Did you know that Wuthering Heights is one of the most artistically beautiful films I’ve ever seen, and here’s why I’m not sure I can recommend it. So, I’m going to break it down for you to decide if it is your cup of tea or if you need something stronger.

The new film Wuthering Heights starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie is a new adaptation of the classic novel by Emily Brontë about frustrated love and cruel revenge.

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The story opens with a hanging. Everyone has shown up for a good time. Catherine and her companion Nellie are just children watching the hanging, they are exhilarated by watching the man’s death and his body’s involuntary response. The next day Catherine’s father, a vicious and brutal drunk, brings home a young boy whom she renames as Heathcliff after her dead brother, and he is raised alongside Catherine and Nelly.

From the moment that Heathcliff is introduced, there is an obsessive and possessive relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff that shifts between romance, siblings, and best friends. Nelly is pushed aside as Catherine focuses on the boy in an entitled way that only a woman of visionary beauty who makes herself the center of his world could manage. Her bouts of lavishing cruelty followed by love become a push pull that keeps Heathcliff emotionally tied to her at the deepest level. In turn, he draws her father’s cruelty away from her and to himself acting as her brave protector, drawing them closer together. At least until the extraordinarily rich Edgar Linton and his ward Isabella move into the house nearest to them along the barren Yorkshire moors. That’s when everything changes for Heathcliff as Catherine works her wiles on Mr. Linton, enticing him into a marriage proposal.

Hurt and angry, Heathcliff runs off in the night, leaving Catherine alone with her choice to marry Mr Linton. Five years later, Heathcliff returns as a rich man who buys her father’s house. How he got his money is never addressed nor is how he maintains his income after returning. That is all set aside for the inevitable sexual romance between the two of them that devolves into a vicious game of emotional cruelty toward each other and those around them, which is fueled by their obsessive desire to possess each other at any cost, as long as it doesn’t endanger Catherine’s comfortable marriage.

From there, the film escalates into a wild crescendo of sexual absurdities and demeaning cruelty toward each other, Nelly, Edgar, and Isabella in a way that captures that same awkward feeling that we get from the opening scene.

Yeah, that really happens. So, does this mean Wuthering Heights isn’t worth watching? That really depends on what you want out of this film because while there is an audience for it, it’s not for everyone.

First Impressions

On paper, it’s an interesting set up for a prestige drama that is far more provocative than the novel from which it’s adapted. It captures Cathy and Heathcliff’s story in what can only be described as cinematic artistry that is so vibrant and immersive that the film makes what it is doing emotionally difficult to stomach.

It’s not that Wuthering Heights as a film is overly shocking or unsettling because it’s not any bolder than Fifty Shades of Grey … if it were set in a grim house set in the Yorkshire moors in the early 1800s. What’s rough about this movie is how it embraces the romantic framing between Cathy and Heathcliff, which seems to glorify their deeply unhealthy, vindictive, and toxic relationship through some of the most gorgeous displays of cinematography that I’ve seen in years. The film itself is so beautiful to watch that you can’t look away, even as their relationship devolves into something so sexually destructive that calling it tragic feels dismissive of what actually happens between them. What little sympathy you scrape together for them evaporates as soon as you consider the willful wreckage they cause to the innocent people whose lives they destroy by just being in their orbit.

This isn’t a beautiful romance story about star crossed lovers or unrequited love and lost chances. It’s not even a tragedy because in a tragedy there is some level of wistful longing that the romantic leads could have found a happy future together, but with Wuthering Heights you quickly realize that even if they had figured out a way to be together, their personalities are so toxic that they would have had a cold, unhappy life.

Instead, it’s a modernized take on Emily Brontë’s novel that extracts the essence of the story, while taking liberties with some of the original story’s plot points to make this a gorgeously wrought film about generational trauma and the power of sexual possession and emotional vengeance.

Catherine’s obsession with possessing both Heathcliff as a lover and Edgar as her husband turns into cruelty toward Isabella, who is infatuated with Heathcliff and Nellie who is trying to protect her own comfortable position as Catherine’s companion in the Linton household. Meanwhile, Heathcliff directs his vengeance at being rejected by Catherine in favor of Edgar, which causes him to seduce and marry Isabella who seems to have an almost childlike level of intelligence, which makes what he does to her appalling at the deepest level because he uses her infatuation with him to get her to agree to the depraved ways that he treats her as a woman in order to physically release his anger at Catherine.

Cinematic Art

What Wuthering Heightss does exceptionally well is putting the imagery on the screen in what can only be described as cinematic art. This movie is a gorgeously filmed, capturing the sweeping views of the moors. The use of light and shadows, paired with how the camera angles tie into the emotional undercurrent of each scene, was masterfully done. If this film doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for costuming and cinematography, I’ll be surprised because nearly every scene was designed to make Catherine a godly vision of beauty, both as a child and as an adult. While there is no nudity, at least not in the sense that you might expect from a film that borders on a romanticized version of sexual objectification and seemingly justified infidelity, the sexuality of the film itself feels almost mystical in how it presents this cautionary tale of mistaking love for toxic obsession between two people who could never figure out how to turn love into kindness.

Sadly, because of how Catherine’s father treated them both during his miserable life, neither she nor Heathcliff learned how to be likeable, kind, and caring people. Instead, they are pretty much two of the most horrible people I have seen on screen in a very long time, and their lives didn’t need to turn out like this. That is the true tragedy of this film and perhaps the point of the story.

Cast and Performances

There is not a single truly heroic or redeemable character in this story, except Edgar Linton who just had the bad luck to fall in love with the wrong person. It takes serious talent to bring their characters to life on screen in such a way that you can’t help but to be as fascinated by them as you are repelled by who Catherine and Heathcliff are as people. The director and writer, Emerald Fennell, had a singular vision for her interpretation of this story and she brought these performances out of Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and the others in a way that makes them incredibly watchable on screen.

Margot Robbie brings a sexual magnetism to Catherine that makes it easy to understand why both Heathcliff and Edgar would be drawn to her. Jacob Elordi carries Heathcliff’s brooding intensity, easily shifting from the handsome wounded lover to hardened avenger. Hong Chau plays Nelly as a calm and calculating woman who has buried a lifetime of being ignored and spurned by Catherine, despite being her greatest friend and protector.

Alison Oliver as Isabella is just tragic because she gives us a woman who isn’t really in full possession of herself and can’t understand the cruelty being heaped upon her. Shazad Latif makes Edgar Linton into a kind and compelling man who didn’t deserve any of this. And, finally, Martin Clunes as Catherine’s abusive father Mr. Earnshaw, gives us a character that we can all roundly hate and blame for everything wrong in the world.

Is Wuthering Heights Ticket Worthy

So, is Wuthering Heights ticket worthy? Is this the kind of film that is going to sweep audiences into theaters? Well, I think there is actually a huge audience for this film because Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi have such amazing chemistry on screen and since it’s a visually stunning film to watch, I think a lot of people will get swept up in the romantic nature of the film. For viewers who are looking for that kind of experience, I think you will enjoy it. My theater was filled with young women who were clapping and crying at the end.

However, I honestly don’t feel comfortable recommending this film to anyone despite the terrific acting, the strong writing, and the exceptional cinematography. The problem for me is that there just isn’t any hope or goodness in this film unless you really dig into it to examine why and how everything happens the way it does in the story.

The main characters are truly awful people who do hateful things to each other and everyone else in their lives, and I just can’t square that with how I want to live my life. These characters never learn from their mistakes because they are blind to the consequences of their own actions and the pain they cause. Honestly, there is really not much to like about any of them as human beings, and yet some of those scenes still linger in my mind.

I think the value in this film is in the themes and metaphors that it explores as they relate to generational trauma, the simple human desire to be truly loved, and how easy it is to create your own toxic relationship. However, the themes are so wrapped so tightly in seductive scenery that they get subverted into this overly-romanticized story of a women who can’t see how she poisons the well from which she drinks.

Final Thoughts

This film will likely do well. Many viewers will cry over it while others will just shrug it off and walk away. I think the most fascinating thing about Wuthering Heights is the vastly different responses it will generate.

So, Wuthering Heights what do you think of it? Are you planning to see it? Have you already seen it? I’d love to know your thoughts, and it’s totally okay to disagree with me on this one because this film just wasn’t for me … except for those moments when it was …

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