Film: Wuthering Heights

While it is an obvious thing to say, every reader of Emily Bronte's 1847 novel brings their own imagination to her evocative words. And, imaginations are subjective, creating location images, creating the look and sound characters, heightening the action the more we become involved as we read.

The Internet Movie Database indicates that there have been 15 versions of Wuthering Heights since 1920. Here is a 21st-century interpretation/imagining/imaging with soundtrack/popular and character casting. And, when the writer-director is Emerald Fennell (with her provocative films, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn), her imagining may be very different from many in the audience, especially those who have read the book, but, especially, those who cherish the book.

Initial reviews and comments have been very forthright from those who cherish the novel. Many thumbs down as they can manage. But, for those who have not read the novel, there are possibilities of interpretation, interest and fascination.

And, certainly to be noted with this interpretation, key characters and elements of the novel have been rearranged, omitted, while retaining core characters and plot elements of Emily Bronte's his imagination.

The Yorkshire moors are craggy and mightily forbidding. The Earnshaw home is squalid and dilapidated. The Linton household is opulent. Costumes are lavish. The soundtrack is a blend of classical, old-style ballads, modern sounds and rhythms. The narrative and storytelling is highly emotional, melodramatic.

Interest is in the casting. Margot Robbie is as we might expect as the passionate, conflicted, Catherine. In the first half, Jacob Elordi's Heathcliff resembles his creature from the recent Frankenstein, intensely savage but humane, intensely passionate and sadistic in the second half.

In fact, our acceptance of Catherine and Heathcliff (after a very Dickensian hanging sequence, crowds cheering as the opening to the film) is made possible by the very effective youngsters, Charlotte Mellington and after his award-winning performance in Adolescence, Owen Cooper.

Martin Clunes stands out with his performance of Cathy's father. The character of Nellie is brought to the forefront, her relationship with Catherine, disappointment, betrayal, sinister intervention, played by Hong Chau. There is a great challenge for Alison Oliver as Isabella, initially sheltered and simple (and some audiences laughing at her), then becoming Heathcliff's victim, co-dependence - is also seem to be the case between Heathcliff and Cathy.

Which means then that Emerald Fennell's vision of Wuthering Heights Heights, a 21st-century sensibility of passion and the erotic, has elements of Dickens, 19th century romanticism, the popularity of Gothic melodrama, destiny and doom. (Edgar Linton's description of the situation is that it is, in Emily Brontë's sensibility, the word "untoward" and the word to describe Heathcliff several times is "fiend". And we might wonder what Emily Brontë's reaction would be were she to watch this version.)

This Wuthering Heights highlights, whether it be the 19th century or the 21st-century, love, passion, hatred, betrayal, destruction.

When the 2011 version of Wuthering Heights was released, starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson, adapted by Andrea Arnold, same issues were raised as for the 26 version. The following comments are relevant to 2026.

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's 19th century literary classic. There have been a number of versions, especially the romantic doom and gloom of William Wyler's 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. In a cinematic sense, Olivier with his theatrical delivery became the visual equivalent of the Bronte prose and Merle Oberon's classic beauty was that of Catherine Earnshaw. Luis Bunuel made a version in Spanish (Abismos de Passion). Keith Michel and Claire Bloom in 1962 and Ian Mc Shane was Heathcliff on television in 1967. Anna Calder Marshall teamed with Timothy Dalton (also a smouldering theatrical presence) in 1970. In the 1990s, Ralph Fiennes was Heathcliff to Juliet Binoche's Catherine. Tom Hardy, who has proven himself a strong and versatile actor, was Heathcliff in a British television in 2009 with Charlotte Riley.

Audiences expecting a continuation of that kind of classic cinema should not venture into this much more experimental interpretation unless they want to see something quite different and to be challenged.

Andrea Arnold made her mark with awards for her contemporary domestic dramas, Red Road and Fish Tank. Now she takes her visual style back into the 19th century and the Yorkshire moors and dales.

A gathering in the dark. Dim hallway. A face. Sky vista. A half-framed picture of two riders. Quivering camera.

This is the technique that Andrea Arnold brings to this 129 minute version of Wuthering Heights. It is both intimate and sometimes off kilter. It is dark. It is grubby. It is episodic. Characters are sometimes glimpsed, then contemplated in close-up. The first part of the film, centred on the dingy Earnshaw farm, has little relief. The second part of the film with much more attention given to the Linton mansion is much more sunny (at times), even with blue skies, the interiors, with some red walls, far more colourful than we had become accustomed to.

The director and her director of photography are attempting an interpretation of the novel via the visual rather than literary style, although the screenplay offers much of Emily Bronte's words. It is a disruptive style, at times upsetting, at times puzzling with its idiosyncratic handheld camera work that avoids finesse or neatness. And there are several jolts as characters use expletives that Emily Bronte may not have even known.

This is the context for unsettling characters. Hindley Earnshaw is a brute. His foreman, Joseph, has moments of cruelty. The rest of the family are there, often in the dark, not particularly delineated. Except for Cathy, in her teens, a wild, impetuous young woman. Into this household comes a black slave, bought in charity in Liverpool, to be brought into this Yorkshire life and to become a Christian, Heathcliff. Already this is a jolt for purists, but one of the most interesting features of the film. At first, Cathy spits at him. But, soon, they are kindred spirits, escaping to the top of the heights, riding over the moors. Heathcliff becomes the centre of the film. His plight holds the interest and the emotions.

When Cathy goes to the Linton home and finds herself at home in this different environment, Heathcliff leaves. He disappears for some years.

When he returns, there is different casting for both Heathcliff and Cathy. The continuity between Solomon Glave as the young Heathcliff (offbeat and memorable) and James Howson as the older and more sophisticated Heathcliff is well sustained. This means that Heathcliff's made passion and revenge and his cruel marriage to Isabella more credible. However, the younger Cathy (Shannon Bear) is what can be called a buxom country lass, full of verve, even of song, impetuous, contradictory, at home at the Earnshaw farm rather than at the Linton's. However, the older Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) is glamorous and svelte (despite her attempts at a rough accent). Many audiences will find it hard to accept this transformation. Which undermines the drama and Cathy's responses to Heathcliff.

Edgar Linton is what was once called 'a wet and a weed). Isabella is hard done by. Nelly Dean must have been there earlier but emerges more significantly when Heathcliff returns. It is Lee Shaw as Hindley who is the most consistent character.

Doubtless there will be more versions of Wuthering Heights. This is the more puzzling and challenging one.