People on the internet have become such movie snobs that it almost robs them of one of key values of film: magic.
“‘Wuthering Heights’” perfectly encapsulates the imagination of a child but in an adult fashion.
While the movie is based on the 1847 novel “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, this isn’t a direct adaptation.
Director Emerald Fennell said she created the film the way she imagined the book when reading it as a young teenager. She was obsessed with the two main characters’ toxic romance.
I have not had the pleasure of reading the novel, but I believe that gave me the ability to enjoy the film at face value.
This film was erotic, fantastical and a visual masterpiece. From the costume design to the soundtrack, this movie builds a sensual world of pleasure.
The movie opens with someone moaning and a dark screen, making the audience picture a man masturbating. They are soon shocked by the image of a man being hanged while the crowd is celebrating his death. This sets a dark tone for the film and lets the audience know this is more psychological thriller than romance.
Throughout the film we hear the score by the hit pop star Charlie XCX. Of all her music, the album she made for this film is by far my favorite. It’s chilling and tragic.
Margot Robbie’s character Cathy is extremely annoying, entitled and acts like a spoiled brat. She treats the character Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi, as if he is her pet. Her father brought Heathcliff under his abusive wing when both he and Cathy were children. They grew up together, and in doing so, fell in love with each other.
Both child actors were phenomenal and convincing. It’s no wonder why Owen Cooper, playing young Heathcliff, became the youngest-ever male to win a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor.
The main conflict of the film is that Heathcliff is just a servant, and Cathy must marry a rich and noble man to secure her future. After she secures her fortune with a rich neighbor, Heathcliff is overcome with shame and jealousy, so he runs away. He doesn’t return for five years, leaving Cathy in despair.
This causes Cathy to fall into a spiral of going through the motions in her marriage. The audience is presented with a montage of Cathy overindulging in the wealth she just married into, and yet she still was never satisfied. The montage perfectly criticizes the wealthy class in showing all the ridiculous ways they spend their money while people like Cathy’s father rot in poverty back where she grew up.
Then Heathcliff returned, and it was all downhill from there. This leads to an affair, depression and ultimately a tragic end.
The flowing of blood is highlighted throughout the film, starting with a river of blood in the beginning that came from the slaughterhouse Cathy’s family ran and ending with a river flowing through her room. The reds in the film were always bright and apparent in Cathy’s wardrobe as well.
I watched this film on Valentine’s Day alongside my partner, and let’s just say by the time the credits were rolling, his shoulder was covered in my tears. The ending was devastating, but I loved the fact that there was no happy ending. There is nothing more addicting to me than a tragic love story. And this film is nothing but tragic.
The movie presents an overall campy vibe, giving it an artistic feel that so many movies lack these days. I’m tired of dull gray films. I want drama and color with that feeling we had watching movies as kids. Just because we are adults doesn’t mean we should be expected to lose our sense of whimsy.
The only other recent film to do this well is “Dracula: A Love Tale,” which is still in theaters. So, if you long for a sense of magic in film with a side of tragic romance like I do, I highly recommend checking them both out on the big screen.
Through costume, set design and score, both films take you into that imaginary world we used to experience as kids watching fairy-tales like “Beauty and the Beast” except with adult realities like gore and sex.
The one issue I had with this film is actually the promotion of it being an absolute “Fifty Shades of Grey” level freak show. It honestly made me go into the theater with a level of fear. There’s nothing I hate more than a piece of media that lacks plot and is only sex. But both my partner and I agreed that it wasn’t as erotic as the previews had led us to believe.
While yes, some of the sex scenes sometimes felt like they went a few seconds too long, I didn’t find this film to be nearly as freaky as Fennell’s more controversial film, “Saltburn.” That film made me uncomfortable at times.
The people slandering this film online, excluding the people who read the book, aren’t looking at this film in the right lens. We should stop focusing on the lack of historical accuracies and take the movie at face value. If you do that, this film will make you feel the movie magic we loved so much in our childhoods.
