(long post about) why I love Flynn’s Mr. Knightley (and this version of the romance)
Someone said that the best thing about Emma 2020′s Mr Knightley is the fact we see the story from his pov too. I was thinking about that a bit more and I think, indeed, it’s a correct take and the reason why I love him too.
First of all, I think Johnny Flynn did a great work balancing the assuredness and seriousness of the character with his funny and sweet side, and he surprisingly embodies the down-to-earth, eccentric gentleman side of the character and his yourthful, sensible, passionate, soft masculinity energy. He’s 37, just like Knightley, and I know some think the age difference between him and Emma should be always over the top obvious but this interpretation isn’t, IMO, so consistent with how Austen actually depicts their relationship and the character for she describes him as youthful and effervescent for a gentleman of his status, and you see his maturity only when he argues with her (in the movie you see that when she kisses him too for he does come across as much more experienced than her there ;) ), but he’s otherwise young and not so ‘fatherly’ to her.
I like all the Mr Knightley, I think they all bring something different to the character, but it’s true that in other adaptations he’s forced to tone down his feelings a bit more. I think it’s because the novel is from Emma’s pov, and his love comes as a surprise to her in the end, so other adaptations try to misdirect Emma and the audience a bit.
IMHO, it would’ve been a mistake if yet another adaptation handled his character like that, though, and I can see why a female creative team humanized the character a bit giving him a bit more agency too.
Mr Knightley’s love and jealousy for Emma challenge his self-control in the novel. He dislikes Frank without even meeting him just because Emma talks about him. He is surprisingly impulsive when he runs away to London because he thinks Emma is attached to Frank. With the same impulsivity, he leaves his brother and rides under the rain to get to Emma as soon as possible when he thinks she’s distressed over the news about Frank’s engagement to Jane. His declaration of love is something that just happens, without any premeditation or control, because he simply can’t help it anymore.
Most of this tumoil happens offscreen, though, within the walls of his lonely house and when he runs away from Emma and stays with his brother after Box Hill. It’s only in the end that you get his pov a bit but you are otherwise not privy to all the details.
Autumn de Wilde chose to show his transformation and turmoil. His affection for Emma (and jealousy) is obvious from the beginning but Johnny Flynn keeps enough ambiguity to make it believable when, after dancing with Emma, the realization that he’s in love with her and he can’t hide it anymore briefly trasforms his character into a lovesick fool. I find most of their choices with the character are a clever way to extrapolate his pov in the story from the ‘if i loved you less’ line for you do see he is always struggling with his feelings, torn between the fact he wants to tell her, and the fact he doesn’t think she loves him back or it’s too late for him because of Frank’s interference.
For some people, scenes such as the one where he has a meltdown after the ball because of his feelings for Emma will be very familiar, and they will recognize what is happening to him on screen for what the director intended it: a panic attack.
It’s real for a character who, since the beginning, is the most human. And it’s valid because when you think about Mr Knightley and what he goes through even in the novel, he has many reasons to be heartbroken for he really, really, loves her and there is so much conflict in him for many reasons.
Unlike what some writers, and even the audience sometimes might think, those moments where you see his feelings and vulnerabilities don’t make him weak, they just make him (just like in the novel) simply human and make you understand that it isn’t just Emma that has a journey but Knightley too who has his assuredness challenged by love.
I think I also realized why they deleted this:
It’s because they gave his character more agency.
The scene in the movie keeps the same energy of the one in the novel even without him touching her. Especially because he doesn’t touch her. Because he can’t. You can feel he wants to tell her much more but he can’t. He struggles even looking at her.
I think there is another reason why they changed this scene a bit, though:
it’s Emma and how this movie develops the romance from her side too.
In the book, Emma realizes at last that she had always been in love with him but one of the reasons why she hadn’t realized her feelings before is because she took him for granted.
She is mature enough to admit it to herself: she was always sure of the fact she was first for him and his affection for her was unquestioned. It’s only in the end, when she realizes she could lose him that she’s forced to admit her feelings for him. This movie emphasizes this all the more by taking out the detail above because here Emma needs to see his feelings (even if she still doesn’t know why he acts this way. She just thinks she has ruined their relationship and lost his affection), and that he isn’t someone to take for granted. This forces her to realize her feelings for him all the more.
In the novel, the journey of Emma’s feelings and realization is in her thoughts for the most part; it’s the (amusing) contraddiction between what she thinks she feels and what her thoughts actually hint that give you the clues about her feelings for him even before she realizes them herself.
Realistically, we have to recognize that this isn’t something that a film adaptation can easily convey on screen and sometimes, Emma’s feelings for him may feel very sudden in the end if there isn’t enough build up.
In this movie they changed this a bit so you see Emma’s own journey a bit more: she’s attracted to him from the beginning, she’s jealous of Jane (changing the singing scene so that it’s Mr Knightley and Jane was a clever, yet effective, way to include Emma’s jealousy from that moment in the book where Mrs Weston makes that comment about them), she shows her attraction for him in the dance scene (a nod to book Emma also finding him hot there even while it’s with Frank she’s dancing). The ‘not brother and sister’ scene is also handled well for it’s a foundamental moment for me because it’s the moment where you not only realize he’s in love with her, but Emma is subconsciously trying to tell him she’s not his sister and he can thus see her as a woman and possible partner. In the movie Emma does feel that something between them is different from before.. and then, at last, she realizes she had been in love with him the whole time.
As I said at the beginning, other adaptations tend to relegate their romance to the last act, the very end, a bit only because it’s where Emma realizes her feelings and the fact they keep Mr Knightley more aloof and surprising as a love interest is a way to misdirect the audience too. But! Who are you kidding??? Everyone knows who ends up with in Emma and that she and Mr Knightley are in love! So why not place their romance to the foreground from the beginning, for once? It’s actually a clever way to include and emphasize a lot of things from the novel too that would get lost, not least the subtle, Austen-clever, journey to Emma’s feelings too.
(sorry for the wall of text!)
