“If I could, I would work in silence and obscurity, and let the results speak for themselves.” - Emily Bront.


Her wish was granted. Wuthering Heights is a classic, and her poetry, unlike her sisters', still jumps off the page with bleak despairing imagery and ferocious independence of tone. Her most famous poems, No Coward Soul is Mine (which Emily Dickinson reportedly requested be read at her funeral) and Remembrance, are frequently anthologized. I first read Often Rebuked in high school, and the lines below helped me get through those sometimes difficult years.


I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide.


Words to live by, and Emily did in her tragically brief life. But what do we really know about her? Charlotte described her as "a lonely raven, not a gentle dove." Emily rarely left the house (and when she did leave home, it usually ended badly). This means that we don't have as much correspondence from Emily as we do from Charlotte, who went away to school and work and wrote multiple letters a day. Much of what we know about Emily comes from Charlotte, the only surviving sibling following the disastrous one-year period (1848-1849) in which sisters Anne and Emily, as well as brother Branwell, all died. Given the shaky record, speculation about what happened fills the void. Frances O'Connor's "Emily" engages in some wild speculations, some of which I've heard before, some of which I've never heard before, but it's all in an attempt to get close to the most mysterious Bront, not just as a person but as an artist.


Emma Mackey, who plays Emily with sensitivity and freedom, is an ideal partner for O'Connor in this. She isn't stifled by an imposed "conception" of this woman. She's let herself go. Her Emily is joyful, sulky, troubled, anxious, rebellious, and passionate. There's reason to believe it's all true. Emily was dubbed "the strange one" by the local villagers, and Mackey speculates on why. She is unable to make eye contact with others. She withdraws from interactions with people who are not family. When Mr. Bront's new assistant curate, Michael Weightman (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), enters the family circle, he stirs the pot. His sermons are the polar opposite of Mr. Bront's fiery declarations. Weightman describes God as gentle, almost thoughtful. The Bront sisters are enthralled as they listen, and they can't help but notice how attractive he is. Emily initially responds combatively to him, poking holes in his arguments and refusing to concede ground. He's naturally drawn to her the most.


There are a number of extraordinary sequences that are speculative in nature but make so much thematic and emotional sense. "Emily" delves deeply. (In any case, surface events are minimal. A similar problem arises in the case of Emily Dickinson, whose life was not filled with external events. But consider "the outcomes." It is possible to live a dramatic inner life while never leaving your house. This is something Frances O'Connor deftly explores.) In one scene, Emily, while playing with her siblings and Weightman, puts on a ceramic mask. It appears to be a game at first, until Emily transforms, the mask providing her with the anonymity she requires to express the grief beneath the surface, all while a storm rages outside. The scene is a fantastic work of imagination, based on what we already know and what we can guess based on Wuthering Heights. It evokes—without emphasizing the link—the book's terrifying opening scene, with the ghost rattling at the window frame, pleading to be let in to escape the storm.


All of the relationships are in flux. Sister Charlotte (Alexandra Dowling) is concerned about wild Emily. At first, Sister Anne (Amelia Gething) is an ally, but she eventually moves out of reach. This brings us to Branwell (Fionn Whitehead). One can only imagine how it felt to be the only brother to these three magnificent Weird Sisters. He had a creative bent but lacked drive and discipline. He led a discredited and scandalous life. The relationship between Emily and Branwell is at the heart of the film—the two rebels supporting each other for better or worse, mirrored by Emily and Weightman's relationship.


"Emily" excels at creating atmosphere. The mood is adaptable enough to accommodate a wide range of emotions. Nanu Segal's cinematography is full of life and drive. Sometimes the camera darts through the rooms or across the fields, chasing Emily and careening around corners, almost crashing into a wall. Emily and Weightman's romantic scenes shiver with a forbidden passion so foreign to Emily that you fear for her. You already know how it ends. "Emily" takes place before the sisters began to be published. However, they are becoming more productive.


For over two centuries, critics have wondered how a woman who grew up in virtual isolation could come up with a story as wild as Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre has its share of lunacy (Mr. Rochester dressed in drag! The insane woman is trapped in the attic! Mr. Rochester calling to Jane from the other side of the space-time continuum! ), but Wuthering Heights makes Jane Eyre look tame. Wuthering Heights is set in a world of godless chaos. "The action is laid in Hell—only it appears places and people have English names there," Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote of the book in 1854. There is nothing soft about Wuthering Heights. How could someone with no life experience come up with such a story?


It's understandable that a biopic would want to be historically accurate. Whitewashing criticism is frequently accurate. But there are deeper issues to consider, which many biopics avoid. Why is this person significant? Why has their art survived? Who did they consider themselves to be as artists? There have been numerous biopics that are not Wikipedia pages come to life, but rather extended meditations on the artist's work, its impact, and the artist as a persona (Stanley Kwan's "Center Stage," Bill Pohlad's "Love & Mercy," Madeleine Olnek's "Wild Nights with Emily," and Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There," to name a few recent examples). "Emily" has faced accusations of historical inaccuracy. (The ending of the recent "Corsage" is an intriguing example of total historical inaccuracy. That was not the case at all. But what does it tell us about the Empress in terms of imagination and speculation?) It was long assumed that Anne was the one who fell in love with Weightman, and that something happened between them. People have pointed out passages in her novel that appear to correspond. That's all right. It's conceivable. But it's still just conjecture. What if it had been Emily?


We'll never know why Branwell painted himself out of his three sisters' portrait, creating the strange effect of a golden pillar of Branwell-shaped flame between Emily and Charlotte. We don't know if he actually painted himself out. Perhaps he didn't paint himself out at all, and instead painted his sisters over another piece. Maybe we're completely wrong about everything. We were not present. But guessing gets us closer to the truth: who was Emily? How did she make sense of everything? How did she incorporate this into her work? Emily is known by her results. The remainder is silence. And imaginative leaps like "Emily" by Frances O'Connor.


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