Emma. (2020)

 Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on February 14, 2025

The degree to which I love Emma. is irrational. It doesn’t make any sense. My Austen experience extends to reading Pride & Prejudice after my little brother ranted about it during Ms. Karl’s class, I typically bristle at costume dramas, and I have no particular affection for any player in this ensemble. And yet, I love it. I tear up in eight places. There’s a specific scene I count as a formative creative inspiration. Whatever the wavelength of this proto-rom-com, I vibrate at it. I adore Emma.

 

Amateur matchmaker Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) haughtily flits about the countryside doing expensive things and feeling in control. When Emma takes a shine to the new girl in town, Harriet (Mia Goth), it becomes her mission to arrange for her a proper marriage. Despite warnings to tread lightly from her father’s young friend, Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), Emma schemes and lands Harriet in all manner of messes. Still, things look promising for Emma when the object of her personal fancy, Frank Churchill (Callum Turner), arrives. But is the pompous Churchill really the match for Emma?

 

It’s silly: we know all along in Emma. who’s right for our heroine, yet the unfolding leaves me spellbound. Seriously: everything about this adaptation works on me. All the dresses and long coats are stunning perspiration generators, but each garment’s folds and flourishes fascinate me. A haberdashery houses four scenes, but I watch each one like it’s the Super Bowl. I yearn to bake the lavish pink pastry with a porcelain elk protruding from its top. When director Autumn de Wilde needle drops in an Irish chorus, my ears perk up. Screenshots from this movie appear in my desktop background at school.

 

Ahem. Sorry. For those less enraptured by nineteenth-century British choreography—that I definitely don’t pantomime in my living room, how dare you accuse me—let the impressive cast draw you in. Taylor-Joy is a Taylor-Joy as Emma, putting her expressive eyes to work blending dignity with immature exasperation. Flynn’s great as well, his Knightley a withholding presence reeking of paternalistic self-importance until he finally cracks and melts your heart, and of course, there’s Goth light years from becoming the notorious Pearl, but there’s something fun about watching her knowing the axe she’d soon be swinging. If that’s not enough, Bill Nighy’s Mr. Woodhouse steals several scenes with alternating wit and sentimentality, and for the Challengers fan in your life, there’s a Josh O’Connor preacher 600% less slick than he thinks is who’ll have you squirming and squealing in turn.

 

I’m wholly aware that your mileage may vary with Emma. Perhaps I’ve inflated its stature—it was among the final films I caught in theaters before COVID closed them down, so it carries extra nostalgia, and I do spend more intellectual energy imagining 1800s dresses as Calvin Klein shirts and New Era A’s hats than the average person. My brother loathed all things Austen; he hated this film. It might not be your cup of tea, either. But it shouldn’t be my cup of tea, yet I swear the chemistry pops off the screen, the laughs flow freely, and the story sparkles. I also swear this immaculate period piece only missed its acclaim due to the pandemic.

 

Romance isn’t my thing, but watching with bated breath as stuffy Brits dance a waltz defibrillates my heart. It gets me every single time. Emma. electrifies me.

 

I take the movie Emma. as my Valentine. Maybe you can enjoy it with yours?