Once Again On Jane Austen- Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Emma” (1996  )-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, based on the novel by Ms. Jane Austen, 1996    

Recently in a review of another one of the film adaptations of Jane Austen’s romantic novels, Northanger Abbey, I mentioned that what got me started on reviewing some of Ms. Austen’s novels was a film review of The Jane Austen Book Club a modern day look at romance via the prism of her six major novels. I also mentioned in that review that the works of Jane Austen when I was young, when I was in high school say, growing up in a rough and tumble working class neighborhood dominated by a corner boy culture were tightly wrapped in seven seals. No self-respecting corner boy would read, or admit to reading, such “girl” books short of some classroom command. I was in the former camp since I never read her material not was commanded to do so again my will. Those reading experiences came later when I was much more serious about investigating the great works of English literature-and not under the gun either.       

Another point made in that review was that once I got onto some subject, literary or otherwise, I tended to play out my hand, tended to grab everything I could by an author or as here in this review of Ms. Austen’s  Emma  film adaptations of those works. Here’s what’s what, here’s why many generations of girls, and hopefully, now hopefully, boys, enjoyed reading her books and equally hopefully after reading the books viewing film adaptations as well.  

Ms. Jane Austen had a razor sharp sense of the customs, mores, and foibles of the country gentry from whence she came. The mating rituals as well. In Emma, here played by fetching Gwyneth Paltrow, she takes a tongue and check yet romantic look the matchmaking among the young country set in early 19^th  England just as the Industrial Revolution is beginning to shift England from an isolated rural society to king of the hill world industrial power. Emma is by turns very smart, very well brought and something of an incurable romantic once she takes a funny stab at matchmaking among the younger set. Her “victim” her friend Harriet, sort of country bumpkin, female version whom she tries to match up with several eligible young men, including Mr. Knightley, played by Jeremy Northam. The film then revolves around the mishaps and errors of judgment by Ms. Emma in her chosen profession up to and including encouraging the relationship between Harriet and Mr. Knightley. Oops. As it turned out Emma was mad for Mr. Knightley when she thought she was losing him. Not to worry everything works out in the end. Pure Jane Austen but read the book first-okay.