Written by Zaccary Kimes & Mia Strand
There are two main audiences for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”: those who read Emily Brönte’s book of the same name, and those who went out on Valentine’s Day in hopes of a romantic love story.
Both will be disappointed.
“Wuthering Heights” is nothing short of amazing — visually. The plot falls flat against the spectacular backdrop and the actors can only do so much when their characters’ motivations are watered down. Fennel’s thrilling, emotional and risque film has the viewers rooting for true love. However, she not only misses the mark as an adaptation of Brönte’s 1847 book, but effectively erases the heart of the novel’s commentary.
A watered-down plot
Book Reader
If seeing the film has made you rush to the closest bookstore to pick up a copy of a sex-filled romance novel, you may want to wait until you’re done reading this review before you decide to drop twenty dollars on a brand new book. The book itself isn’t about love — it’s a haunting tale of trauma and cruelties passed down through generations, written through the lens of characters’ obsessions, wickedness and tragic decisions. Fennell takes Brönte’s cast of emotionally complex characters and waters them down, with their R-rated scenes taking precedence over accurate novel portrayals of their motivations and personalities. In the case of “Wuthering Heights,” it detracts from the source material’s message, rather than adding to it. Many viewers might be stunned to know that there are no overtly sexual scenes in the entire book.
Valentine’s Viewer
Catherine and Heathcliff conduct the world’s worst will they won’t they trope. The pair engage in a raunchy montage of adultery for a good chunk of runtime. Afterwards, both characters constantly attempt to one-up their cruelty towards one another with each passing day. Now, some context can be found within the books, but viewers watching this for the first time as a Valentine’s Day flick may have left the theaters deeply unsatisfied with the ending. The film’s ending is framed to make audiences feel sorry for these characters, despite spending the last two hours watching them be unnecessarily cruel towards everyone around them. Exploring the rationale for these traumatized characters’ cruelty would explain their behavior and earn sympathy. Instead, Fennell opts for a plethora of sex scenes, which come off as carnal rather than coping. Plot is an unimaginably important element in a good drama and watering down complex trauma into a soft-core x-rated movie makes it easy to look elsewhere.
Wait, where are they?
Book Reader
There’s no doubt that the sets and costume design, although absolutely inaccurate to the period the film is set in, are beautiful. They add a sense of eeriness to the film and, accompanied by shots of the wild, windy expanses of the surrounding moors, place the characters somewhere otherworldly. As an already unique and book-inaccurate adaptation, making it a complete departure from the original story would have worked in Fennell’s favor to make her separation from the book appear intentional and stylistic, rather than seemingly unintentional through unnecessary character cuts and central story changes.
Valentine’s Viewer
The set design throughout “Wuthering Heights” is nothing to scoff at. Each set felt grounded in reality, but also so out of this world. Unfortunately, this framing did not work in the film’s favor. The cinematography made the film resemble a long-winded perfume ad rather than the eerily isolated landscape of Northern England. There was a distinct lack of realism, which took viewers’ attention away from the characters’ dialogue and put the focus on where they were. An example is found in the film’s Winter montage, where the menagerie of colors and decor pulls your eyes away from the important plot elements of Catherine’s hidden dissatisfaction with her new life. For a plot-heavy film, keeping track of messy drama between characters is made far more difficult when every other scene makes you question where on earth those characters are.
A matter of character
Book Reader
Entire droves of characters that were integral to the novel were erased, relationships were simplified, and the remaining characters were molded like taffy into flattened versions of themselves that were more palatable to a modern obsession with graphic romance. An example is Isabella in the movie, her portrayal is tone deaf. Instead of being a figure that silently empowers women of the time by escaping Heathcliff, who abused her emotionally and physically, she is made to act like a dog in the movie (in reference to her dog that Heathcliff kills in the book), and is a willing participant in his abuses. The entire second half of the novel is missing in the adaptation, where Catherine’s haunting of Heathcliff leads to his descent into madness. Fennell’s decision to end the narrative halfway further speaks to her infatuation with the love story, not what the relationship actually meant between the two characters. By doing this, she strips what makes this novel a Gothic classic.
Valentine’s Viewer
All the motivations for the characters in the film feel singular, but their portrayals do not help matters. At best, the acting in this film can be moving, the scene between adult Heathcliff and Catherine as evidence to that fact. However, the performances during extremely serious moments felt overdramatized. Martin Clunes’ portrayal of Mr. Earnshaw is the main culprit here, his scenes, at times, almost come off as a man pretending to be dramatic in an SNL skit, not ideal for your Victorian era gothic film. Other characters are guilty of this as well, with Catherine’s constant weeping and Heathcliff’s general broodiness, every character felt like they were milking it a little too much.
Fennell has explained that this adaptation was meant to be what she recalled and felt from her experience reading the novel when she was in her early teens, so perhaps she nailed it — young teens often do not fully understand what the authors of classics are trying to say. Much like a perfume ad, complex storylines are not this movie’s forte, and it ends up as just a bunch of hot people in stunning outfits walking in a visual wonderland.
