Wuthering Heights: A sensual but shallow take on a literary masterpiece

Despite having this year's biggest opening, Emerald Fenell's reinvention of this immortal classic relishes in sensuality and passion, but has no essence of the original novel. 

Stunning, lush visuals and powerhouse actors like Jacob Eliordi and Margot Robbie could do very little to elevate the film from the absolute ruins that Fenell has carefully curated. 

Even before the film's release, it stirred up controversy and drew immense criticism from the audience due to its choice of casting Jacob Eliordi as Heathcliff– a character of colour whose identity served as a major tool for the novel's theme and plot development. 

Surprisingly, when watching the film, that is the least disturbing aspect of it. The way Fennel managed to strip the story away from its source material and disfigure it in such an unrecognisable fashion might perhaps be the most wondrous attribute of this film. 

Set in the 18th century, in a manor named "Wuthering Heights", the film centres around the destructive and turbulent relationship of Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Eliordi). 

The scene opens when Mr Earnshaw brings home a scallywag from the streets of Liverpool out of lordly whim. His daughter, Cathy, adopts him as his brother and names him Heathcliff. Slowly, they develop a unique friendship and become inseparable despite Mr Earnshaw's mistreatment of the boy

As they gradually grow up, Mr Earnshaw's alcoholism and gambling addiction push the residents of Wuthering Heights to absolute despair. Cathy decides to marry the rich neighbour Edgar for greater financial security and to aid Heathcliff, who has been reduced to a mere brute servant. 

While expressing her guilt of choosing Heathcliff instead of Edgar, Heathcliff accidentally overheard the part where she mentioned that marrying him would degrade her.

Heartbroken, he leaves the moor before Cathy can profess her love. He returns after five years, but this time, more poised with greater wealth and status. His return starts a chain of events leading to the rekindling of their passion, but jealousy erupts, further complicating their dynamic and circumstances and pushes each character to the extreme.

Wuthering Heights has been hailed as one of the greatest works of Gothic Literature for its portrayal of love, revenge, and intergenerational trauma. The original work of Brontë exposed the gruesome reality and created characters that are complicated, deeply flawed and not easily digestible. 

The movie, however, takes the liberty of making structural changes in the narrative by completely scrapping the second half of the novel, which reduced the film's ability to showcase and develop greater themes of intergenerational trauma, and scraping off a few characters, such as Hindley, made it worse. 

Filmmakers should definitely have creative room when adapting a classic for a contemporary audience, but none of the changes in the narrative contributed to anything significant; rather, making it more appalling. 

The film's hyperfocus on visual pleasure and quasi-eroticism to showcase passion and tension between the two main characters stripped the story of its original essence, where the relationship is portrayed as destructive, obsessive, and tragic. Revenge and trauma were the proponents that propelled Heathcliff's actions rather than romance. 

It tried way too hard to romanticise and sensualise the relationship, which was never the initial intention of the source material. In the film, they have a full-blown affair with secret meetings, but in the novel, their relationship is discreet, tragic, and symbolic. 

The characters in the film have fallen flat, as most of their major attributes have been erased in the film, reducing their complexity and depth. Cathy is no longer a temperamental, selfish, and borderline cruel woman but a sympathetic girl trapped in a helpless circumstance. 

Heathcliff's racial ambiguity, vengeful brute nature, and his penchant for perpetuating immense cruelty have been discarded or mellowed to the extent that he can be easily romanticised by the audience. 

Margot Robbie and Jacob Eliordi's chemistry definitely brings a visceral, intense element on screen and perhaps serves as the only emotionally impactful aspect of the film. Eliordi proves to be charming, but not as complicated and enigmatic as intended. 

Margot Robbie did a decent job with her character, but the script provided her with less room to embody a character as torn apart as Cathy. It feels like they both primarily exist to serve as rain-soaked eye candies for the audience. 

However, the best part of the film was arguably the visuals, the only thing Fenell did right. The film was characterised by a surrealist, highly stylised visual approach that contrasts raw, wet, and oppressive environments with lavish, almost hallucinatory interiors suitable for the gothic, claustrophobic ambience intended. The styling of the characters and costumes was not exactly faithful to the time period, at times featuring oversized dresses and a red latex dress. 

The movie proves to be visually sumptuous and highlights Fenell's technical savvy. Other than that, with choppy storytelling, characters shuffling through ambiguity and absurdity, this film exists to infuriate everyone who grew up admiring Brontë's work. 

It can never be considered as the "retelling of the greatest love story of all time," because within this marketing catchphrase lies the biggest misunderstanding. Wuthering Heights was never a love story, but a story where the greater power of obsession and trauma dominates love. The film can at best be considered a loosely inspired version of the original novel and can only be consumed if one needs a cheap dash of dopamine.