Weeks after its release on Valentine’s Day, “Wuthering Heights,” directed by Emerald Fennell, is still drawing crowds. I went to the theater the week after its release, expecting only the odd couple or two, and found the theater about a quarter full. With large theater turnouts and projections of $200 million in global profit next week, it seems moviegoers are desperate for the romantic film. Or rather, people are searching for something different than the biennial Colleen Hoover adaptations that come out to consistent lukewarm reviews. The genre of romance film has been lulled into a sleep of mediocrity. What a new “Wuthering Heights” adaptation should be, then, is a snapping back to a known reality with an injection of modernity. But what was advertised as a clean break instead came as a reinforcement of the despondently mercenary status quo.
Starting with an examination of its plot might be the most fruitful way to understand how the film managed to surpass mere failure and become, rather, an affront. The glaring issue arose before the film’s release: casting white actor Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose perceived racial otherness is central to the novel. Much of the drama and tension in the book stemmed from Heathcliff’s status as a victim of racism. Therefore, much of the romance stemmed from Cathy’s compassion for him and from their rebellion against Victorian society. Of course, all of this is jettisoned in the film.
The deep problem of societal and systemic racism bearing down on the two main characters’ love is replaced instead by a simple drunken father in an attempt by the scriptwriter to keep the flash and results of the original love story. What ultimately happens to the narrative as a whole is a lack of substance. Save for the prologue and the final couple of minutes, I fail to recall or point to a scene that existed in the film. This is not due to faulty memory, however. With the original substance of the plot lost, the film appears as only a series of events with no individual meaning.
The movie is a series of misinterpretations of the source material stacked upon another, all in favor of over-sexualization. All this is to keep its audience from realizing that nothing meaningful is occurring. In general, I would consider myself a staunch defender of vulgarity in film, but Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” adaptation is simply a series of completely meaningless erotic elements that are wholly detached from the story and exist as a cheap attempt to stimulate the audience.
What results from these narrative maladies is a complete lack of tone. We are never able to attach to what should be a desperate and rebellious romance. This is reinforced by the soundtrack, which appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to integrate the music of Charli XCX into a Victorian period-piece romance that is at one moment orchestral and in the next moment uses subwoofers to play bass-heavy pop music.
The use of visuals to establish tone is also subpar but largely inoffensive. The attempts at applying color theory and visual storytelling are bland. For instance, the husband whose wife is obviously cheating on him has a green room and a wardrobe. Wow, I wonder what that could signify.
The overall lack of tone in the film is only a symptom of the film’s presupposition that its audience is brain-dead and indulgent. The viewer must be imagined leaning forward in their seats as something sexually provocative occurs, willing to sacrifice a story of actual romance and strife for conventionally attractive lead characters. Antithetical to what the book represents, the film has shown us that we, as an audience, choose to exist in a soft world. Unlike the Cathy from its original narrative, the new “Wuthering Heights” adaptation presumes that the lot of us are still trapped in Victorian society. It assumes we are unwilling to give up our comfortable existence for a true romance film, which is more viscerally real and more viscerally alive. Maybe it is right.
