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Babylon 5 3.17-3.22
Nov. 1st, 2009 08:05 am( spoilers )
Nov. 1st, 2009
Emma (2009)
Nov. 1st, 2009 04:38 pmI should mention (reiterate?) upfront that I watched this far too soon after reading the book (I watched the first episode before I quite finished the book, actually) and after many viewing of a version I love (Andrew Davies’s version with Kate Beckinsale).
Basically: Lovely sets and costuming, a mostly decent (sometimes excellent) cast, but an awful script.
Most of the things Emma thinks in the book but is wise enough not to say out loud she says out loud here, usually in discussions with Knightley. They also seem to try to make her more conventionally likable, which only serves to make her unlikable because she’s still classist and still messing around in people’s lives. She also lacks the composure and (over)confidence I tend to associate with Emma, and instead they portray her as lonely and regretting her choice of lifestyle. That said, despite disliking how Emma was characterized here, I ended up really liking Romola Garai, though I suspect she usually plays tragic beauties. Of course, I also really liked her in Atonement.
Knightley, for his part, is just as classist as Emma*, here, except the script portrays him as justified, and as a result, he never seems to respect Emma at all, and ended up thoroughly unlikable to me, aside from times when he was buying her books or keeping her mouth shut and looking at Emma with fond amusement. I’m not sure Johnny Lee Miller would ever make a good Knightley-I don’t think he has the gravity or presence for the role-but I think he could have been a likable one with a better script.
Then there’s Jane and Frank. Jane is rather…meek and mousie, not Emma’s equal at all, and the result is that she doesn’t really seem to be on anyone’s level, here. I suspect the actress usually plays “cute” roles. And Frank…well, honestly, I think the writers shipped Emma/Frank, and ended up making him rather wishy-washy, and almost whiny. Which…kind of makes him come across as a loser, even before the Reveal. I liked both a good bit at first, but didn’t like them at all by the end.
Two things I did really like, though, are that they increased Mrs. Weston’s role, and emphasized her friendship with Emma, and that (unlike other adaptations) Mrs. Elton was pretty and bitchy and rather like how Emma would be if she weren’t essentially a nice person under it all, which is the impression I got of her from the book, and not at all like how she usually seems to be portrayed. I also really liked the actress who played Harriet, though the struggled mightily against a script that often wrote the character as not being smart enough to know you can’t walk through a door.
And despite my problems with the characterization, I liked most of the scenes they added in, save for one scene early on that was fine until you realized that they were doing the “totally going to get married later” thing with Emma and Knightly when they were roughly 13 and 29. And while I thought they messed up several important scenes terribly, they reclaimed some of the right “feel” in some of the very last, most significant scenes, even if that redemption was literally in the last 20 or so minutes of the series.
In short, it may be best to watch the prettiness on mute and imagine a good script/4-hour version by Andrew Davies and then turn the sound on for the last half hour.
Though, I attempted to rewatch the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma for the first time in several years the other day, and couldn’t get more than half an hour into it due to my rage at how they changed it so that Emma’s befriending Harriet was purely because she was looking for a wife for Elton. Emma’s matchmaking tendencies seem to be centered around obtaining position and security for other women (in the pairings, the men seem to be more emotionally involved, and even dependant on, than the women), and so making Harriet incidental to a man’s happiness instead of Emma latching onto Harriet and deciding that Elton would be a good thing to acquire for Harriet was way too much for me. That focus of Emma’s, at least, is something the miniseries got right.
*I do think Knightley is classist in other versions, but pragmatically so, in that he realizes class exists and influences people and how they are treated by society, but that he doesn’t care for it, whereas he more wallows in it here.
Basically: Lovely sets and costuming, a mostly decent (sometimes excellent) cast, but an awful script.
Most of the things Emma thinks in the book but is wise enough not to say out loud she says out loud here, usually in discussions with Knightley. They also seem to try to make her more conventionally likable, which only serves to make her unlikable because she’s still classist and still messing around in people’s lives. She also lacks the composure and (over)confidence I tend to associate with Emma, and instead they portray her as lonely and regretting her choice of lifestyle. That said, despite disliking how Emma was characterized here, I ended up really liking Romola Garai, though I suspect she usually plays tragic beauties. Of course, I also really liked her in Atonement.
Knightley, for his part, is just as classist as Emma*, here, except the script portrays him as justified, and as a result, he never seems to respect Emma at all, and ended up thoroughly unlikable to me, aside from times when he was buying her books or keeping her mouth shut and looking at Emma with fond amusement. I’m not sure Johnny Lee Miller would ever make a good Knightley-I don’t think he has the gravity or presence for the role-but I think he could have been a likable one with a better script.
Then there’s Jane and Frank. Jane is rather…meek and mousie, not Emma’s equal at all, and the result is that she doesn’t really seem to be on anyone’s level, here. I suspect the actress usually plays “cute” roles. And Frank…well, honestly, I think the writers shipped Emma/Frank, and ended up making him rather wishy-washy, and almost whiny. Which…kind of makes him come across as a loser, even before the Reveal. I liked both a good bit at first, but didn’t like them at all by the end.
Two things I did really like, though, are that they increased Mrs. Weston’s role, and emphasized her friendship with Emma, and that (unlike other adaptations) Mrs. Elton was pretty and bitchy and rather like how Emma would be if she weren’t essentially a nice person under it all, which is the impression I got of her from the book, and not at all like how she usually seems to be portrayed. I also really liked the actress who played Harriet, though the struggled mightily against a script that often wrote the character as not being smart enough to know you can’t walk through a door.
And despite my problems with the characterization, I liked most of the scenes they added in, save for one scene early on that was fine until you realized that they were doing the “totally going to get married later” thing with Emma and Knightly when they were roughly 13 and 29. And while I thought they messed up several important scenes terribly, they reclaimed some of the right “feel” in some of the very last, most significant scenes, even if that redemption was literally in the last 20 or so minutes of the series.
In short, it may be best to watch the prettiness on mute and imagine a good script/4-hour version by Andrew Davies and then turn the sound on for the last half hour.
Though, I attempted to rewatch the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma for the first time in several years the other day, and couldn’t get more than half an hour into it due to my rage at how they changed it so that Emma’s befriending Harriet was purely because she was looking for a wife for Elton. Emma’s matchmaking tendencies seem to be centered around obtaining position and security for other women (in the pairings, the men seem to be more emotionally involved, and even dependant on, than the women), and so making Harriet incidental to a man’s happiness instead of Emma latching onto Harriet and deciding that Elton would be a good thing to acquire for Harriet was way too much for me. That focus of Emma’s, at least, is something the miniseries got right.
*I do think Knightley is classist in other versions, but pragmatically so, in that he realizes class exists and influences people and how they are treated by society, but that he doesn’t care for it, whereas he more wallows in it here.