La Vie des soeurs Brontë

Absorbing and with authentic Yorkshire vernacular in parts.

Each sister was given their own character: Anne seemed to be the placid one,Charlotte was a feisty little firecracker while Emily was emotional and quick to temper. I admired all three characters.

I believe the rock outcrop on the moors where Emily stood in the film is Ponden Kirk near Haworth - this is a pre-Christian holy place and in Victorian times was where young couples would crawl through a hole in the base - this would mean they would be wed within a year. A fitting place to film on the moors which provided such inspiration to them.

A welcome and unique addition to dramas about the Bronte sisters who provided some of the finest writing in the English language.

I would heartily recommend 'To Walk Invisible' as a heartfelt, insightful and quite succinct look into the world of the Bronte sisters. Any follower of their literature and fellow lover of period dramas would be amiss in not watching this venture.

Go for it. A lot of novelty in a subject as popular for chroniclers as the Brontes. It is interesting to see the family dynamics of the Brontes, especially as so much of their writing was a product of the same.

I am always on the lookout for interesting period dramas and this year has yielded very few which I would willingly rewatch. This one is one I definitely will.

I hope this review is helpful and it adds to your understanding of the Brontes and their incredible craft.

I've read all the Bronte novels, studied Emily's poetry in college, and been to Haworth several times. (Tip: if you ever visit, don't skip the hike to Top Withens-the place Emily based Wuthering Heights on. You won't get the true Bronte experience unless you hike on the moors.) I've sat next to Charlotte and Emily's graves and tried to imagine life in that place in the 19th century. This movie encapsulated and synthesized every emotion, thought, and feeling I experienced while in Haworth, at the parsonage museum, reading, and hiking on the moors. It positively reeks of authenticity. The sisters form the nucleus of the story while the ancillary characters orbit them at just the right distance. Their quiet strength and desperation depicts the plight of three women smarter than anyone around them in an age when their brains were considered by men to be more similar to monkeys than their own. Each sister is fully actuated and differentiated as a stand-alone character, individual in her own right. I finished the movie with a determination to visit their home again and re-read all of their work. How many movies inspire their viewers to travel several thousand miles, spend several thousand dollars, and invest scores of hours in reading? I loved that the movie required something from the viewer. You can't watch this film passively. It takes scrutiny, concentration, and contemplation; in other words, things most modern movies don't require in the least. That's why this movie stays with you days after viewing it. No wonder I forget almost everything about many movies I see hours after watching them; they demand nothing but sensational response, something that ebbs almost immediately after arousal. My one complaint is in the sound mixing. The background music swells with such amplitude in places that the dialogue is almost impossible to make out without closed captioning. I eventually put in my Bluetooth ear buds to help me discern the dialogue (admittedly, Yorkshire accents are tough for Americans to decipher in the first place, but as I mentioned earlier, the effort required helps galvanize the viewer into deeper concentration and engagement). Bravo PBS. You rarely disappoint.

This film feels to me like THE depiction of the Brontes for our age. It is compelling each time I watch it (3 times now). I found the approach to a "historical" period so refreshingly vibrant and earthy as well as being strikingly filmed it's almost like a hyper real rendition of the time rather than the chocolate box visions we are often given. I've noticed a theme in several reviews asking why the film is so focused on Bramwell, when it is supposed to w about the women? I HATE it when this male centric approach to EVERYTHING happens due to our still malecentric world. However in this film's case I think it was exactly right and was used as a tool to show how very dependent the women were on the men in their lives. The users were safe while their father was alive, but having no legal right to hold property or money of their own their lives were in peril due to the solipsistic self destructiveness of their brother. In stead of showing 3 insipid women relying on men as is usual it showed 3 strong intelligent women whose social status and wealth were manacled to Bramwell's with no recourse to their independence. So I think to say the film focused on him too much is to miss the point Sally Wainwright was making. A couple of American reviewers have said they could not understand the film and to them I would say: put the subtitles on. The film uses northern dialect/accent as would have been spoken (and still is). If the characters spoke received pronunciation it would have sounded ridiculous and lost some of its heart. To take a reverse example I loved "The Wire" but in the beginning found I could not understand half of what was said, subtitles allowed me to enjoy it without it being artificially "smoothed" for general viewing. So basically I think this film is excellent. I loved the very end sequence of transition too. It made me feel so close to the characters.

But one must approach this with a keen understanding that this saga is not as much about the titular Bronte Sisters as it is heavily devoted to the story of their troubled brother Bramwell, and the devastation he often imposed upon the family, the sacrifices they had to make on his behalf and the struggles they endured dealing with his addictions.

The story itself is stunning; Capturing the beauty of the period with incredible delicacy. I have scored this film high, because it was so well written and powerfully executed by the writer/director who I hope we have the opportunity to see do more material of this magnitude in the future. Well worth the watch for anyone who is a history buff.