Tragedy strikes when Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, a woman from a wealthy family in 18th-century England.
Rated 1.7 / 5 from 3 logs on Katalog
Well, alright. So. This is a confused review. This is a confusing movie. It’s bad? Obviously, it’s bad. It’s deliberately bad, maybe? It’s hard to put it in words, alright? There are many intersecting vectors of badness at play here, some of them working cross purposes so, in the end, they almost cancel each other out. But you know theyre there. When you think of the movie, when you recall it, your mind will inevitably and accurately isolate one such discrete unit of nonsense, even while knowing that it will be soon smothered by another This, you think, when your mind settles on the taxidermied corpse of class critique—But then you’re distracted by the sleazy, desperately restrained horniness—Then further bamboozled by the gorgeous craft of the costuming—Bewildered by meticulous rejection of one of the finest works of fiction ever written—Stumped by the fact that this product feels both sincere, a look into what the director herself thinks is thrilling, and wholly cynical and inauthentic mass market slop— To quote a review by Clarissa Loughrey, “… it uses the guise of interpretation to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever written, and then toss its flayed skin over whatever romance tropes seem most marketable.” Which summarizes it quite well, doesnt it? I don’t mind bold interpretations. I prefer them, in fact. Adaptations should be independent works of art in themselves, and there is no way to be too sincere and courageous when making art. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to approach this film. I don’t understand why it is the way it is. I can’t comprehend, truly, that Fennel could have wanted to make this. But no matter how I search, I can’t find rumors of studio interference, of strict contracts and last minute reshoots. But alright, since the author clearly doesn’t want us to engage with this work from a literary perspective, I will meet her where she’s at and approach it via twee pop slop. Initially I wanted to make the obvious point of comparison with Taylor Swifts ridiculous shtick of referencing Shakespeare, done most terribly in her new song, Fate of Ophelia. But that’s a bit too obvious, a bit cheap. In Twilight, the protagonist, Bella, comes out with a take that Catherine is the source of all the pain and heartache and that Heathcliff did nothing wrong. I want to make two points. One, Stephanie Meyer had better applied Wuthering Heights, the novel, to display her protagonists character and state of mind than our critically acclaimed director. Two, Fennel made a movie as embarrassing as if it were made by Bella Swan. Of Twilight. In conclusion, the person who in the end deserves our thoughts and sympathies the most—more, even, than the hilariously wasted set designers and costumers, a high bar indeed—is Jacob Elordi. He keeps signing on to projects where he could play morally complex, gothic monsters, and keeps being betrayed by his big, wet eyes and pouty mouth. They cant seem to help it. Maybe it’s the Aussie thing? Maybe nobody can conceive of an Australian hunk doing any more edgy than to put his fingers in a woman’s mouth?
Did not wuther my heights. Watched every Emerald Fennell movie „for the culture“ but can we - as a culture - just not??
Cruel, dumb, obsessed teenagers in the secluded, soggy, moist England frolicking between two houses doing nothing but arguing and abusing each other? Children are born between people who emotionally and physically abuse each other? I’m on board. Let’s focus on that aspect for once. I love it, let’s do it. “Wuthering Heights” seems to be doing that, at least in the first third. Except instead of two obsessed, angry teenagers, Emerald Fennell gives us two conventionally good-looking Australians in their 30s, with strange English accents, zero chemistry and distractingly perfect sets of teeth. And instead of a cheeky or a controversial or a fan-fiction-like retelling, she actually attempts to do a cheesy love story, which ultimately dooms it. What could be the reason for their separation? The original text offers many possibilities — class, race, trauma, personalities. What does Fennell choose? A simple misunderstanding based on eavesdropping behind close doors. This telenovela-worthy choice cheapens an already wobbly script. Wherever she attempts to bypass source material, she trips up. The concept is fine. The execution is polished and prudish but not entirely soulless. And yet, it feels too commercial to be truly daring, to push the limits. Visually, “Wuthering Heights” is a collage of beautiful references. Emerald Fennell glued inoffensive, gorgeous images together, but with no vision. I think I understand the lukewarm reviews. It’s not faithful enough to please the literary purists, it’s not spicy enough to satisfy the contrarians. And it’s simply not a good enough of a movie to impress anyone in between.
