Do not leave me in this abyss
With Emerald Fennell anything goes in her movies, so no big surprise that the first thing to go in Wuthering Heights was anything remotely related to the novel other than the central characters — Catherine and Heathcliff. In that sense it was no different than the movies that have come before it. Emily Brontë’s classic is largely taken as an enduring love story, one that no doubt inspired Barbara Cartland and Danielle Steel. Sadly this is what this movie felt like. Gone were all the elements that made Emily’s work enduring. Emerald simply reduced it to its historical trappings.
It’s too bad because Emerald is very good at playing on class consciousness, as we saw in Saltburn, and loves poking holes in the inflated images men have of themselves, as we saw in Promising Young Woman. I think it would have been better if she had updated the novel, made it her own, rather than give it this strange hybrid feeling of Barbie lost in early 19th century Yorkshire.
Emerald played with the rocky outcrops much like Roman Polanski did with Stonehenge in Tess, which was truly a cinematic thing of beauty. It seemed like Emerald took a lot of her visual cues from this film, more so than the novel itself, although the rocks played a stark dividing line in the novel, separating Thrushcross Grange from Wuthering Heights. It made me wonder what Roman would have done with Catherine, as he did such a beautiful job capturing the complexities of Tess and her love for Angel.
Margot Robbie seemed more confused than strained throughout this movie, not sure what to convey in her character. Emerald makes no effort to disguise that Margot is a woman in her mid-30s, whereas Catherine was no more than 20. In fact all the characters are much older, which feels odd having them bandy about like teenagers. Edgar Linton looks like a middle-aged man with his graying sideburns. You’re not quite sure whether Isabella is his sister or his daughter or simply a ward. Emerald does away with their father and plants them at Thrushcross Grange as very wealthy recent arrivals. Edgar appeared to amass a fortune in India or some other Far East country.
In fact the actor Shazad Latif is Pakistani-British, further giving Edgar an exotic air, whereas Allison Oliver, who plays Isabella, is Irish. The whole thing starts to take on the air of Bridgerton with Hung Chao as Nelly, which makes you wonder why Emerald didn’t go all the way and make Heathcliff black. Regé-Jean Page certainly would have fit the role. However, Jacob Elordi is enjoying his peak right now and Emerald already worked with him on Saltburn.
Anyway, all this exoticness didn’t add anything to the story. I liked Chau, but she was less a nervous Nelly than a very conniving one, especially in the way she tried to control the wild passions that overwhelmed the film. It all felt hopelessly contrived with not enough of the original story to hold it together.
Emerald did her best to insert bits and pieces here and there. The youthful Cathy and Heathcliff were taken more from the second half of the novel where Catherine’s daughter tried to teach Hareton to read but to no avail. In this film, Cathy dies from a very bloody miscarriage, essentially quashing any attempt at a sequel. I got the sense that would happen as Emerald made the halls of Linton’s estate a very ominous red and the romance seemed so tightly compressed there was no chance for her to go through labor as she did in the novel. It’s kind of a shame because had Cathy given birth it would have at least lent some hope to the movie. Instead, it just dissolved into a bitter morass.
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What made the novel so intriguing was that it was couched within a “ghost story.” Lockwood saw what he believed to be a haggard apparition of Cathy in the window of the room, where Heathcliff had etched her name over and over again into the wood frame. Heathcliff even unearthed Cathy at one point to catch one last glimpse of her face before being completely overcome with her presence and slowly dissolving himself. There was this wonderful quote,
“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you — haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! ”
It gave the novel such an intriguing texture, which was completely missing in this film.
Instead, Heathcliff is not all bad or good. He’s just some poor misunderstood figure that Cathy loves but can’t bring herself to be with as he doesn’t offer her any position in society. She has been rotting away in her father’s house and wants desperately to escape. Edgar becomes that means of escape only for her to continue to long for the wild Heathcliff who had ridden away on a blood-red moonlit night only to return a gentleman, judging from appearances, some years later.
That in itself was pretty close to the original story but something was missing. In between Cathy had formed a loving relationship with Edgar. My impression from the novel was that Cathy wanted to have both Edgar and Healthcliff, but the two refused to share her, and so became bitter enemies. In the movie, I didn’t get that sense. Edgar was simply an encumbrance. Healthcliff showed no respect, fucking Cathy everywhere, even on the dining room table of Edgar’s lavish estate. It is hard to believe this torrid romance could go unnoticed. In the end it seemed Nelly clued Edgar into what was going on, which is why he let Cathy rot away in the bedroom believing her pains to be entirely contrived, and then blaming Nelly when it was too late to do anything about it.
As I recall from the novel, Edgar so deeply loved Cathy that he slaved over her during her sickness. He tried to keep Heathcliff away as much for her health as his own sanity but to no avail. This was a doomed romance. That much Emerald Fennell captured. The saving grace was the little girl born from Cathy’s womb, to whom Edgar devoted all his attention while Heathcliff grossly abused Isabella.
Emerald didn’t seem to know quite what to do with Heathcliff and Isabella. She saved it for the end and made it into a bawdy S&M relationship which Isabella appeared to relish. The letters were more a way to draw Cathy back out than the pleas of a tormented young woman desperately hoping to escape her abusive husband. It didn’t really matter in the end. Nelly made sure nothing would come of the letters.
The film seemed to lose all its moorings at this point. All that was left was a death scene and Emerald Fennell gave it a truly surreal presence. Heathcliff brushed aside Edgar to have one last look at Cathy, pulling away the sheet that covered her lifeless ashen face. She had been cleaned up since Edgar and Nelly first found her. She resembled Sleeping Beauty with Heathcliff desperately trying to breath life back into her but this was no fairy tale. Catherine was gone forever.
It’s too bad because I really wanted to like this movie but I couldn’t. There were just too many things wrong with it. Mostly, Emerald failed to capture the spark between Cathy and Heathcliff. It just felt like they were going through the motions of love without anything behind it. Again I point to Tess because Roman Polanski was able to capture this doomed love. Sadly, Emerald Fennell was not.
