*This is a review post. I was kindly asked to review Emma, for this post*
Jane Austen’s Emma is one of my favourite books. I studied it at school and wrote almost ten thousand words on the story, for my English Higher exam at school. I know it well. My much loved and very tatty copy was handed to my own teenager to read recently. Emma was and is my favourite Jane Austen main heroine or character. Mainly because she clearly isn’t perfect, and also faces a lot of her own mistakes and issues, and life not going the way she wants it, but also because she is slightly spoiled yet learns some tough life lessons.
There have been quite a few adaptions of this book for the screen, and some of them are better than others, but there is a new version on the scene and despite the fact that I am a bit of purist when it comes to books being made into films, I like this one.
Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde is a very refreshing version. Combining modern with the old fashioned and tradition we know and love from the book. I actually found this film stuck to the book well. Some other adaptions gloss over the more tricky parts of the book or make light of them, which I don’t think Jane Austen would have approved of. She wrote the book to show how Emma learns to face her faults and not to have them glossed over.
The costumes, scenery, acting and set are all beautifully done, and you get a real sense of the formality and almost ridiculousness of life for a woman of Emma’s class, in that time, but also her frustration with certain things she has to put up with, due to being female. Some of the cast are familiar and some are less well known, which is also refreshing.
The story takes you on Emma’s journey, the mistakes she makes, the friends she wins and looses and the love she eventually realises will be good for her and make her happy. I think if you are a Jane Austen fan, and like a film that sticks to the books, and that Jane herself would have approved of, then this movie definitely well worth getting a copy of to watch and enjoy…
Jane Austen’s Emma is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray.