Few novels demand as much intensity and accuracy as Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” The novel is a gothic masterpiece that thrives on two teenagers who fall in love in an intense, crooked and emotional way as life and time tear them apart. Any adaptation entering the world must include its cultural significance and the true point of Brontë’s masterpiece. By many standards, “Wuthering Heights is a period piece, and it should have an atmosphere that replicates the time and place in which the book is set. The new movie adaptation and interpretation of Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell and starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, fails to meet the requirements and expectations of book fans. Fennell’s adaptation smothers the original idea and purpose of Brontë’s novel by the throat, removing the novel’s gothic elements and ferocity.
The production clearly prioritizes visuals over content; the sets feature high contrast lighting while excluding accurate representation of the time period in which the book takes place, and the fashion is too modern for a period piece. Each frame looks like an Instagram pop-ip that appears on feeds or in ads. Although the cinematography is excellent, the movie’s inaccuracy overshadows it. The costumes, makeup and hair in the movie are even more of a modern touch that feels forced on viewers. The makeup includes rhinestones on the face, and the hair has ribbon braids. The costume designer for the movie is Jacqueline Durran, whose other works include “Barbie” (2023) and “Little Women” (2019). Viewers can see similarities in her style in these two movies, including the over-the-top costumes in “Barbie” and the yet again inaccurate costumes in “Little Women.”
Another mistake in the creative process is the casting; hiring A-List celebrities is not the problem. The problem is hiring people who do not look like teenagers and who are not the same age as Heathcliff and Catherine, diminishing the point of their ages. Margot Robbie seems like a childish and whiny grown-up, while Jacob Elordi looks like he is still trying to play a teenager on “Euphoria.” The two actors show almost no chemistry together; they had chemistry with themselves, but not with each other, which stems from the problem of casting the wrong actors. Elordi had more chemistry with Isabella, played by Alison Oliver, than he did with Robbie. The casting comes off as a financial move more than a creative decision.
The casting has also sparked controversy. In the original text, Brontë describes Heathcliff as a person of color, as Brontë describes her character as a “dark-skinned gipsy” and a “Lascar,” a term that described South Asian Laborers on British ships. At a point in the book Healthcliff compares himself to Edgar Linton, Catherine’s Husband, saying, “I wish I had light hair and fair skin.” One of the servants, Nelly Dean suggest to Healthcliff, “Who knows, but your father was emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen.” Elordi, a white man from Australia, was an interesting choice for the character, and many are blaming the movie for “whitewashing,” but many others are ignoring this fact because Hollywood widely considers Elordi one of the most attractive men in Hollywood. The main problem with “whitewashing” a character whose background should be South Asian is that it removes an essential element of their story from the book. The acceptance of Elordi’s casting perpetuates double standards in Hollywood, as many women have stepped down from roles because their heritage does not align with the characters’, while men in Hollywood have rarely stepped down due to this controversy.
In a phase of our culture that fixates on taking classic pieces and adapting them through a contemporary lens, this adaptation tends to catch the eye rather than the mind. This revision amplifies the book’s themes at a surface level while softening the true emotional brutality. The gothic expressions in Brontë’s writing disappear in translation, and the film replaces them with aesthetic branding.
Unfortunately, this “Wuthering Heights” lands on the unfavorable side of movie adaptations. By sanding away the book’s original atmosphere and emotional complexity, the film transforms Brontë’s work into a shallow love story that desperately tries to meet the expectations Brontë has left behind.
