"No oddity that Fennell can extract or create can be as bizarre as the genuine article."

The Boston Globe is quite right when it says that "no oddity that Fennell can extract or create can be as bizarre as the genuine article."

By now you might have read that the new “Wuthering Heights” movie is a little … different. Maybe a tad oversexed and stylized. Writer-director Emerald Fennell, they say, has gone and messed with a beloved classic. It’s a weird movie.

All of which may, to some extent, be true. But none of that changes a vital “Wuthering Heights” truth: Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of obsessive, unrequited love and mutually assured destruction is a deeply, unabashedly strange piece of work, full of antisocial misfits and abject squalor, and committed to an exceedingly dark and eccentric view of human nature. It is, like many great works of literature, bonkers. No oddity that Fennell can extract or create can be as bizarre as the genuine article.

This is why I chuckle when I hear someone describe Fennell’s “Heights” as “horny” (a word that has always struck me as a little adolescent in the first place). Yes — and here come the spoilers — Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) have sex. Lots of sex, actually. The movie also indulges in the occasional S&M sequence. Things get kind of kinky over on these moors.

But not as kinky as the moment that Brontë slips in near the end of the novel, which doesn’t make it into Fennell’s film. I speak of Heathcliff’s disclosure to the servant Nelly that he dug up Catherine’s grave — not once, but twice. “I’ll have her in my arms again!” he exclaims. “If she be cold, I’ll think it is this north wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.” Talk about horny. Yes, this notion of undying love is romantic. It’s also quite creepy. And therein lies much of the power generated by a novel that more than once equates obsessive passion with a storm, or a spiritual sickness. The French call this amour fou, or “mad love.” (Chris Vogner)

After reading so many takes on the film by people whose connection to the novel comes from, at the very best, the Wikipedia synopsis and at the very worst by the ChatGPT summary in simple English, it's nice to read someone who knows the novel but is not a fidelity taliban:

Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” which, on the whole, I found bracingly cinematic, makes a number of departures from the source material — some of which worked better for me than others. (...)

It’s helpful to keep in mind that a movie’s source novel is just that: a source, or, if you will, a template. All that a filmmaker really owes a novelist is a screenwriting credit. (Chris Vogner)

Hear, hear.

Benjamin D. Muir in The Conversation, on the other hand, has quite a different opinion: the film looks lush, but it's a bad film and a worse adaptation:

Like 2020’s colourful Austen adaptation, Emma (well received as a film, but criticised as an adaptation), Fennell’s Wuthering Heights signals a trend towards the “tiktokification” of literary adaptations.

Hollywood has long taken liberties with books, but this recent wave feels engineered for clips, reels and virality, rather than the necessary sacrifices of adaptation.

We know it’s possible to have adaptations with both flair and substance. Consider Baz Luhrmann. The Oscar-nominated Romeo + Juliet (1996) is just as visually bombastic, yet the extent of verbatim Shakespeare retains a dedication to the source that Fennell’s film lacks.

So what does it have to offer? Virality. Even this article contributes to the internet firestorm that will ensure Wuthering Heights’ commercial success. It will ragebait critics far longer than such a limp effort deserves – and we are all its victims.

The selling of West Riddlenden Hall is featured in Country Living:

The Yorkshire manor that inspired Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is for sale.

West Riddlesden Hall and its former owner is thought to be the real Thornfield Hall and brooding Mr Rochester. (...)

With interest in the Brontë sisters enjoying a fresh surge, thanks to recent screen adaptations and exhibitions celebrating their legacy, a Yorkshire manor with direct ties to the eldest – Charlotte Brontë – has come onto the market.

West Riddlesden Hall, a Grade I-listed 17th-century manor near Keighley in West Yorkshire, is for sale for £1.15 million.

Tucked behind a three-metre-high stone wall and set within 2.3 acres, the six-bedroom property was once owned by the Sidgwick family, who employed Charlotte Brontë as governess to their children in 1839. (...)

Though her tenure was short-lived – she famously despaired of the "riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs" she taught – the connection has fuelled longstanding speculation that John Sidgwick inspired Edward Fairfax Rochester, the secretive master of Thornfield Hall.

Brontë’s strained relationship with his wife, Sarah, is also thought to have left its mark on the novel. (Maddy Ando)

Infobae (Argentina) reports a recent tweet by Joyce Carol Oates where she complains about the "sad comments" she reads on socials:

The comments on "Wuthering Heights" just seem so sad.  it is evident that many/most commentators had only read Part I, not Part II; the novel is hugely ambitious in dramatizing quite an arc of experience, in fact decades.  astonishing accomplishment for  first-time novelist, like also, it seems confounding, glancing through these postings about "Wuthering Heights," that our Williamsville NY high school teachers actually taught the Brontes, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau & many other writers whose books  would probably be too demanding for readers today, dismissed as "garbage".... & students read the books, & learned a good deal.  just as Americans of the 19th century wrote such eloquent letters to one another.

It is indeed another era, another species, & good luck to them.

McSweeney's has a hilarious article about Wuthering Heights's red flags: 

He lives with your family, and he’s sort of your brother.

Not a red flag. Because he’s not your actual brother, and everyone has already met the parents.

He is repeatedly bullied by your actual brother.

Not a red flag. Kids are resilient, and there is no evidence that individuals who were persistently dehumanized by a jealous/racist quasi-sibling are more likely to become Byronic antiheroes than those who were not. (...) ( Amy Greenlee)

The treatment of Isabella in the film is discussed on several websites. The Guardian thinks itis grotesque and betrays the book and its audience:

 Even more troubling is that Isabella’s so-called consent mirrors what is termed the “rough sex defence”. For decades, defendants have argued that they caused harm, sometimes lethally so, through willing acts of rough sex. The onus is placed on the victim; they’re the cause of their pain because they apparently consented. It’s one of numerous ways of excusing violence against women, and while legal reform has come about because of its flagrant misuse, abusers still readily pass the buck of blame. (...)

 Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a story of violation. It isn’t meant to be arousing or provocative; it’s about unhealed trauma that poisons everyone it touches. Brontë’s world of anguish cannot and should not be reconciled with the kind of fanciful naivety that Fennell espouses. The film-maker has robbed Isabella of her story to sell a grotesque sexualisation of a domestic abuse survivor. (Emma Flint)       

The Problem of a Hot, White Heathcliff, in The New York Times:

That’s the problem with “Wuthering Heights”: Ms. Fennell’s casting of Asian actors in supporting roles is at best oblivious of how they’ll be read onscreen, and at worst a cheap kind of scapegoating. Edgar is the boring, undesirable cuck, and Nelly the scheming servant who’s to blame for both Cathy’s thwarted romance and premature death. Either way, the choices tell a confusing story about otherness in the world of the film while pretending that it doesn’t matter in ours. (Naveen Kumar)                                   

And now something completely different... well, no. Not really, more reviews:

A mi juicio Emerald Fennell, ganadora del Oscar al Mejor guion original por Una joven prometedora y responsable de aquella rareza titulada Saltburn, no se ha acercado a la narración de Brontë con el debido respeto a la creación ajena. La ha maquillado y actualizado hasta unos niveles que han desnaturalizado el trabajo de la novelista británica. Me consta que no cabe a estas alturas hablar de derechos de autor, tal y como se entienden a día de hoy. Incluso resulta defendible el derecho de los cineastas a modificar a su libre albedrío las propuestas de otros artistas. Aun así, yo soy de los que considera que, cuando ni las tramas ni los personajes te pertenecen plenamente, no es legítimo usarlos a tu antojo prescindiendo de su esencia. Sirva como muestra el caso de la hermana de Emily, Charlotte, cuya inolvidable Jane Eyre (2011) llevó a la gran pantalla con acercamiento respetuoso y de manera notable Cary Joji Fukunaga. (Gerardo Pérez Sánchez in El Día) (Translation)

 There can be good, divergent imaginings of classic novels, like “Clueless” or “10 Things I Hate About You,” but those adaptations aren’t trying to be the original. “Wuthering Heights” is set in the same time period, all the characters have the same names and the plot is very similar. Sure, Fennell’s adaptation includes a wallpaper modelled after Margot Robbie’s skin – veins and all – but that does not make the film a new interpretation. There are elements that Fennell adds to her version, but not enough to make the film distinct from its inspiration. “Wuthering Heights” suffers in all of the comparisons. (Zoe Sutton in Trinitonian)

The nonexistent on-screen chemistry between the actors playing the love interests fell to the wayside in the face of overly raunchy sex scenes that some may find distasteful when they are expecting more of a slow-burn brooding romance. Although when paired with the gorgeous and expensive looking stage setting, it could be interpreted as artfully campy. Even if this film is not entirely true to the roots that it claims to sprout from, it does offer intense visual appeal and an emotionally moving storyline for more mature audience members. (Jasmine de la Vega Rodriguez in The Oswegonian)

And reviews of Charli XCX's Wuthering Heights of course: 

What makes “Wuthering Heights” compelling and frustrating is Charli XCX’s unwavering commitment to concept and atmosphere. The album succeeds as a mood driven artistic statement and as a companion to a controversial cinematic interpretation. However, it does not consistently deliver the memorable songwriting that has defined her strongest releases. The result is a project that is admirable in ambition, uneven in execution and undeniably intriguing. (Natalie Glosek in The Oswegonian)