To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters

[osprey_archer]

To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters is basically a two-hour movie that has been cut into two one-hour episodes, and I think many of its problems can be traced to the fact that it’s just too short. There are three Bronte sisters and, despite their reputation as recluses, they had quite eventful lives, and it’s just too much to fit into two hours.

There are so many things that I would have liked to see that just aren’t here! Charlotte Bronte’s friendship with Elizabeth Gaskell (who wrote a laudatory biography after Charlotte’s death), her meeting with Thackeray, indeed the entirety of her trips to London after Jane Eyre’s success -

A Charlotte Bronte miniseries. What I want is a Charlotte Bronte miniseries.

To Walk Invisible is about all three Bronte sisters and focuses, reasonably enough, on the three sisters together, rather than Charlotte haring off and doing her own thing.

There’s also, somewhat less reasonably I feel, quite a lot of their brother Branwell. I realize that Branwell’s drunken dissolution might seem more exciting than watching the Bronte sisters pace around the dining room table as they compose their novels together, but surely anyone who chooses to watch a Bronte miniseries would far rather listen to the Bronte girls chat about their novels than watch Branwell pass out drunk yet again. There don’t need to be entire segments focused on him to show that his alcohol-fueled self-destruction was immensely disruptive.

Now that I’ve finished complaining, let me note that the series does have some quite good qualities. The sisters are all excellent. The portrayals of Emily and Charlotte are particularly strong, but then they were more intense and decided characters than Anne in the first place, and the actress playing Anne makes the most of the somewhat thankless task of portraying the quiet peace-making sister who has actual social skills. (Charlotte seems like she has social skills but she’s basically too intense and nervy to keep it up. Emily is just plain feral.)

And the Yorkshire scenery is just gorgeous: there are some lovely, lovely shots of the moors.

There’s enough good stuff in To Walk Invisible that I’m not sorry that I watched it, but I am sorry because there are the bones of a good miniseries here and it could have been far better than it is.

Comments

[asakiyume]

It's frustrating when someone does a thing you want (in this case, make a miniseries about the Brontes) but then doesn't do as good a job at it as you'd like. I feel this especially about movies of books I like. In some cases, eventually someone will try again, but in other cases I get the sense that this was my one and only chance, and the result was... not good.

I guess in this case it's possible there'll be another, better miniseries one day.

[osprey_archer]

There's enough ongoing interest in the Brontes that it seems quite likely there will be more movies and miniseries, although it's impossible to know if they'll be better. The casting in this one was perfect! - which just makes it more frustrating that they weren't optimally deployed.

Re: one and only chance at an adaptation - this is the way that I feel about the Ella Enchanted movie; it's not like the book at all and there's unlikely ever to be another and to add insult to injury, they had Anne Hathaway and Cary Elwes and Parminder Nagra (who played Jess in Bend It Like Beckham, so by all rights it should have been good!

[thisbluespirit]

I enjoyed it, actually. It aired here simply as one long TV piece, of 120 minutes and it worked perfectly well as essentially a film-for-TV. Although less Branwell is something you could ask of nearly every Bronte thing.

I did watch a Brontes mini-series from the 1970s, so I'd already had the much too long, overly narrated and ploddy version, and I enjoyed this one much more! ;-p

[osprey_archer]

Why so much Branwell? I really think my every complaint about this movie could have been negated by cutting, oh, even just half of Branwell's scenes and giving the space to the sisters and their novels instead.

I think my review came across as crabbier than I intended, because I did enjoy it, or at least the non-Branwell parts - and even then the problem is not that the Branwell parts are bad as that there are so many more interesting things that could have used the time.

[kore]

SO MUCH BRANWELL. Even Goddess Juliet Barker did this, and I think she said it's just because there's more of a public record of the men -- they wrote to newspapers and their doings were recorded, people saved their letters, they were more visible in contemporary life &c &c. Even a lot of the contemporary stuff we have about the sisters was written after they got famous. And a lot of Charlotte-in-London stuff is about how much of a fish out of water she was (and how unpretty! It made me want to unleash Joanna Russ on the Victorian men. YES WE KNOW YOU DON'T FANCY HER WE FUCKING GET IT).

[lilysea]

Have you seen A Quiet Passion (2016), about Emily Dickinson?

If so, what did you think of it?

[osprey_archer]

I haven't, but I love Emily Dickinson & biopics in general, so I probably should.

[lilysea]

I would also be interested to hear your thoughts on

Bright Star (2009) "The three-year romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne near the end of his life"

and

Miss Austen Regrets (2008) "In the later years of her life, as she's approaching the age of forty, the novelist Jane Austen helps her niece find a husband."

[osprey_archer]

You are in luck! At least partially. I rewatched Bright Star this spring and I wrote a whole entry about it.

[lilysea]

Aha! I actually read that at the time when you posted it... I blame brain fog. ^_^

[kore]

Bright Star is so gorgeous.

[kore]

Ooh, is that the one about her and Su?

[kore]

I heard the acting and scenery in this was really good, but haven't seen it yet. I NEED it on DVD. I have Brontes of Haworth, which nobody loves but me (sovay ALERT: written by Christopher Fry!), but I think In search of the Brontes is actually better (2003).

And there is always the LOLTERRIBLE Devotion, from 1946!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM9GEgb9ngg

(Yes, I own that on DVD. It's a sickness. It has SIDNEY GREENSTREET in it.)

I think the way it goes is: Anne was reserved (but made friends), Charlotte was shy, and Emily just didn't give a fuck. And then Ellen Nussey was fascinated by them all, she always gets pilloried as a fame-hunter but I love how she describes Emily.

[leaina]

Somewhat tangentially (but Bronte-related): have you come across The Glass Town Game? It's a newish middle-grade book about the Bronte children wandering into their own made-up fantasy world, really wonderfully written. Branwell is often beastly, as one might imagine, but you also get to see how and why he got to be that way; and the girls are just great, each in their own way.

[osprey_archer]

No, but that sounds delightful.

[sartorias]

Poor Branwell gets so trashed in bios, but he was writing with Charlotte while Emily and Anne were writing their own world. (Which Charlotte burned, while keeping her own, argh, argh, argh)

[kore]

He did get the Du Maurier bio, which I think is the most sympathetic thing I've ever read of him (I don't remember if I read the Gerin one, I know I have it).

[sartorias]

True.

[osprey_archer]

I think an adaptation that focused more on their childhood could have plenty of Branwell. But when he's reached the part of his life where most of what he does is get drunk, it's hard not to feel that the charitable thing would be not to linger on it quite so much - and maybe to have the girls reminisce about The Days of Our Youth, when Branwell was part of their imaginative games, so that viewers will know that there's more to him than collapsing drunk in the road.

[sartorias]

Oh, that's for sure.

[ladyherenya]

I really want to see this, but so far it doesn't seem to be available anywhere here! Which is not what I expect for a recent-but-not-too-recent BBC production.

I too would be happy with a Charlotte Bronte miniseries.

[osprey_archer]

That's so strange! I thought the BBC usually sent things to Australia before the US.

I know this review is rather cranky, but for all that I had quibbles with it, I was glad I watched it & I do think it's worth seeing.