Another adapted classic literature novel has hit the screens and this time it is Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of “Wuthering Heights”, released on Feb 13, starring Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Eloridi as Heathcliff. The highly anticipated film arrives not as a faithful reenactment of Emily Brontë’s literary masterpiece, but as a stylized, polarizing reinterpretation that will have audiences confused and intrigued.
This version feels less like the raw, haunting sweep of the original novel, with its bleak moors and emotionally violent intimacy, it is more like a fever dream filtered through glossy visuals and heightened romantic tropes. Some critics praise Fennell for daring to reinvent the story with vivid flair, calling the film “resplendently lurid” and “utterly absorbing” if approached as its own story, not a straight adaptation. The cinematography, costumes, and atmosphere are undeniably striking, there’s a wild energy that makes the story feel immediate and modern.
But that’s exactly where this Wuthering Heights divides and loses plot for me and so many others. For many, the heart of the original, its fierce emotional complexity and its critique of class and power, gets flattened under the weight of stylization and the need to make the story out to be a romance and not a story of self-destruction.
Fennell’s Heathcliff veers away from the shadowy, tortured figure Brontë wrote, leaning instead toward a more conventional romantic hero, and Cathy’s fire often feels very surface-level. This leaves the central relationship feeling restrained, intense in appearance but hollow in emotional impact.
Critics have pointed out that the chemistry between leads can’t quite carry the film’s weight, and some narrative choices simplify or scrap characters and themes that gave the original its depth. Elements that once felt deeply psychological or socially radical for its time are rehashed as heightened spectacle.
Brontë wrote a novel that was ahead of its time in its moral ambiguity and structural daring. To rework it into something more digestible is not modernization; it is weakening. What has made Wuthering Heights captivating, is that it refuses comfort. It refuses to be another tortured love story. It leaves readers unsettled. This film, by contrast, seems desperate to be felt rather than understood. And in doing so, it misses the point entirely.
Still, there’s something undeniably intriguing about watching Wuthering Heights this way. Think of it as an interpretation, not a translation. If you go in expecting an exact retelling of Brontë’s gothic novel, you might leave frustrated. But if you’re open to a stylized retelling that shines a new light on familiar characters, there’s enough here to spark conversation.
