‘Emily’ 2022 Movie Review: Emily Brontë & The Caution of Inspiration
‘Emily’ (2022)
Disclaimer: Emily received an R rating due to some sexual content and drug use. Viewer discretion is advised.
Emily starring Emma Mackey is a period drama along the lines of Little Women—a second-born sister sets out on a journey to become a classic-writing author, while navigating the twists and turns of small-town family life. However, unlike Louisa May Alcott’s 19th Century family drama, Emily takes a darker turn. The little nuances and joys of the March sisters are largely absent here. Instead, we spend a great deal of the movie inside Emily Brontë’s troubled yet brilliant mind.
Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, a gothic, ghost-story romantic novel that stretched moral boundaries at the time and remains a popular read today. The very fictionalized movie of her life starts out with a scolding Charlotte Brontë (Alexandra Dowling), also a famous author in her own right, pestering her younger sister (who is now at death’s door) about how she wrote the book. Emily replies sarcastically that she put pen to paper and wrote it down. We then flash back several years as Emily’s story unfolds.
Because the Brontë sisters both became renowned authors, the movie explores what the sibling rivalry might have looked like. Charlotte is shown as a prude and self-righteous schoolteacher who is not beautiful enough to attract a husband. They do not make her redeemable, even though she is quick to take care of Emily whenever she has a breakdown.
Emily is shown as the anxious, free spirit. She’s always looking for a bit of trouble, but her fears keep her stuck in the small English village where her widowed father is part of the local clergy. Charlotte walks the line. Emily enjoys crossing lines just enough to avoid major consequences, or at the very least, getting caught.
What I walked away from the film was thinking about the two very different ways these sisters drew inspiration. With Emily, it feels like more of a cautionary tale of letting your dark side run wild.
Early on, Emily takes her turn at a version of 20 questions, where the person who’s ‘it’ is wearing a mask while the others try to guess who she is. Emily pretends to be her dead mother. She’s so good at the impersonation that she convinces both Charlotte and her other younger sister Anne that it’s really their mom talking to them from the dead, much like a seance. Charlotte and Anne are left eerily screaming at the window, begging their mother to stay. When Emily takes the mask off, it’s unclear if she really was possessed at that moment. She at least acts like she doesn’t remember speaking to them as their mother. The game comes to a screeching halt and everyone turns on Emily.
Emily does not check her passions. If there is a temptation around, she’ll give into it. She experiments with drugs with her brother, has an affair with another local pastor, and gets thrills from trespassing and spying on her neighbors. These passions eventually fuel her writing.
At one point, she and her lover discuss where their inspiration comes from. He points to nature and beauty as the starting points of many of his sermons. Emily had yet to start writing a great deal. As she does begin, you see someone who draws from her restless existence and even more restless mind. I half expected them to show her putting the mask back on to write Wuthering Heights (a missed opportunity in my book).
She seems to wallow in the sadness of the world and open herself up to anything and everything that seeks to move through her as a vessel. Wuthering Heights is more melancholy and controversial for the time. What draws Emily are the tragedies around her and her own struggle with moments of madness. She brings that wildness to her book.
Charlotte Brontë is the author of Jane Eyre—though the movie doesn’t mention this book by name. It does, however, show Charlotte seeking different inspiration. She uses her extensive schooling, intelligence and life as a teacher to fuel her imagination. She is filled with her sense of duty and that plays into her method. Charlotte also seems to write as an homage to those she loved who passed on before their time. Her pull to write is part of a grieving process.
Despite Emily’s attempts to villainize Charlotte, I concluded that Charlotte’s source of inspiration is the healthier choice. “Where does your power come from?” is a question all artists should wrestle with.
Writing as a way to grieve, as an outlet for intelligence, to glorify God, or to explore beauty are all wonderful reasons to ‘put pen to paper.’ However, as many writers—and actors, painters, and musicians—have discovered too late, letting your dark side go unchecked in your art can pull you under. It pulls Emily under.
So while Emily is the star of this story, her wild streak and openness to whatever drug or power was most available make her more of an antihero than a model heroine. But Charlotte is the balance, the reminder that art does not have to cost you everything, especially your soul.
