When an idea has been done to death, say an umpteenth production of a play or a reboot of a film franchise, an artist will often try to find a fresher take on the material. Sometimes the new spin may even feel outrageous. Thus, in the sixties, productions of Shakespeare were often done in modern dress. In the seventies, Dracula was given the Blaxpoitation treatment in the cult classic BLACKULA. Heck, for the past 22 years, the Puppy Bowl has been presented as counter programming to the Super Bowl, a gentler game for the softer set. Some spins on tried-and-true material work better than others but zigging while others zag almost always finds a way to stand out.
Emerald Fennell is a filmmaker who likes to zig where others zagged. And she’s proven to be quite good at it too.
She told a “Me too” story in 2020’s PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN in an atypical way, through the eyes of the rape victim’s surviving friend, and it won her a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Fennell’s next film SALTBURN (2023) sympathized with the homicidal maniac who infiltrates the home of a rich British family rather than any of his victims whom he proceeds to take out one by one. Now, in her take on the famed 1847 Gothic novel WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Fennell keeps on zigging. Emily Bronte’s classic novel is about two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, living on the West Yorkshire moors. In the Earnshaw household, the privileged Catherine becomes besties with the exotic, gypsy boy Heathcliff the family takes in out of charity. As they grow up and grow closer together, the adult Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) become obsessed with each other, even sexually. But despite their connection, these adults cannot give into their attraction for each other because one is white and the other is, well, exotic.
That is the core issue in Bronte’s classic novel, but Fennell had decided to even zig on that basic tenet. Instead of casting an actor of color, she chose Elordi to play Heathcliff, who doesn’t read ethnic at all. Fennell went even further by casting supporting roles with a color-blind eye, and yet such choices only underline her misinterpretation of Bronte. The issue is writ large with the casting of British actor Shazad Latif, whose background is Pakistani, English and Scottish, in the role of Catherine’s wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton. In the original story, Catherine ends up marrying Edgar because society would accept a white coupling, even though she lusts for the ethnic, darker-hued Heathcliff. Whiffing the basic idea about racism, station, and class warfare in the British caste system seemed like a no-brainer, but Fennell’s take belies what should be obvious.
Perhaps Fennell is simply trying to draw even more attention to the theme of racism, but it makes for a strange sit as the elite look like those discriminated against in the original prose. Maybe she thought that no one was as attractive as Elordi, so he had to be Heathcliff, but he never feels like the ethnic character he’s supposed to be. Such choices don’t feel like much of a fresh spin either when you consider that most of the other Heathcliff’s in previous big screen adaptations have seen lily-white actors playing the role as well. Everyone from Laurence Olivier to Ralph Fiennes has done the role in a big screen production, so Fennell appears to be zagging, just like her predecessors.
Farrell ignores convention in other places, choosing to portray the two elite homes in broad and garish ways that were not in Bronte’s prose. Her film’s production design is something to see, but it’s all way too over-the-top, to the point of inviting comparisons to Grand Guignol. The Earnshaw home becomes so dilapidated and filthy that it feels almost cartoonish. Meanwhile, the Linton estate looks like the interior design was done by Guillermo del Toro. Blood-red rooms, theatrical furnishings, nippled backboards in bedrooms, and endless windows bursting open via violent gusts of wind…are we watching CRIMSON PEAK here? There are horrors in Bronte’s tale, true, but it’s mostly evidenced in its cruel and prejudiced society and the way that both Catherine and Heathcliff act in kind.
And if you think that Fennell might at least enhance the bodice-ripping aspects of such material, guess again. If anything, her approach feels too demure as very few clothes are discarded. Fennell does play up some sado-masochistic elements, but those scenes are here mostly to show the depths of the depravity of the two main characters.
The acting is generally fine, including clever turns by Hong Chau as housekeeper Nelly and Martin Klunes as the crusty patriarch Earnshaw, but I felt very little for either Catherine or Heathcliff here. They’re awful people mostly and that’s a problem in the original prose too. If only Fennell and her leads could’ve convinced us of something more admirable pulling them towards each other than surface lust, then this film would have truly zigged more than other efforts. Fennell has a lot of skills as a filmmaker, but this feels like her weakest effort. Her emphasis continually plays as off-message. It’s an unmoored adaptation heading straight over the cliffs.
