The filmmaker’s genuine faith is immediately apparent in Emerald Fennell’s version of Emily Brontë’s English literary classic, Wuthering Heights. It is not to the difficult and popular gothic novel of heredity and emotional suppression; like many previous film adaptations, Fennell skips the chaotic second half of the book and most of its traditions. 

The tortuously connected Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) swoon over the Yorkshire moors in ostentatious, anachronistic formalwear, blatantly unbound by period decorum, according to Fennell’s emphatically maximalist vision (she has explained that the quotation marks in the film’s marketing are a note of a sense of humility to her singular and limited interpretation).

Fennell Completely Strays From The Source

Some modifications are acceptable because good adaptations make use of the affordances that the film medium offers. Fennell goes well beyond this, changing key characters, relationships, and ideas to the extent that the movie resembles Hollywood-funded sexual fan fiction.

In summary, Brontë’s tale is a tragedy of anguish over generations. It centers on Catherine, an intergenerational manipulator, and Heathcliff, a serial abuser. The toxic bond between the two and their mutual retaliation against everyone they knew, including, in Catherine’s case, after death, causes chaos.

Severely Lacking In Emotional Depth

Considering its slogan, “the greatest love story ever told,” it was inevitable that Fennell’s movie would undergo some modifications.

The novel’s frame story is absent. Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, narrates the story to Lockwood, Heathcliff’s renter. In contrast, the movie begins in Catherine’s early years and concludes with her passing.

This implies that Fennell does not finish the book’s last act. By doing this, she leaves out a whole generation of significant persons that the real Catherine and Heathcliff, two traumatised, unredeemable wrecking balls, damaged.

With a virtuoso flair that you would only see in Fireball Casino or Alf Casino, the interpersonal interactions that are the basis of Brontë’s story are twisted into a meaningless caricature. There is flair, no doubt about it. The novel’s sombre Gothic tone is completely at odds with the graphic style, which is ostentatious and blatantly out of date.

Heathcliff Loses Much of His Complexity

The alterations to the original material are evident from the first scene. The tone is maintained throughout the entire runtime as we watch a young Catherine observing a hanging man who has an erection.

Hindley, Catherine’s brother who coerces Heathcliff into service and is perhaps the key to Heathcliff’s retaliation, is likewise completely absent from the movie.

Heathcliff’s complaints in the movie diminish when Catherine decides to wed Edgar Linton. This is the closest the movie gets to how racism, classism, and intergenerational trauma are handled in the book.

The effects of the deuteragonists’ machinations, particularly the misery of their respective children and servants, are also erased by concluding on Catherine’s death, instead of carrying out the entire plot of the source material.

The Controversial Casting of Jacob Elordi

There is a dispute about Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff. Almost all of Heathcliff’s interactions in the book are influenced by his unclear racial identification in the setting of Georgian England, Alf Casino, or even Fireball Casino.

His character is characterised by “othering,” even if it’s unclear what his race is (some scholars point to signs that suggest he may have fled from slavery). Elordi’s Heathcliff has little chance of realistically going through this.

The novel’s more comprehensive description of how trauma is passed down through generations and how systematic marginalisation may both attract and produce abuse is flattened in the movie.

Abuse Depicted as a Consensual Act

Regarding abuse, Fennell’s reinterpretation of Heathcliff’s treatment of Isabella (Edgar Linton’s sister and ultimately Heathcliff’s wife) as a consensual BDSM dynamic may be the most peculiar divergence from the original text.

Isabella is physically, psychologically, and implicitly sexually tormented by Brontë’s Heathcliff until she and their son escape.

The novel’s transition from repressed, complex desire to explicit scenes, which are excluded from the book, and the rewriting of abuse as kink appear to be intended more for viewers accustomed to post-50 Shades of Grey erotica, Alf Casino than Victorian Gothic, or Fireball Casino.

Palatability At The Cost of Substance

Although Hollywood has historically used books, the current trend seems to be designed more for virality, reels, and snippets than for the required compromises of adaptation.

We are aware that adjustments with both style and content are feasible. Think about Baz Luhrmann. Romeo and Juliet (1996), which is nominated for an Oscar, is as visually extravagant, but it maintains a commitment to the text that Fennell’s picture does not.

What does it give, then? Virality. Even this piece adds to the online frenzy that will guarantee Wuthering Heights’ financial success. We are all its victims, and it will ragebait critics for far longer than such a pathetic endeavour merits.