Wuthering Heights: A Film Review

By Milana Mezhieva

The newest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, has -  much like the director Emerald Fenell’s previous film Saltburn - amassed great controversy and discourse. (Are we all spotting her fixation with Jacob here?) 

As a great fan of Emily Brontë and the 2022 film Emily , which depicted an imagined biography exploring possible influences on her novel, I was excited to fuel my obsession with Emily, until the wave of criticism and speculation crashed onto this movie before it was even released. 

Spoiler : as soon as I walked out of the cinema (Shoutout Genesis!) my 4 Letterboxd followers were informed of how underwhelming the movie is. From accusations of whitewashing, to disrespecting the original text, to over-eroticisation, understanding this topic can only be done with some backstory. 

Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights

Emily set the novel in the late 18th to early 19^th-century, Yorkshire. It tells the tale of Catherine and a boy adopted by her father - Heathcliff. Growing up side by side, Heathcliff endures much abuse and othering from the Earnshaw household, with the exception of Catherine, with whom he shares a profound mutual love. 

When the wealthy Linton family become their neighbours, Catherine chooses to marry Edgar Linton, a man of high social standing and considerable wealth – a status Heathcliff could never attain due to his origins as a man of colour, orphaned and picked up on the streets of Liverpool by Catherine’s father. Heathcliff resents this turn of fate and leaves home to become a wealthy, successful gentleman. His character development lies in resolving to dominate the Wuthering Heights family home, and ensure that his descendants dominate and triumph over those of Catherine and Edgar. 

Lack of loyalty to the book and the Victorian period

Perhaps the greatest criticism and issue with Fenell’s adaptation is the casting of a white actor to play Heathcliff. The book describes him as “dark-skinned” and he was discovered in Liverpool, a port for the transatlantic slave trade in Victorian England. While Fenell responded to a question about this casting choice by stating that everyone imagines the book in their own way and that she chose to focus on the “sadomasochistic elements” of the novel that resonated with her when she read it at 14 , this argument of personal interpretation and engagement with the story does not demonstrate the core of the story. 

Art is a deeply personal expression until we make an adaptation of someone else’s work, actively ignoring and silencing someone else’s self-expression, overlooking important themes that were seldom illuminated at the time especially, and still to this day are underrepresented. Wuthering Heights has been interpreted as an example of reverse imperialism, confronting Victorian society with its own fears by showing how unsustainable imperialism could be. Heathcliff can be read as a symbol of the colonised subject, immigrating to Britain, joining society and reclaiming the control imperialists held - a relevant theme to this day. 

His revenge arc - becoming a rich, accomplished man of high status is motivated by his experiences of being othered and degraded. A great magnifier of the story’s tragedy is that this is still not enough for him to earn the same respect as his peers. He is introduced by the narrator as a “dark-skinned {slur for Romani people} in aspect but a gentleman in manners” illustrating how his ethnicity continues to form perceptions of him within the society. The same cannot be said for Jacob Elordi’s character as Heathcliff, it strips away political themes from a rare and important example of race commentary in classical English literature. It appears culturally insensitive, ignorant and biased that Fennel, a white woman, imagined the male lead as white despite textual descriptions of him suggesting otherwise, while foregrounding purported “sadomasochistic elements” instead of sociological themes central to the novel.

Another criticism is the visual design deviating greatly from the essence of the book and Victorian England. Though many period pieces take liberty with historical accuracy, this movie stood out for its disorganised visual themes. Jacqueline Durran, the costume designer for this movie as well as Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women - in an interview about the costumes  commented that their dates are blurred and that styles were selected according to preference rather than historical precision. While explaining the vision behind certain costumes, Fenell described her vision to combine old Hollywood, Victorian and contemporaryfashions. 

What it led her look at a random German Vogue cover and decide that it warrants Catherine being dressed as a traditional German milkmaid is a mystery to me. Similarly, the metaphor of Catherine presenting  herself as a gift for Edgar on their wedding night came at the expense of visual coherence.

A redeeming effect of this is that the mixed timed periods in costume and set design can reflect the timeless nature of the themes explored. The set design is richly packed with symbolism to facilitate the rightatmosphere, juxtaposing the wild Wuthering Heights and artificial Thrushcross grange homes meticulously.However, while costumes, music and set design should be a backdrop for the story, complementing its plot and themes, several montage music video-esque moments with Charli XCX blasting at full volume made the movie feel devoid of substance and made it seem over reliant on visuals. The marketability-oriented casting of two actors well beyond their teenage years (perhaps explained by producer Margot Robbie’s tendency to cast herself) visually takes away from the story. Societal pressures to navigate relationships and commit to a marriage at a young age were important for the period. They contextualise Catherine’s decisions and her subsequent regrets. 

A surrealistic, visually modern adaptation of classic texts is not unheard of. Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ was criticised by Shakespeare purists upon its release but ultimately it went down in history as a creative and coherent reinterpretation. A drag queen and gangs with gun violence replace the flamboyant jesters and duels with swords of the Elizabethan era to appeal to contemporary audiences. Absurdist, abstract, contemporary interpretations are not necessarily flawed. The issue lies with Fenell’s adaptation which does not convey a consistent purpose or a reflection of the original text’s core. 

Eroticisation replacing emotional depth and exploration 

Fenell’s claim to focus on “sadomasochistic elements” is confusing for several reasons. Firstly, there are no such elements explicitly mentioned in the novel to be able to focused on, the characters don’t even kiss. Secondly, all of the film’s sexual scenes except for one are not sadomasochistic in nature. The psychological effects or underlying influences  of such themes are not actually meaningfully explored rather the movie is just marketed with sex for shock value. The (alleged) PR stunt of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s mutual obsession, closeness and romantic gestures contributes to this, perhaps trying to recreate the marketing success of Sydney Sweeney and co-star Glenn Powell or Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. While Robbie describes the erotic elements with admiration and says only Fenell could make touching fish and kneading dough so provocative, we all know that thirst trap chefs on TikTok and most “romantic” movies in the last decade have been doing this for a long time now. Many viewers don’t want to see this story become an erotic film, as it is the continuation of a disappointing trend in the romance genre. For example, movies like 50 Shades of Grey now replace those like Pretty Woman. Both have similar dynamics with a rich, powerful man and a naive woman coupling up, but are a world apart in emotional depth. After replaces 10 Things I Hate About You. While both portray a juvenile teenage romance with enemies to lovers cliches where the male lead fakes his feelings at first, After relies much more on sexual intimacy to bring these characters together as well as to mend their conflicts. Fenell’s description of Wuthering Heights as including things she interpreted, felt or would have wanted to happen as a 14 year old reader perhaps explains the result. Like 50 Shades of Grey and After, the film  feels like a ‘Wattpad-ification’ of a classic romance. 

To Watch or Not to Watch 

For readers seeking to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the English moors and get some food for thought on Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights, in the most biased manner possible I recommend Emily (2022), an underrated, imagined take on Brontë’s life. Though it can’t be confirmed, it is very likely that elements of her life did influence the novel. For example her absent mother who died when she was 3, mirrored by every mother in the book. Her family’s antisocial demeanour makes them outsiders in Yorkshire which mirrors the Earnshaws and Heathcliff. Otherwise, enjoying the “Wuthering Heights” movie as a separate entity to the book will also help preserve your sanity.