Wuthering Heights, Dizzying Lows

Can a movie be too art directed? I think the answer is, yes.

We just saw the newest version of Wuthering Heights, which borrows generously from many conflicting film styles – a hanging sequence (?) lifted from A Man for All Seasons, a ride-off-into-the-flame-red sunset seemingly inspired by the burning of Atlanta in Gone with the Wind, a fanciful, dessert-filled luxury garden setting straight out of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, a mantelpiece made of hands reminiscent of the 1946 Beauty and the Beast by Cocteau, and a lot of rain and moistness...a whole lotta moistness...reminiscent of the Weather Channel. So many styles, so much icing on the cake.

And then there are the costume changes for the newly rich heroine – changes so frequent and so beautiful and so inconsistent as to which century they’re supposedly from, that for a good twenty minutes there, you find yourself in one of those fashion dream sequences from 1930’s movies like The Women...or this year’s spring runway from Schiaparelli...or both. 

It’s visually overpowering and exhausting, like surfing on your remote and getting bombarded with glimpses of too much of everything. And unfortunately, it’s really distracting from the storyline, which has enough built-in distractions to require a road map...Emily Brontë was a little long-winded.

It’s a shame, really, because the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon at their most movie-starry, filmed in glorious black and white, somehow manages to be richer, sadder, sexier and more memorable. Each of them in close up is worth a view.

On the other hand, and there’s always another hand, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are both so beyond pretty, that you can kind of almost zone out for a while and pretend you’re watching Love Island or something. So there’s that.

“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! 

— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights