A Review of Emerald Fennell’s controversial adaptation
Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights is a staple of the English literary canon, and it’s one of the novels studied by first-year English students at St Andrews. The novel’s status as a well-known and respected classic makes it feel like everyone has an opinion on the newly-released adaptation, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
In case you’re not familiar with the novel, here’s a brief explanation: set in the Yorkshire moors during the late-18th and early-19th centuries, it follows the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their relationship with Heathcliff, who is taken in by the Earnshaws as a child. While Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw form a close bond, the complexity of their relationship, as well as the abuse Heathcliff is subjected to, results in him growing into a cruel man who perpetuates a cycle of abuse against the next generation of the two families
The controversies behind Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”
Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff
By far the most controversial aspect of “Wuthering Heights” ahead of its release was the casting choices –particularly Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff.
While Heathcliff’s ethnicity remains ambiguous in the novel, Brontë makes it abundantly clear that he is different from the white characters around him. Heathcliff’s abuse at the hands of other characters and their hatred of him is clearly motivated by his racial ‘otherness’, with examples throughout the novel referring to him as: ‘a dark-skinned gipsy’, ‘a gipsy brat’, ‘a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway’, and ‘dark, almost as if it came from the devil’. Heathcliff was also brought to Wuthering Heights from Liverpool, which was a major British port for the slave trade.
So, although Heathcliff’s specific identity is not known, he is almost certainly not white. While some people might think Heathcliff’s race is an irrelevant detail, Fennell is within her rights to dismiss it; the consequences of the racially-motivated abuse that Heathcliff faces significantly impact the rest of the novel. His race is integral to his character arc; it is due to the horrific treatment that Heathcliff becomes a ‘monster’ himself and perpetuates a cycle of violence.
A Vogue interview with Margot Robbie offered some more insight into Fennell’s thought process when she cast the role of Heathcliff, revealing that Fennell instantly knew she wanted Elordi when she saw him in costume for Saltburn: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the Heathcliff on the cover of the book that I’ve had since I was a teenager’”. The article also mentions that she read the novel for the first time when she was fourteen, and that she wanted to capture that ‘visceral experience.’ This suggests that Fennell wasn’t considering deeper elements of the story when she cast Elordi, but instead was fangirling over the idealised version of Heathcliff she took from the novel as a young girl.
Margot Robbie’s casting as Catherine Earnshaw
The next (and less significant) casting controversy was around Margot Robbie’s casting as Catherine Earnshaw. One specific concern was how a thirty-five-year-old would be able to convincingly play a character who tragically dies as a teenager.
Furthermore, Catherine is brunette, while Robbie is blonde. This could have been easily solved with a wig or some hair dye, but instead, it became clear during production that Fennell’s Catherine would be very much blonde. The significance of hair colour is undeniable in the novel: Catherine’s brown hair aligns her physically with Heathcliff, while the Lintons’ ‘perfect’ blonde hair is physically antithetical to Heathcliff and represents everything he can never have.
It was noticeable how differently Fennell describes her thought process when casting Margot as Catherine compared to when casting Jacob as Heathcliff. Fennell describes Catherine as ‘wilful, mean, a recreational sadist, a provocateur’, but she also acknowledges Catherine’s charm as someone who ‘you would forgive in spite of yourself’ and who everyone could ‘understand why you love her’.
How come Fennell can give a detailed and thoughtful analysis of Catherine’s character with all its flaws, when her analysis of Heathcliff involves her drooling over Jacob Elordi and exclaiming that he looks just like the Heathcliff on her book cover? How is it fair that Robbie is expected to encapsulate Catherine’s entire character, while Elordi essentially just has to look good?
The casting crossover with Saltburn
It also seems that during the casting process for “Wuthering Heights”, no one looked much further than Fennell’s most recent project, Saltburn (2023). Robbie’s production company, Lucky Chap Entertainment, produced Saltburn. Elordi starred as Felix Catton in Saltburn. Isabella Linton is played by Alison Oliver, who played Venetia Catton in Saltburn. Joseph is played by Ewan Mitchell, who played Oliver’s nerdy maths friend in Saltburn. Even Paul Rhys makes an appearance with young Heathcliff at the start of the film and, surprise!…he played the Cattons’ butler Duncan in Saltburn.
It’s hard to ignore the pattern here. If the film had just added a freaky role for Barry Keoghan and his questionable accents, we would have had Saltburn: The Sequel. This copy-and-paste casting feels lazy, especially given that some of the actors arguably don’t fit their roles. It definitely seems like corners were cut in favour of big names who could draw publicity, such as Robbie and Elordi.
Is Wuthering Heights a love story?
Even more outrage followed the release of the film’s trailers. Many fans of the book argued that Wuthering Heights was not a love story at all, while Fennell clearly seemed to have understood it as one and was using that as a key marketing point, even scheduling the film for release in cinemas on Valentine’s Day.
The trailer also made clear that “Wuthering Heights” would follow the same formula Fennell used in Saltburn, which gained viral attention upon its release for its shock-value ‘sex scenes’. Many people weren’t happy that Fennell was clearly going for an overtly erotic depiction of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, when in the original novel, the most ‘sexual’ act depicted is them embracing and kissing the last time they see each other.
Before watching the film, I wondered why Fennell bothered to ‘adapt’ Wuthering Heights at all if she intended to change it almost beyond recognition. While every adaptation takes some level of creative liberties, warping a story to the point of disrespecting or dismissing the source material makes me question why Fennell didn’t just write an original screenplay. It feels less like an adaptation and more like a manipulative use of a famous title as a cheap marketing ploy.
My review of “Wuthering Heights”
Overall, my thoughts are pretty much the same after seeing the film. I tried to go into it with a fairly open mind, and it was actually helpful knowing roughly what to expect, because it meant I wasn’t shocked or distracted by the big changes Fennell had made.
First, let’s start with the negatives.
As expected, Fennell’s adaptation was almost unrecognisable from the original novel. Not only was Heathcliff whitewashed, but the character of Hindley was completely axed, and there was no second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws. The film ended with Catherine’s death and Heathcliff lying on top of her body, cutting out about half of the novel’s plot.
As well as the added erotic scenes, there were small changes made that felt strange or unnecessary. The character of Joseph, who in the novel is a fanatically religious elderly man, was turned into a nice-enough servant who is into whipping his sexual partners. Isabella Linton is no longer Edgar’s sister, but his ‘ward,’ and no longer a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Heathcliff, but a willing participant whom he warns of his intentions for their relationship. Hindley and Mr. Earnshaw are combined into a single character, erasing the further complexities of the jealousy and abuse that arise from the sibling dynamic.
While none of these changes were necessarily surprising, it just made me question further why Fennell would work with source material she would manipulate into something entirely different.
Aside from the controversial casting of Heathcliff, I also have reservations about Fennell’s casting of Shazad Latif and Hong Chau as Edgar Linton and Nelly Dean, respectively. It’s not that their performances weren’t good; many people pointed out that Shazad Latif would have been great for the role of Heathcliff, and Hong Chau gave arguably the best performance of the whole film.
My main problem is the way these two characters are presented in the film. In the book, it is understood that every character is awful in their own way, including Catherine and Heathcliff. However, perhaps in an effort to dumb down the story for her audience, or to make Catherine and Heathcliff impossible not to root for, Fennell completely ‘whitewashed’ their characters in the moral sense, especially Heathcliff’s. In the book, Heathcliff literally hangs Isabella’s dog, which Fennell trades for some sexual antics in which Isabella pretends to be a dog.
With Catherine and Heathcliff presented as a love story to be invested in, Edgar and Nelly are essentially the ‘villains’ of the film, as they are the two main obstacles to the relationship. It’s troubling to me that, in a film that already refused to present a desirable leading man as anything other than white, the only two non-white actors are cast as the ‘villains’ and bear the brunt of the blame for the film’s ending.
Another weak point of the film was the acting at times. This was especially noticeable with Robbie’s performance towards the start of the adult timeline, but it wasn’t really her fault. The problem was that while the film aged up Catherine and Heathcliff, it didn’t ‘age up’ Catherine’s personality to match. The result was thirty-five-year-old Robbie trying to pull off the act of a wild, petulant teenage girl, and it was jarring to say the least.
Catherine’s flaws in the book are more easily forgiven because of her youth, to the point that they almost become a part of her charm. Meanwhile, the dissonance between the fully-grown actress and the selfish, petty, immature brat she was playing felt quite bizarre, and it certainly took me out of the film at points. This wasn’t Robbie’s fault, and she did a decent job with the material she was given. However, it made Catherine a hard protagonist to root for in a way that the novel didn’t.
Another thing I took away from the film was just how much of a ‘self-insert fanfiction’ moment it was for Fennell. There had already been clues pointing to this, such as her gushing about Jacob Elordi and her repeated emphasis on her experience reading the novel as a teenager, specifically aged fourteen.
However, it was during the montage of sex scenes between Catherine and Heathcliff that it fully dawned on me just how much the creative decisions made in the film seem to be motivated by Fennell’s personal desires.
During one shot, which shows Catherine and Heathcliff having sex on the moors, I was looking at Catherine’s hair from a distance and yet again wondering why she was made blonde in the film, as there genuinely seemed to be no reason for it. Except, from a distance, or if you closed your eyes slightly, you could almost think that the blonde hair was Fennell’s.
Many of the changes made in the film could be the result of Emerald Fennell wanting to fulfill a self-insert fanfiction in which she gets to be Cathy, and it also makes sense why the central relationship is romanticised, if the director herself romanticises it. Overall, I think Emerald Fennell used the money and resources at her disposal to come up with an elaborate fantasy for herself, and who can blame her for that? What you can blame her for is erasing the meaningful elements of the novel, such as the racial discrimination Heathcliff faces, just because it didn’t align with the version of the story she finds attractive.
However, as hard as it might sound to believe, I didn’t actually hate “Wuthering Heights”. Although it’s a questionable adaptation and it definitely won’t be making my Letterboxd top four, it’s not a terrible film. I had a great time seeing it in the cinema and hearing the shocked giggles of other audience members at moments that were definitely not intended to be comedic.
But aside from my individual experience, there were stronger elements to the film as well. It was visually stunning, with cinematographer Linus Sandgren having worked on Fennell’s 2023 film Saltburn as well. However, they might be lacking in other areas; both “Wuthering Heights” and Saltburn feature strong visuals that are aesthetically striking and have become a trademark of Fennell’s directorial style. Meanwhile, amongst a soundtrack and score that included recognisable vocals from Charli XCX, a particular stand-out moment was the hauntingly beautiful blend of voice and harmonium in Olivia Chaney’s ‘Dark-Eyed Sailor’.
The costumes and sets were also interesting in their own right, particularly the portrayal of the Lintons’ house, Thrushcross Grange, as an absurd and surreal wonderland. However, as my friend Joanna pointed out, even those more abstract creative decisions felt like an attempt to replicate Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, rather than being an original idea.
This is similar to Saltburn, whose most interesting theme is heavily based on the obsession portrayed in older works such as Brideshead Revisited or The Talented Mr Ripley. So, while Fennell has strong visual skills, she is generally lacking when it comes to writing screenplays: in other words, her films feel as though they’re all style and no substance.
Whatever your opinions on the film, there’s no denying that Emerald Fennell and her team are masterful at crafting a cultural ‘moment’, and you have to give credit for that in a time where creating a buzz around going to the cinema is harder than ever. They did it with Saltburn, and they’ve done it again with “Wuthering Heights”. Even if their main tactic has been rage-baiting, they’ve got people like me talking about and writing articles on the film.
Maybe all press really is good press, as the film passed £16 million total in the British box office during its second week. In terms of whether to bother watching the film, I would say that overall, if you enjoyed Saltburn, you’ll probably enjoy “Wuthering Heights”. However, if you love the novel Wuthering Heights, I’m not so sure this is the film for you.