not Emily/a guy) and reference Emily in a poem about Sylvia Plath, so I am really not convinced he’d have liked this film. The script of which sounds as if it was written by Mr. Lockwood, based on his so very insightful inititial assumptions about the people at Wuthering Heights, and with this Wuthering Heights joke, I am ending this rant.

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

Ugh.

[selenak]

Quite.

[mildred_of_midgard]

What.

[selenak]

If someone ever writes my "Lehndorff! The Musical" scenario, it will be more historically accurate, to put it mildly.

[kathyh]

I read a review of it somewhere else that put it into my Avoid Like the Plague category. Thanks for confirming that for me :)

[kore]

incidentally, the published copy of Wuthering Heights which Emily finally holds in her hands would not have been credited to “Emily Brontë” but “Ellis Bell”


OMFG LOLLLLLL is really about all I can say.

It sounds about on a par with that Becoming Jane movie -- of course every great female artist was really taught and freed by A Man!

[kore]

This grain comment put it much better!

"Every time someone posits that a writer like EB couldn't have written a passionate novel without having had some sort of steamy, ilicit, love affair, I think to myself that Agatha Christie must have been one heck of a serial killer. And to have got away with it for all those years! In plain sight of everyone!"

[selenak]

Ha, yes. And then there's the blood dripping of Dorothy Sayers' hands....

[lirazel]

THANK YOU FOR THIS I could not agree more! About everything! (Including Miss Austen Regrets! Olivia Williams truly was the Jane Austen we deserved!) I am quite upset!!!!!!!


(which ships Emily/the Wind, not Emily/a guy)

I am no Ted Hughes fan but this is 100% the correct position to take re: Emily.

[jesuswasbatman]

I was put off this by how utterly contemporary Emily looks in the posters.

[selenak]

That, too. But then, there are current 19th century set movies and tv shows - Gentleman Jack and To Walk Invisible being the honorable exceptions - willing to commit to early to mid 19th century hair style and fashion, so this alone would not yet have been a deterrent to me. But the trailer already was very alarming re: the content, and this review truly confirms it.