The Hart of Emma
Matt Suddain, AKA Mr Beardy-Bonnet, attends the premiere of ‘Emma’ and chats to actor and comedian Miranda Hart.
This special preview screening of Emma is well under way, and I’m in the loos trying to dry my trousers after sitting in a pool of complimentary wine. I’m way out of my lane here. The last costume drama I saw was probably a Star Wars movie.
I’ll watch a rom-com if I’m forced at gunpoint, or I’m really hungover.
I haven’t seen any of the 785,943 (I estimate) screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice.
I’m as out of my depth as Elizabeth Bennet was when Mr Darcy proposed marriage to her, in spite of her inferior social standing. The only adaptation of Emma I’ve seen is Clueless – though I will pretentiously tell you that it’s the only one to really grasp the nuances of the original novel. (I’ve never read the original novel.)
But let’s forget all that for now and make the best of it. For now I’m just a boy, standing downward dog-style in front of an air-dryer, hoping no one walks in.
When Miranda Hart calls me the next day from the secret island the stars all live on, she sounds chipper. She claims she’s wearing a bonnet for the interview – and inquires if I’m wearing one.
I tell her I wear a special inverted bonnet to keep my beard fresh. (I’m lying, friends, I have no bonnet, I’m an imposter. I think she senses this.)
‘‘How do you look in a bonnet?’’ she asks. ‘‘Good?’’
I tell her I look ‘‘fetching’’ and ‘‘comely’’, which I believe are both words used to describe women at the time Emma is set.
Jane Austen’s seminal ‘‘girdle-core’’ classic tells the story of a comely young woman trying to have it all in Regency-era England, an age when bonnets were plentiful, beards less so.
Hart plays Miss Bates, a friendly, over-sharing spinster whose family have fallen on hard times.
There’s a big dose of Hart in the character. I wonder how films like this, which sustain some pretty old-school ideas about the place of women in society, fit with our socially complicated age.
‘‘Hoooooooo. Big question from Mr BeardyBonnet! I think Emma’s a really interesting character. What’s beautiful about the story is that she does learn how to be bold and assertive, but with the gentleness and kindness she lacks at the beginning.
‘‘It’s relevant because it’s easy for women to become bolder and more self-accepting, and then they can feel like they have to be strident and loud. But you can actually change people with gentleness and kindness.’’
Late in the film, Emma insults Miss Bates during an already awkward picnic, providing one of the film’s genuinely touching moments, a moment that prompts the heroine to re-evaluate her behaviour. In a way, Miss Bates is the heart of the film.
I confess she was the only character I really cared about.
‘‘That’s so lovely. Miss Bates is the one you don’t want to get stuck with at the party, but there’s this underlying current of kindness.
‘‘It’s pivotal in teaching Emma humility and forgiveness after Emma’s so mean to her.’’
We all feel vulnerable at times, she says, and we all feel like we don’t fit in.
‘‘And there’s Miss Bates going, ‘Yep, but I’m just
gonna be myself.’ And then, when she gets hurt, we obviously feel desperate for her,’’ Hart says.
I’ve seen Miss Bates described as a ‘‘shabby genteel’’, which I think is sweet.
‘‘Oh right. Yeah, I love that. I relate, I relate.’’ As an outsider, I can see how this sub-genre provides respite from our chaotic age. These films open a refreshing window to a time when manners were valued, and people dressed like every day was a hipster friend’s wedding. No-one in Regency England ever wrote something like …
‘‘You pierce my soul. I am half-agony, half-hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever,’’ (from Austen’s
Persuasion), and got the reply, ‘‘K, not looking for nything seriuz, ur weird AF lol.’’
I’d arrived at the preview screening to find the wine flowing and excited women raiding the cakestands like a swarm of locusts.
The air was filled with a mist of fine crumbs, and people were taking selfies in front of the lifesized portrait of three of the film’s stars, Ana
Taylor-Joy (Emma), Johnny Flynn as (Mr Knightley) and Callum Turner (Frank Churchill).
The film’s strapline, ‘‘Love knows best’’, is one of those lines you think you get. Then you stare at it for a while, as you sip your free wine, and you wonder if it means anything.
In these films, love seems to be less about passion, more an extension of manners, and manners are scarce in London these days.
When I finally sat down in the theatre, I felt a cool sensation in my buttocks.
I must have casually mentioned it out loud,
‘‘What [Emma’s] Miss Bates does is she’s kind and loving and forgiving, and puts love at the centre. She’s occasionally wounded by that, because she makes herself vulnerable. Everybody in this movie has their own story about love.’’
Miranda Hart
because the guy next to me said, ‘‘Oh yeah, I sloshed my sav,’’ before adding, ‘‘in my defence, I rubbed it off with my hand.’’
Sure you did, mate. Good for you.
The film begins with the opening lines from the novel.
‘‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition . . . had lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.’’ Hart came to the book only relatively recently. ‘‘I had no idea how funny Austen was. I was really struck that Miss Bates has 10-page monologues, which obviously you’d never get from the film. I would love to do a 10-page monologue in the film, but the audience might start leaving.’’
I can tell you, you couldn’t have made this preview audience leave if you’d yelled, ‘‘Fire!’’ (I thought about it.) I don’t know if it was all the free wine they were accidentally spilling into their own faces, but Bill Nighy only had to twitch his top lip to get them going.
The first ‘‘joke’’ of the film is when a vicar officiating the wedding between Emma’s former governess, Miss Taylor, and Mr Weston, says ‘‘inno-cence’’ instead of ‘‘in-nocence’’. Nighy turns to Emma to whisper, ‘‘In-no-cence?’’ The crowd loses it. It’s the funniest thing any of them have ever seen – until a few minutes later, when Nighy asks ‘‘Does anyone feel a cold draught?’’
I find it hard to reach their pitch, and it isn’t just that there’s chilled white wine soaking into my underpants. Maybe it’s partly that.
The screenplay was written by our own Eleanor Catton, who Hart says brought a sensitivity to it.
‘‘It was lovely that it was a woman cos I think it needed that vulnerability. I read it and felt like she’d got it. And then, meeting her, I just thought she was lovely. And obviously, if she’s from New Zealand, what’s not to love?’’
One thing to love about Hart is it’s hard to tell if she’s being sarcastic. In this case, she isn’t.
‘‘I love New Zealand, I went there when I was 19, and completely fell in love. I did the backpacking thing. I often think of it and wonder, ‘Why am I not there?’’’
‘‘I often think that when I’m on London transport.’’
‘‘Are you being sarcastic?’’ I realise she probably thinks I live in New Zealand. ‘‘The grass is always greener,’’ she says, ‘‘Especially if you live in New Zealand. Oh that’s a good joke.’’
‘‘I’ll make sure that gets in,’’ I tell her. ‘‘Yeah, say you thought it was marvellous.’’ As for crossing the line between comedy and drama, Hart says drama is easier. ‘‘Comedy’s so technical, and you have the added pressure of getting a laugh.’’
Comedy, for her, comes from a dark place. ‘‘No-one would have imagined when I started writing Miranda, I was actually coming from a place of lonely – and how much of a misfit you can feel. Most comedians are able to tap into those places to find things that are absurd and funny. We’re very deep.’’
Now that we’ve talked about pain, we should probably talk about love. As mentioned earlier, the strapline for the film is ‘‘Love knows best’’. Does that . . . mean anything?
She laughs loudly. ‘‘Is that the question?’’ ‘‘Well, I suppose . . . if it does mean something, what do you think that thing . . . is?’’
To her credit, she gives it a crack.
‘‘I suppose you come at it from the character you’re playing. With Emma, the love that was always there finally allows itself to be heard.
‘‘What Miss Bates does is she’s kind and loving and forgiving, and puts love at the centre. She’s occasionally wounded by that, because she makes herself vulnerable. Everybody in this movie has their own story about love.’’
This is true. Whether it’s Mr Woodhouse letting his daughter go, or Mrs Weston making the difficult decision to choose her husband over her old friend Emma, or a humble writer drying his bottom with an air-dryer and thinking he should go back in and watch act three and try not to be so judgy.
Let people enjoy their free wine, and laugh at jokes that aren’t jokes, and enjoy a drama about love and longing set in more in-no-cent times.