“I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” – Heathcliff
To this day there has never been an English language adaptation of Emily Brontë’s gothic novel Wuthering Heights that stayed true to the book. Ironically, the closest adaptation directed by Peter Kosminsky in 1992 starring Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff and Juliette Binoche is also one of the least successful versions of creating the “romance” between the two messy protagonists. It doesn’t skimp on the villainy of Heathcliff, and Fiennes looks the part despite an increasingly terrible wig, yet the French accented Cathy Earnshaw, then Catherine Linton, then Catherine Heathcliff (the full novel condensed like a Reader’s Digest compilation) barely scratches the surface of Catherine Earnshaw.
The least “faithful” adaptation, beyond Emerald Fennell’s, was Andrea Arnold’s 2011 Wuthering Heights which understood the reckless psychology of its protagonists and the perversity inherent in Emily Brontë’s writing. It also wed Cathy and Heathcliff to the Yorkshire moors as essentially creatures grown from them – wildlings that could never be tamed and as harsh, cruel, and sometimes beautiful as the environs Brontë herself knew so well.
Emerald Fennell’s adaptation is noted as “Wuthering Heights” for a reason. Fennell isn’t pretending naturalism or fidelity at all. She’s also taking sketches from Brontë’s novel and creating a grand passionate romance where Heathcliff isn’t seeking vengeance or destruction, and Cathy is comprehensively his soulmate and he hers. Carnal, sensuous, and thrust out of time, “Wuthering Heights” relishes in it’s beautiful perversity with a fervent burst of unforgettable imagery and excess.
The film opens with young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) attending a hanging in Gimmerton with her companion Nelly (Vy Nguyen). She screeches with abandonment as the condemned man slowly chokes to death resulting in the local boys pointing out his asphyxiation related erection. Blonde haired and blue-eyed, Cathy relishes this dark form of entertainment which is evidenced by a slew of dolls she has purchased from similar hangings all placed on the rafters of her bedroom of the crumbling Wuthering Heights. Her father, Earnshaw (Martin Clunes) is an inebriate wastrel who has slipped into a childish and selfish state. He loathes Cathy’s “passions” – her emotional outbursts and relies on Nelly to attempt to make something of his only child. Nelly, the bastard child of an aristocrat was shipped off to Yorkshire and Wuthering Heights as a place where she would dwell in hiding. Already the farm is falling into ruin, a ruin that has had centuries to return itself to the bleak and black decay of a place where disintegration of civility for a one named family is gasping it’s last.
Earnshaw brings home a boy (Owen Cooper) whose “father” or caretaker has gladly abandoned to his care. The boy is silent and has already suffered before Earnshaw’s act of drunken “charity.” Earnshaw tells Cathy he has brought her a gift and she finds the young boy under her bed who immediately covers her mouth. Cathy is astounded by her father’s gift of a brother and names him Heathcliff after her dead brother. “I may keep him as my pet?” she asks Earnshaw who assents. Yet, Earnshaw is barely able to function. His servants Mrs Burton and Zilla (Amy Morgan) prepare for his insensible abjectness every time he decides to spend an evening in Gimmerton. Earnshaw’s charity in bringing Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights is at first to shape Heathcliff into an heir, but soon devolves into him relegating the child to the stables and liberally whipping him when in a temper.
For Cathy, however, Heathcliff is a miracle. A boy who patiently watches her and reaches for her in a mixture of condolence and comfort. A shadow self who withstands Cathy’s ungovernable moods. A child made from deprivation who forbears retaliating to any ill treatment as long as he can stay in the proximity of Cathy. Such a proximity causes a nascent jealousy and hardness in Nelly who has been replaced by someone of unknown birth.
In jettisoning Hindley as a character and replacing him with Earnshaw senior, Fennell gives the audience time to understand what brings young Cathy and Heathcliff together. Cathy runs her hands over the whip marks left on Heathcliff’s body and tells him they hurt her as if they are on her own flesh. They are unparented children born of a tempestuous and unpredictable house falling into nature which is equally unforgiving. Yet, as they grow with each other they grow into an untamed beauty and as adults their temperaments match as does their elemental yearning.
Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) maintain their teasing relationship as adults, but it is tinged with longing. Cathy remains imperious despite the desolation of the circumstances at the Heights. She bemoans how disgusting her home has become as Joseph (Ewan Mitchell) butchers a pig in the forecourt. Earnshaw has gambled and drunk away whatever Wuthering Heights once had in both good name and fortune. Heathcliff understands the privations and works still to maintain a basic living for Cathy and his erstwhile father. Nelly (Hong Chau) can barely abide being in the house especially as she is kept apart from both servants and her Cathy.
Heathcliff and Cathy still have their own world which opens wider when Cathy sneaks into Heathcliff’s apartment above the stables and sees Joseph engage in some bondage with Zillah. It is a defining sexual moment for them both as Heathcliff covers Cathy’s eyes and mouth covering her body with his as the servants below take pleasure in each other. That moment opens the chasm of wanting in Cathy who takes to the moors to pleasure herself and is found by Heathcliff. As much as they’ve always seen the other their eyes are now affixed to what exquisite pleasures they might offer each other. A moment that is interrupted by the purchasing of Thrushcross Grange to new neighbours. A man called Linton (Shazad Latif) who made his money via mercantile ventures in fabrics who has brought his ward Isabella (Alison Oliver) with him.
Cathy expects the Lintons to invite her immediately to their house. She also expects she will have to “throw herself into marriage” with new money. It’s insulting to her that no invitation comes especially as the Earnshaw name has been across the Heights since 1500. Eventually she makes her way to the Grange, a fresh miracle of Regency design and abundant wealth. Climbing over the wall she falls and hurts her ankle and from there the taming of Catherine Earnshaw into Mrs Linton is assured. So too the fateful words spoken that Heathcliff will hear, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff” without the context of “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” orchestrated by Nelly to deliberately hurt the pair. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights and Catherine spends days alone on the moor waiting for him to return. Eventually she accepts that he has left her and that she must marry Edgar Linton if she is to survive; and what a wonder Thrushcross Grange is with its bizarre pleasures, although none of them reach to Cathy’s heart nor her soul. She is as trapped as the taxidermy animals in their glass cases. A doll in a dollhouse inside a dollhouse. Seasons pass and she remains caged in an excess of comfort mostly designed by Isabella in her childishly unhinged manner.
“Wuthering Heights” is unhinged, that is true both of the novel and Emerald Fennell’s vision brought to life by the exquisite production design of Suzie Davis who has reached new heights in her art. Walls sweat, food is exorbitant, Cathy’s bedroom at the Grange is decorated with a facsimile of her own skin. Isabella’s extravagant obsessions paid for by Linton’s money and general disinterest in drama and preference for luxury are made astonishing by Davis’ design work and Linus Sandgren’s cinematography. The same can be said for their work capturing the degradation and depravity of Wuthering Heights. Angles that are askew, ceilings too low even for a Tudor relic. Fennell has cried out, “Make it weird!” and all of the cast and crew heard.
Fennell also decided that as strange and deviant as her version of Brontë’s novel is, it is also to be a tragic and complete gothic romance with the emphasis on romance. Contrary and headstrong Cathy is perfectly played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff is rendered extraordinarily as her equal. Erotic, carnal, defiant, sumptuous, and mad – “Wuthering Heights” is a work of devastating craving and infatuation wrought into a timeless game of masochism and obsession for two souls who grew inextricably as one.
Director: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau
Writer: Emerald Fennell, (based on the novel by Emily Brontë)
Producers: Emerald Fennell, Rosie Goodwin, Josey McNamara, Margot Robbie
Composer: Anthony Willis
Cinematographer: Linus Sandgren
Editor: Victoria Boydell
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