Emily (2022)

My 10th favourite film of 2022 is a fictionalised story about the life of English author Emily Brontë, well known for her 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. Combining fact and fiction, this becomes an overarching theme of the film, starting with a scene that speaks volumes.

Wuthering Heights was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction, and the mask scene in Emily takes on the latter genre, memorable and powerful. Here, Emily wears a mask that covers her entire face, and seems to embody the spirit of her mother, and appears convincing as her siblings begin to believe their mother was speaking to them, but it turns out to just be an act.

This is the film's one and only gothic scene in a film of deep melodrama, reminding me of Terence Davies' film The Deep Blue Sea, where the protagonist Hester goes down to an empty railway station, appears frightened, and we see a flashback to years ago in wartimes, when she and other citizens hid in the station while bombs were dropped above them.

Much later in the film, there is one quick shot of Emily looking at her reflection in the mirror as she covers her face with the mask, then puts it down. These are the only two times in the film where Emily wears the mask. I reckon that shielding her face with the mask is meant to be akin to shielding herself from society. Like how she allegedly was in real life, the film depicts Emily as a recluse, with her visibly uncomfortable around people outside of her family, and her even suggesting that she stay in her bedroom for the three weeks that her sister's friend will be visiting. Because of her reclusiveness, Emily's sister alleges that people call her "the strange one". The question that the mask may provoke is, did Emily want to hide her anxiety or did she not mind society seeing this? Emily was afraid of being around strangers and acquaintances, but was she worried about letting others see her discomfort, or was she fully accepting of herself and unbothered about others' social perception of her? Was she ever afraid of herself, or did she embrace her oddness and accept herself, believing in her own world instead of adhering to the world normalised by society? I think this because I know the feeling of knowing that others see you as awkward, but not much caring about it. The feeling that you have the ability to appear normal and excited and talkative to others, but choose not to because that is not you.

Writer-director Frances O'Connor: "She’s a mystery, we know so little about her – and I’m an introvert and this character is an introvert! She died when she was 30 and yet she wrote this gargantuan piece of work and there’s so much in it. You can kind of feel who she was through the novel."

O'Connor blended the lack of knowledge about the 1800s author with introversion, which naturally does not let others know much about oneself. But do note that Emily Brontë was indeed solitary and reclusive, it was not invented for this film. Emily goes from being uncomfortable around others to becoming an author. "to find her voice", said writer-director Frances O'Connor.

And during Emily's romance with William, as William avoids her and deems it forbidden love, he asks Emily, "That night with the mask ... did you ..."

Emily: "Did I what? DID I WHAT?!"

William: "There is something ungodly in you."

William does not complete his question, but it must be about whether Emily was pretending to be the spirit of her mother. William's line sounds like it would be from a horror film, again hinting at the part-gothic nature of Wuthering Heights. Additionally, this moment might mean to be ironic, with Emily, a recluse, exploding. It is an odd scene, and those are my thoughts of their intention.

As mentioned earlier, the mask scene shows the power of belief, that fiction can be believed to be reality, a meta-theme of the film being a fictionalized biography of Emily Brontë. Belief is strongly and intelligently emphasised in a scene in the film where William for the first time coaches Emily in French. William criticises Emily for believing his translation and swiftly carrying on with her speech, instead of checking the dictionary for herself. Emily turns this around to strengthen her point, criticising William for "blindly" following religion and preaching it to others, instead of thinking for himself. Belief is also emphasised with Emily's brother Branwell having "freedom of thought" tattooed on his arm, which Emily then follows. After Branwell is caught for spying on another family, Emily is questioned as to whether she was also there. Emily lies and says that she was not, and she is believed. Once again, fiction appears like reality.

In my opinion, the only major flaw with this film is that Emily does not ever try to speak to William at his grave. I naturally expected her to read Wuthering Heights at his grave, which this film implies was inspired by a relationship she had. I wish there was at least a scene of Emily and William saying something like they believe that spirits are always with the living. That could have explained why Emily is never seen speaking to William's grave. But there is no such scene. Similarly, Emily never tries to speak to the spirit of her dead mother, and I thus wonder whether this was creatively intended. Early in the film, Emily implies that she dreams of her, to which one of her sisters retorts that they had agreed not to talk about her. A while later, Emily pretends to be possessed by her spirit. I expect that the inclusion of these scenes are meant to hint that Emily's avoiding of people is due to trauma from her mother's death. Her mention of her mother, despite the family's decision not to talk about her, shows that she is unable to move on. Does the film want to imply that she eventually moves on, or doesn't? I genuinely do not know, but it is fine as I do not feel that we need to know. Her mother is pretty much mentioned only these two times in the film. Similarly, one could say that Emily found closure and catharsis from William's death by writing Wuthering Heights, or one could say that Emily refused to move on and refused to confront the reality of his death, due to her never seen speaking to William's grave (although she did visit it with her family before writing Wuthering Heights). I cannot tell the intent of this, but there might also not have been any intent behind this. It could simply be that writer-director Frances O'Connor did not feel that such a moment would be necessary.

After William ends his relationship with Emily, she decides to move to Brussels to study. Emily then tells William she has stopped writing and is instead studying to be a teacher, which she had previously said she didn't want to be. It seems that having experienced heartbreak from William, she has decided to adopt a "real" profession, no longer romanticising the beauty of love or the art of writing. This is also a callback to earlier in the film, where Charlotte had tried to dissuade her from creating stories. She herself had wanted to stop, citing it as juvenile.

After William ends his relationship with Emily against her wishes, Emily avoids him even when he comes to her. Naturally, it is likely because he dismissed her that she no longer wants to be close to him, but additionally, her tendency towards reclusiveness might have made her more cold towards William here.

Keeping in line with Emily's reclusiveness and oddness, I expect that writer-director Frances O'Connor deliberately avoided conveying whether Emily liked William from the beginning. She first sees him at church, where he is introduced as the new curate. Emily looks around coldly as everyone applauds him. Later, Emily looks in disgust at her sisters as they admire him. I cannot tell whether Emily discreetly liked him once she saw him, she never smiles or appears flirtatious when he is initially around. Neither do I know why she was instantly cold to him. After his introductory speech, she does question his line about God being in the rain, but she seemed cold even before he had spoken and she herself is at church.

In the film, Emily has a romantic relationship with the curate William Weightman (a fictional character). After William's death, Emily writes Wuthering Heights, the 1847 novel that centres on a romance. Throughout the film, the only other person who learns of their relationship is Emily's brother Branwell Brontë, who also dies in the film. Even when Emily dies at the end of the film and we never see her tell anyone about her relationship with William. Thus, the film smartly implies that Wuthering Heights was based on a romance that Emily Brontë had, but no one knew about.

To conclude, with this film being a fictionalised story about the life of this author, elements I've found similar to Wuthering Heights and this film, are that both include a strong relationship between foster siblings (in the film it's Emily and Branwell), a growing romance (in the film it's Emily and William), a character who rejects religion (in the film it's Emily), the female and male characters spy on another family and gets caught by a dog (in the film it's Emily and Branwell, but only Branwell gets caught), the male leaves the female and she later marries another man (in the film, the female leaves the male and the male is upset, then dies before she could see him again), the female dies young (in the film, William dies young, then Branwell dies young, then Emily dies young too after writing the novel).

Rather than just making another adaptation of Wuthering Heights, this film imagines those events as being experienced by the author, and how they could have shaped her life to who Emily Brontë was. Writer-director Frances O'Connor has beautifully and intelligently adapted threads of the famed book into an original story, about how Emily might have lived, two centuries ago.

Trivia:

• Lead actress Emma Mackey: "The times where you did do static shots [like the mask scene at the table], they were for a specific reason."

• Writer-director Frances O'Connor says the handheld cinematography is to make Emily feel personal with her struggles and relationships.

• According to Emma Mackey, Emily never saw the success of her book during her lifetime, unlike in the film where her father celebrates her for getting the novel to London.