Wuthering Heights

[GCAcademic]

Anyone planning to see this? From the trailer I was expecting it to be marmite and not in any way a straight adaptation of the novel, but the reviews I've seen so far are universally uncomplimentary. I'd already booked to see it, so will go in with an open mind!

@MilanoCortina2026

I've visited regularly over the last few years and even walked to Top Withens (the ruin which was said to originally be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights farmhouse).

I am very envious of your visit!

The Parsonage is well worth a visit too.

Hopefully they'll go to swaledale instead? That's where this was filmed.

Just seen it and loved it. It is not faithful to the book storyline wise but it is to its essence and it ended at a different place than the book did. The costumes and sets were flamboyant but at times a bit distracting. Elordi is beautiful, just fine as fine can be and they did a good job ageing gorgeous Margot Robbie through the film just making her look progressively more jaded and brittle. The last seen made me cry but the scene it's based on in the book did the same when I read it..

I loved it.

I laughed at some of the reviews chastising the director for ‘misreading’ the novel, or for failing to produce a reenactment of it. Fennell was crystal clear from the start that it was her version as imagined when she read it as a teen. She has ‘misread’ nothing.

Films inspired by novels are artistic works in their own right. I can think of few things more tedious than the mostly ‘faithful’ adaptations Merchant Ivory used to produce.

A faithful adaptation would have had to devote a significant portion to the next generation of kids and no one wants that, do they?

Haven't seen the film yet but this is very true - art can be anything. The trailer makes it pretty clear it's not going to be a conventional adaptation 😂

Oh dont misunderstanding me. I would love people to visit howarth. The budinesses there.would welcome visitors with open arms. I guess I'm just being selfish in that car parking there isnt the best so my monthly visit might be a bit more difficult! Theres a lovely train station in Howarth where you can also ride the regular steam trains, so that's always an option. In fact Hebden bridge is only a few minutes away, also with its own train station, and that's always worth a visit too.

We went to Howarth for a whole week two years ago and stayed in an Air b n b - bloody loved it even though I had already been for day visits many times before. I just love the place.

Probably not if they weren't shagging.

Haworth. Sorry to be that person but it is Haworth, my family home for generations.

Well...yes. What's the point of telling half the story?

Surely a significant chunk of the story is the toxic legacy. Had to giggle at the reports of GenZ expecting a happy ending, if sad they have clearly never seen opera, ballet, Shakespeare…

Sorry, even as I was writing it I was doubting myself. I stand corrected.

What do Haworth people make of the Brontes’ legacy locally? It must feel strange essentially being treated like a theme park by a lot of tourists, though I did find myself laughing at the existence of a Brontẽ Balti House the only time I visited.

One thing I really liked about it was that they didn't shy away from portraying Cathy as petulant and spiteful.

Heathcliff - rightly - gets an awful lot of bad press when people talk about the book but Cathy was also a piece of work, probably moreso in the book than the film.

She’s certainly misread it if she’s labouring under the delusion that it’s ‘the Greatest Love Story of All Time’, as the trailer suggests.

And putting the title in quotation marks isn’t going to change the fact that she’s only doing just another version of what virtually every other adaptation has done — remove the Lockwood frame, delete the second generation, and turn the Heathcliff-Cathy relationship into an obsessive, conventionally romantic-sexual one, which it just isn’t in the novel. It’s pretty hackneyed.

I mean, I have no issue at all with unfaithful adaptations, and it’s not as though the novel is going to suffer. But this just isn’t in any way original or surprising. It’s the same every other adaptation.

Cathy was bipolar I'd say.

I really don’t think it’s for anyone to tell someone they have “misread” something. The film is an artistic piece of work based on how it made her feel. I don’t think the film gives off “greatest love story of all time” at all, it’s still dark and visceral.

Yes. This is one of the reasons why I'm not in agreement with the huge amount of discourse on how emerald fennel has misinterpreted or somehow doesn't understand the book. I don't think the movie shies away from how awful and destructive the relationship is between Heathcliff and Cathy.

Well, good for the local economy/jobs but brings overcrowding/congestion and all sorts of dodgy related naming 😂. No doubt some find it a pita as not everyone is interested in period fiction.

I remember my aunt telling me about a bit of noise on facebook when a local brewery launched a 'Branwell' named beer amongst others,😱this was generally moaned about as being in very poor taste, but if you weren't a fan of the books/aware of Branwell's fate you probably wouldn't give a jot.

I rarely go into Haworth to eat/drink during peak tourist season tbh, I'd go as far as to say that I actively avoid it. I've never lived there, but spent all my summers on our family farm plus all our Easter and Christmas's, family events/weddings etc.. I wouldn't rule out living there, but that's because of my family rather than Haworth itself iyswim.

Kate Bush didn't star in Wuthering Heights, she sang the song

Whoooosh 😂

Yep, if it was a joke it went over my head

And yet the trailer has ‘INSPIRED BY THE GREATEST LOVE STORY OF ALL TIME’ emblazoned across it, which suggests this is how EF views the novel.

In which case, yes, she’s misreading it. I suspect many people coming to the novel via film adaptations would be astonished by (a) how little of the novel focuses on H and C in any guise (b) how little of the novel features C at all and (c) how much more interested H is in acquiring and owning property than in any woman.

I said I don’t think the film gives off greatest love story of all time, the characters are self destructive as they are in the book. There’s a moment when they’re children when Cathy says “we are doomed” and it’s reiterated at the climax. For all its darkness and trauma it is still a love story, it’s not a pretty one, it’s a vessel to bring out other societal themes, and one could argue the characters themselves misunderstand love, but it is still a love story of sorts.

I just find gate keeping of a novel is snobbish, it doesn’t belong to anyone.