Reaction to Emerald Fennell’s movie adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi
My group of six English teachers – aged from 30 to 54 – saw the film on Friday. We are still processing our thoughts in a group chat. We agreed that the visuals were often delightfully shocking. We talked about the contrasts between the lavish costumes and the moor landscape, which we thought Fennell got right. We talked about the Charlie XCX music and how well it evoked the landscape and the spirit of the book.
We were entertained by the sex scenes and agreed Brontë would have written some if she had written in a different time … but Fennell failed to develop the emotional longing and connection. It was reduced to something silly instead. We lamented that Fennell turned Nellie (our beloved unreliable narrator) into a conniving villain, and the film seemed to miss the supernatural elements of the book – if Fennell wanted to shock us, she could have shown that scene in which Heathcliff digs up Cathy’s body!
While we appreciated that Fennell conflated the characters of Heathcliff and Hareton [Earnshaw] to make him more sympathetic, we thought she forgot what she was doing when she swung into his awfulness – no consistency. However, it was brilliant to combine Earnshaw and Hindley’s characters. That made sense. We will certainly be discussing it for weeks to come. Sarah Campbell, 46, Denver, Colorado
