Why it is impossible to reimagine ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a movie

I am a sucker for movie adaptations of literary texts. So, despite the deluge of bad press, I simply had to watch Emerald Fennell’s recent remake of Wuthering Heights. Let’s say, the only good thing to have come out of that experience was my keen desire to revisit Emily Brontë’s first and only novel, published in 1847 under the pseudonym “Ellis Bell”, a year before her untimely death at the age of 30.

For the last several days, I have been savouring the Gothic pleasures of the story, its multi-layered narrative framework, and the fiendishly clever ploys the author employs to entrap the reader in the unending nightmares surrounding Wuthering Heights, a farmhouse in the remote Yorkshire moors of England. The novel remains as gripping and darkly comedic as it had felt when I first read it in my 20s. Back then, I was taken in by the elliptical charm of the story and the bravado of a feisty, young voice. Reading it again after more than two decades, I find myself wondering what else Brontë would have written had she lived a full, productive life.

My singular takeaway this time around is a deep appreciation of the story’s resistance to following a single arc or steady moral compass. The plot is unsuited to quick judgements because it is hard to affix feminist or misogynist labels on the text and be done with it. The psychological complexity of Brontë’s characters creates a slippery cognitive terrain for the reader. The frequent twists and turns in the plot, triggered by the gap between action and intention, leave us confused, unsure of whether to align our feelings with Catherine or Heathcliff, the two central figures. This difficulty also explains Fennell’s Mills & Boons-style interpretation in her movie version. The only way she could attempt to tame, and make presentable, a sublime but rugged masterpiece was by turning it into a Hollywood-style sob story.

Indeed, for over a century, directors have grappled with the inspired genius of Brontë’s novel and nearly all of them have failed to capture the baroque energy that sizzles through it. The most memorable of these adaptations is the 1939 version, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, directed by William Wyler. Although critically acclaimed, it avoided, like most other subsequent remakes, that part of the novel which is told by the second generation (Cathy, Linton and Hareton). Yet, it is precisely this odd framing that gives Brontë’s plot its labyrinthine appeal. In this age of OTT services, this problem of depicting the narrative layers may have been circumvented easily had the book been reimagined as a TV series instead of one continuous movie.

One of the best expressions of the essence of Wuthering Heights, for me, comes from the English singer-songwriter, Kate Bush. In 1978, at the tender age of 19, she conveyed the novel’s manic edge through her chart-topping debut single, also titled Wuthering Heights. The ghost of Catherine (or Cathy) sings, nay pleads, in Bush’s inimitably squeaky voice, with her beloved, Heathcliff, to be let inside the dilapidated Wuthering Heights. Like the howling northern winds, the singer intones and stretches out the words, forcing the listener to recalibrate their feelings with the sudden changes of chords. The major to minor movements mirror the unsteady registers of Brontë’s prose—ranging from high tragedy to coarse humour—with a million prickly thorns strewn along the way.

The first sting from the novel comes in the form of Heathcliff’s murky past. The reader is told that he was a “foundling”, rescued by Mr Earnshaw—Catherine’s father—from Liverpool. Heathcliff is supposed to have gypsy blood in him, though Jacob Elordi, who plays the character in Fennell’s rendition, looks too much to the manor born to be taken for a credible outsider. Heathcliff’s life story is the tragedy of an interloper—someone who can never fully belong to genteel society, despite being the beneficiary of the latter’s fleeting kindness.

Spited all his life by Hindley, Catherine’s brother, among others, Heathcliff is primed for revenge, which pushes him to commit acts of shocking cruelty and harm. He misleads Isabella, sister of Edgar Linton, his neighbour at Thrushcross Grange, into marrying him. After Hindley’s death, he takes possession of Wuthering Heights, even though the estate belongs to Hareton, Hindley’s son, as the rightful heir. Last but not least, after Linton dies, Heathcliff usurps Thrushcross Grange, cutting his own son out of his inheritance. It is as though only by forcibly laying claim on these estates can Heathcliff aspire to undo all the wrongs he has suffered as an orphan, treated with indifference by most people around him, except for Catherine.

For the contemporary reader, easily distractible by bite-sized entertainment available on smartphones, it isn’t easy to hold all the intertwined threads of Brontë’s novel in their heads. Fennell seems to have anticipated this challenge and hence simplified chunks of the novel to suit a more linear and palatable storyline. Apart from reframing Brontë’s hypnotic tale of suspense and horror into a tear-jerking love story, she underplays the spectral presences that are so germane to the spookiness of Wuthering Heights. It feels as outrageous as writing Banquo’s ghost out of Macbeth—an omission that not only flattens the appeal of the story but also takes away its very soul.

If Fennell’s decision to temper Brontë’s spirits was meant to add a more psychological and contemporary touch to the novel, it fails miserably. But some of her other tricks arouse more interest. Such as the choice to cast the Vietnamese-origin American actor, Hong Chau, in the role of Ellen “Nelly” Dean, Lockwood’s housekeeper and Catherine’s former caregiver. Nelly’s status as an outsider to the family immediately stands out, as does Fennell’s decision to get Shazad Latif—of Pakistani, British and Scottish descent—to play Lockwood. And yet, even as the presence of these actors upholds the principle of colour-blind casting, it remains baffling why the male lead should not have been played by a person of colour, too.

Remaking a classic for 21st-century tastes is never an easy task, especially when it involves a novel as complicated as Wuthering Heights. But often, the most obvious answer to such a conundrum is to completely surrender to the power of the original. As I make my way through Brontë’s classic, I find myself learning to pay a different degree of attention—one that doesn’t shy away from frequently having to make sense out of difficulty. Such an act of reading involves removing the onion-like layers of the story, only to find oneself getting more and more “lost” in its world—in the best sense of the term.

Brontë, who was famously wilful and intrepid, didn’t want to make things easy or obvious for her reader. And nor should anyone else try to do so on her behalf.