Since the movie came out, there has been a lot of speculation around the script and the source material of the new film Wuthering Heights. It seems you either love the movie and leave the theater crying, or hate it as an adaptation of the book.
But that’s the thing: the movie itself is an adaptation, not a recreation. The writer, director, and co-producer,
Emerald Fennell, as well as actress and producer Margot Robbie, have stated in interviews that the main goal of this film was for Fennell to convey the same feeling she had when reading the book at 14. So are there major changes, missing characters and events that didn’t even occur in the original material? Yes. But the film makes up for its inaccuracies through the dark romance ambience that Fennel was able to create.
The attention to detail in the set design, costumes and makeup transports you into this world set on the cold and gloomy moors in 19th-century England. It engages fantasy in a clever way with specific color symbolism and atmospheres that are truly stunning, while also including the absence of realism in small details like the grass or plants that keep the world grounded, allowing you to suspend disbelief just enough to appreciate the world Fennel has created. The costumes are roughly fit for the time period while representing what a character is feeling instead of focusing on accuracy.
Opinions on this movie seem to be split, as some people obsess over the source material and fail to understand what this film truly is: a love note from the director to the book and the audience. She’s taken aspects from the book she either loved or wanted to delve deeper into, as well as things she may have wished would have happened, and emphasized these details on screen. As unlikable as the characters may be described in the book, it’s fascinating how
Margot Robbie is able to transform this bratty and self-centered character into a still-bratty and self-centered character, yet oddly likeable. Though, that could just be because it’s Margot Robbie, famous for lovable characters like Barbie and Harley Quinn. The same goes for actor Jacob Elordi. Popular for his roles in The Kissing Booth and Saltburn, he was the first person to be cast for this movie. This choice was one of the more controversial ones, as Heathcliff’s character in the book isn’t white.
Elordi’s version of Heathcliff, arguably, could be just as unlikable in the book. And yet we can’t strip our eyes away from this toxic relationship built on yearning and the ambition of wanting to have it all.
In truth, this movie is only as good as you let it be, and if you look at it for what it is – an adaptation based on the book Wuthering Heights rather than a literal translation – that explains why one would be upset. This film isn’t supposed to be a copy-and-paste of the book, with its complicated characters and themes, but simply a conveyed feeling and atmosphere the creator felt while reading the book in high school, using characters and settings from the book with visual symbolism through incredible atmosphere, costumes and makeup with incredibly good-looking actors yearning for each other until it consumes them.
