Starting in 1920 with a silent version, there have been umpteen adaptations of Emily Bronte’s Gothic masterpiece staring luminaries of screen greats– Laurence Oliver, Merle Oberon, Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche– even a Monte Python sketch in which the story was presented in semaphore.
The perennial question is how far movies strayed from the source material considering thats exactly what happens to every great piece of literature that continues to lure and to inspire countless imaginings and semi-lucid high school term papers for decades to come.
This film is certainly a romp through the heather, produced with visual opulence and perilously little sense, taking one of the great works of English literature and reduces it oversexed and under thought lunacy.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS marks writer- director Emerald Fennell’s third feature film after winning the Oscar for Original Screenplay in 2020 for Promising Young Woman. How can one go to a movie starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi and not be enthusiastic, considering how easy they are on the eyes while accompanied by an original soundtrack by pop icon Charli XCX?!
WUTHERING HEIGHTS gives us a startling shock in the opening moments with a giant black screen where we hear creaking noises along with someone rapidly gasping, which considering the amount of PR promising hot and heavy action, engaging in humping is what our senses are guided towards. It turns out that what we were listening to are the dying gasps of someone swinging from the gallows. OK, I’m now fully engaged. Maybe that’s what agony and ecstasy symbolises while we get glimpses of both the crowd below breaking into a fit of excitement over the hanging, as well as, a close-up of the prominent erection sported by the dead guy.
Among the spectators at the hanging is young Catherine Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington) who lives at an estate known as Wuthering Heights with her sometimes loving, sometimes abusive drunken sod of a father (Martin Clunes) and her sole companion, a servant named Nelly (Vy Nguyen).
That all changes one day when Mr Earnshaw comes home from an extended bender with an orphan boy (Owen Cooper) that he has chosen to rescue from the streets. Catherine takes to the new addition, naming him Heathcliff. He is instantly besotted with her as well.
Cue the story years later…with Catherine and Heathcliff now played by Robbie and Elordi– their mutual adoration is still there but complicated however by concerns about the adult world.
They may have the hots for each other but the notion that a union between a member of aristocratic society and a mere servant simply was not on, is just a twee of a stretch.
Catherine, who may secretly love Heathcliff has serious life-changing decisions to make. Her father’s twin love for gambling and alcohol leads him perilously close to losing everything. She has unabashedly a love for the finer things in life, leaving her with the only recourse to marry a person of wealth and happily for her, just such a person in the form of Edgar Linton (Shazam Latif) moves into the estate next door with his oddball sister, Isabella (Alison Oliver).
Short story follows….while spying on her new neighbour, Catherine injures her foot and is taken in by the Lintons to recover. By the time she leaves she has Edgar wrapped around her finger. While talking to Nelly (now played by Hong Chau) about her romantic dilemma of choosing between Edgar and Heathcliff, Nelly goads her to choose Edgar, cause she has the hots for Heathcliff and knows he is within earshot.
No surprise, Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights, Catherine marries Linton and vacates her father’s dissolute home.
Visually the film is stunning throughout with Heathcliff’s exit from Wuthering Heights set against a blood-red sky evoking his inner turmoil, is properly swoon-worthy.
Alison Oliver as Isabella, although misused as her character, finds the right offbeat approach to the role. Robbie and Elordi are both excellent actors, whose performances come across as retreads of parts they have played in the past– Robbie, too often gives off vibes of early Barbie while Elordi is a better-dressed version of the psycho he played in Euphoria – they don’t connect in a way that makes sense of their twisted relationship. It has the feel of an elaborate Wuthering Heights-themed fashion magazine spread.
When it comes to something the film wants us to take seriously– the allegedly passionate affair– the results are just inept. The director certainly steamed up the duo’s various trysts to earn an “R” rating, without any palpable heat. While the two characters go about their gyrations we never get a sense of the feelings of love, lust, anger and jealousies that they are suppose to embody or embrace because we never buy Heathcliff and Catherine, either as characters or as lovers.
This story ain’t a straightforward love story, by any means. It never hews closer to the Gothic horror of Bronte’s ultimate dark and gloomy narrative. For me, it would have been better to see the full story as writ by Emily Bronte, all liberties taken by the movie, excepted.
