In 1978, an 18-year-old Kate Bush rose to stardom with a 4-minute 28-second song called Wuthering Heights, inspired by the Emily Brontë novel of the same name. The song is haunting; high-pitched vocals capture the obsessive and controlling nature of the story’s primary relationship, Catherine and Heathcliff. It is with the most ease that I can say that Kate Bush’s song is an infinitely better retelling of the original novel than the 2-hour-and-16-minute headache-inducing film that was Emerald Fennell’s reimagining.
Now I can sit here and say that my only gripe is that the film is inaccurate to the book, and the era it represents, or that it is a masterclass in book-to-movie adaptations– but that would be a lie. I could go on tangent after tangent, as I have for months (much to my dear mother’s chagrin!), about the miscasting that was the pale Jacob Elordi for the “dark-skinned” Heathcliff, or the unnecessary uses of phallic imagery. And don’t even get me started on the over-sexualized depiction of an abusive marriage. Still, if you’re reading this review, you’ve likely already read others and thus are privy to the “liberties” Fennell takes.
I’m here to discourse upon the cheapening of complex themes, tragedies, and characters for the sake of a mediocre-at-best homage to the director’s early adolescence. The thing about Wuthering Heights is that it’s not a story that exists to be attractive. It is not a BookTok dark romance. It is a novel about love shifting into possession in manners so terrible that it could hardly be perceived as love at all. It is about class being a lose-lose game for people born without the privilege of wealth or whiteness. Every character is ruined, not because of a Shakespearean-level love, but because the worst parts of the human condition come to the surface in a world that rewards control and domination. Fennell’s unhinged film seems intimidated by this sort of ugliness and even exonerates its characters from their wrongdoings. This is what becomes the film’s most pressing flaw. Its fixation on style and aesthetic removes any aspect of this story that is designed to be suffocating.
The film effectively replaces the original discomfort with the shock value equal only to a Bridgerton relationship scandal. Tension is diffused by consummating the relationship that never was. Fennell wanted this film to evoke the same feelings she had when she initially read the book, and in that, she succeeds. The film certainly feels like a Pinterest mood board a teenager would put together to be “edgy” or “deep.”
The novel is a slow Gothic horror in which tension swells throughout the generations in both social and domestic ways. It is a story that embodies the threat of being consumed by things out of control. No one who leaves Wuthering Heights ever really leaves. Even the children aren’t safe. Fennell trades all that for a version that is smoothed down into something easy and palatable. It becomes a story about a passionate man and woman who can’t deny themselves any longer. But Heathcliff and Catherine are not tragic because they’re “meant to be.” They are tragic because they ruin each other. Their pain isn’t just reserved for each other; it spills out to everyone else. They aren’t aspirational. They are a cautionary tale.
And the “caution” matters. Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel that details how dehumanization is reproduced in generational cycles. Heathcliff is shaped by cruelty, which turns him cruel. Catherine is not split between two loves. She chose status and security and spent the rest of her short life punishing herself and everyone around her. The themes in the novel are not subtle but are nevertheless complex. The removal of such complexity, but glorifying the aesthetics, solidifies the emptiness in the film. I said in a previous article that “some liberties may be overlooked or completely forgiven if the majority of the themes are not minimized or dismissed.” Unfortunately, dismissing critical themes is the legacy this film will leave behind.
Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is too fixated on provocation to try being honest. It is too focused on justifying its “romance” label to be cruel in the way the source material is cruel. The gothic elements peak at the moors.
That is what angers me most. This book came from Emily Brontë when she was barely 30, writing while tuberculosis was already killing her. She died only a year after it was published. Wuthering Heights was the chance to be something more than the timid, private girl people described her as. So to reduce any part of that story to “just a book” or “artistic expression” isn’t bold. It’s a deliberate disregard for the legacy Fennell now gets to profit from.
Wuthering Heights doesn’t need to be saved by pastels and Charlie XCX. It doesn’t require a “smooth-brained” interpretation. What it needs is respect and integrity.
Kate Bush understood that in less than five minutes. Emerald Fennell’s offering proves to be dreadfully incapable of bringing it home in over 2 hours.