Inspired by the forthcoming adaptation of
Wuthering Heights,
Cherwell wonders whether the book is always better than the film.
However, fidelity to the source material doesn’t have to mean scene-by-scene replication. Films are constrained by runtime and driven by visuals, and many literary scenes are like untranslatable words in a foreign language when trying to adapt to the screen. Pages of a character’s inner monologue would be frankly unmarketable if accurately translated to screen with no artistic flair, and many filmmakers find themselves at the mercy of studio demands for runtime, meaning they simply cannot afford to include everything. [...] Some content can be cut, and not a great deal of the overall picture changes, but this is not the case for what viewers are seeing with the new Heathcliffe [sic] and Cathy. [...]
It’s easy enough to argue ‘you can’t please everyone’, and directing a film is an entirely different ball game from writing a book. However, the uproar over Robbie and Elordi’s casting teaches us that, at the very least, audiences ask that adaptations remain faithful to the parts of a story that really matter to its overall message.
After all, no one listens to Kate Bush expecting a Brontë lecture. But they do expect Heathcliff, and not Elvis. (Sophie Price)
In spite of the newly-sprung experts on a couple of lines from the novel, the jury is still out on what Heathcliff may have looked like so each (real) reader will have different expectations. If Emerald Fennell wants him to look like Elvis then she is completely free to show him as such.
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