“Wuthering Heights” was certainly an experience. A twisted, dark, seductive romance based on the novel by Emily Brontë, director Emerald Fennell’s reimagination of the story as a Yorkshire-bred bodice-ripper is full of innuendo and intrigue.
With respect to the imagery, it is beautiful. The costumes are gorgeous and feel purposeful, always conveying something meaningful about the narrative. They are striking and luxurious, not historically accurate but also not trying to be. No one was wearing shiny pink cellophane in the 18th century, but it doesn’t really matter. The costumes fit the dream-like, surrealist atmosphere of the movie in a way that communicates its tone better than any period-accurate clothing could have done.
There has been much controversy about the casting. Fennell has faced criticisms of whitewashing Heathcliff by casting Jacob Elordi, who in the book is described as having dark skin and being of racially ambiguous descent. His identity is rooted in his otherness; his status and his skin-color, permanently intertwined, mark him as separate. Erasing this crucial part of his character feels reductive, turning him into a cut-and-paste Byronic hero sweeping around the moors with his one gold hoop earring, instead of a multi-dimensional protagonist.
Fennell claimed to have portrayed Heathcliff as her 14-year-old self envisioned him, while casting director Kharmel Cochrane defended the decision by saying, “You really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art.”
Some of the most successful adaptations radically change the original source material. But in this case, it feels more like a decision based on marketing and popularity, hidden behind claims of artistic license. Ultimately, it ended up feeling like Jacob Elordi was cast just because he’s Jacob Elordi. If Fennell wanted to remove that aspect of Heathcliff’s identity, there should have been a stronger intention and purpose, rather than just a realization of her teenage fantasy.
Fennell has no issue with casting non-white actors in supporting roles. Edgar Linton is played by Shazad Latif, and Nelly is played by Vy Nguyen and Hong Chau as her younger and older selves. Unfortunately, these characters feel underdeveloped and end up as either non-entities or obstacles to the Catherine-Heathcliff relationship. It’s also unclear whether their racial identities have any impact on their narratives, considering the insouciance of Heathcliff’s casting.
Aside from the casting issues, the plot leaves much to be desired.
Brontë portrays the relationships between all of the characters in the novel as a complex web of interactions that unfold over multiple generations. This complexity is lost in the movie. Fennell fixates on the two main characters, with peripheral figures entering and exiting the audience’s field of vision only in relation to the two protagonists. The peripheral characters have practically no bearing whatsoever on the main plot, unlike in Brontë’s story, which locates the primary relationship within a subtle labyrinth of motives and dynamics.
There are cursory attempts at developing supporting characters, such as Nelly. There is a moment where she interacts with a servant at the Earnshaw residence and her status in the household is left ambiguous. But this glance at Nelly’s storyline provides very little substance and feels like a perfunctory attempt to explain her later actions. We never fully understand her motivations or her place in the story, as our attention is continually directed back toward the twinging lovers.
Fennell obsesses over the central dynamic of the lovers at the expense of the other characters. But is “Wuthering Heights” the book even a love story? There are certainly some romantic themes, but defining it as a romance erases its most compelling complexities.
Without external influences on Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, the reasons for their being apart feel less convincing. There are no stakes — once Heathcliff returns as a rich man, it seems that Catherine wouldn’t lose much by leaving Edgar. There is no ‘society’ imposing customs and traditions on them, and we never see any of the world beyond Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The few other characters seem to simply exist in the same space as Catherine and Heathcliff. Rather than being star-crossed lovers, as Fennell seems to imply, their strained dynamic is unexplained. Why couldn’t they just run off together across the moors? What stars were crossed?
I certainly have many issues with the plot, yet there is still something of substance. At one point, amidst Catherine’s lamentations, Nelly points out that Catherine actually likes to cry. She likes to winge and be in pain, to be drenched in the icy chill of Yorkshire rain, to feel torn apart by divisive desires. Here, there certainly is a touch of the gothic. Fennell does well at mixing the sensations of pleasure and pain from the outset. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff feels poisoned in this way, and their sexually charged connection is always undercut by the dark, the morose and the monstrous.
“ It dazzles in the moment, but their relationship doesn’t compel me to ruminate on it and bask in its delicate complex of violence and obsession. It’s both too much and not enough. ”
In fact, I think Fennell could have gone even further with the gothic tragedy elements. I wanted more haunting, more melodrama, more windy expanses of bare land. But, I also understand that Fennell’s vision was much more stylized and surreal: more disturbing for its outright eroticism and viscerality than for an undercurrent of disquietude and dread.
“Wuthering Heights” was a somewhat intriguing fantasy of lethal obsession and sadism mixed with a sort of love between kindred evils — Catherine and Heathcliff are matched in their cruelty, and there is a constant push and pull between them. Yet something about it feels empty. There is so much eroticism that it becomes redundant and off-putting, and the condensation of an interwoven, multi-generational plot into a singular romance fell flat.
It dazzles in the moment, but their relationship doesn’t compel me to ruminate on it and bask in its delicate complex of violence and obsession. It’s both too much and not enough.
Ava Chambers PO ’28 enjoys watching movies, eating breakfast foods and adding books to her ‘want to read’ list.
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