Another story from the past now being redone in a modern way is Emily Brontë’s gothic romance Wuthering Heights.  While this project has been addressed several times its most famous incantation remains its 1939 release, directed by William Wyler, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.  That film was one of the ten nominated for Best Picture in 1939, widely considered to be the finest year in motion picture history, earning eight nods altogether and winning one.  It was also reviewed by myself and my wife Barbara in our “Catching Up with the Classics” feature in 2015.  This version pales in comparison to that one.

Emerald Fennell’s film shows the privation Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) endured as a child, along with that of young Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), a waif with whom she grows up on their wild Yorkshire moor estate.  When Catherine makes plans to marry rich Edgar Litton (Shazad Latif), Heathcliff runs away.  Years later he returns with his own fortune, buys the estate and tortures Cathy with his presence, because she still loves him dearly.  Romantic complications ensue and finally, inevitably, tragedy ensues.

This new retelling is harsh in the extreme, from the opening scene of a hanging to the bloody butchery of its animals.  The characters are only slightly less wicked, continually spying upon one another, pining for what they cannot have and cannot be, casually cruel without remorse and determinedly cruel with remorse, at least in Cathy’s case.  This is supposed to be a romantic story and there is, eventually, a great deal of heavy breathing and rather chaste fornicating on the moors, but it rarely seems real or convincing.  Perhaps this is one of those stories that just doesn’t translate to a modern way of thinking the way it worked more than a century ago.  In any case, it struggles to connect to its audience despite some nice production values and technique.

Miss Fennell has, as writer and director, changed quite a bit of the original text in order to make it palatable to modern audiences, but I don’t think it matters much.  The whole feels disconnected from reality, a liability for this production which, actually, may have been a point in its favor as a contemporary literary work.  Certainly old chestnuts like this and Shakespeare’s plays and other treatments of landmark literature of the past are worthwhile efforts because each new approach can bring something new and fresh to modern viewers.  But I fail to see how this one provides anything other than rehash.  Miss Fennell scored mightily with her previous film Promising Young Woman (and I still haven’t seen the controversial Saltburn).  My feeling is that she should continue making contemporary stories rather than dipping into the past to rethink a classic that really doesn’t need the revisit.  ☆ ☆.  9 March 2026.