Emily Brontë's 1847 tragedy "Wuthering Heights", set in the windswept wilds of the Yorkshire Moors, has had "several movie adaptations, released to varying degrees of acclaim", said ScreenRant's Cathal Gunning, but the latest one has come under fire before it has even been made.
Filmmaker Emerald Fennell is facing a backlash over the casting for her new adaptation, in which "Barbie" star Margot Robbie is lined up to play Cathy, while Jacob Elordi, who played Elvis Presley in "Priscilla", will take on the role of her lover Heathcliff.
A 'perverse' choice
Although his "specific race" isn't mentioned in Brontë's text, Heathcliff is "heavily implied" to be "Romani, mixed-race, or possibly North African", said Gunning. This is a "pivotal plot point", as much of the abuse Heathcliff faces is as a result of his "racial ambiguity", making him "one of the literary canon's most prominent characters of color". Casting Elordi, a white Australian, "arguably rewrites Brontë's story".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
It is "perverse" to ignore Heathcliff's skin colour considering it is mentioned several times in the novel, said BBC Culture's Nicholas Barber. After Andrea Arnold's 2011 adaptation featured a black Heathcliff (James Howson), Fennell's decision "can't help but feel like a leap in the wrong direction".
The choice of Robbie is no better, as surely few of the novel's readers will have pictured the Victorian protagonists as "the spitting images" of these two "impossibly good-looking Australians".
'Far too pretty'
The leads are "far too pretty", said The Telegraph's Michael Deacon. Heathcliff is supposed to be "wild, cruel, brooding and ragingly intense – not like some cute, winsome, boy-band-style pin-up" and while Robbie is "very talented", she "doesn't exactly scream 'windswept Yorkshire moors'".
This "glossy and glamorous" look makes them "too contemporary to be credible in a period drama", said Barber. "They belong on a red carpet, not in a muddy field." The "pearly white teeth, flawless skin, sleek hair and a gym-honed physique" makes it "almost impossible to buy them as living in the days before stylists, nutritionists and personal trainers".
Cathy also dies aged around 19 in the book, but will be played by 34-year-old Margot, while Heathcliff, who is 40 at the end of the novel, will be played by a 27-year-old. Considering for much of the book the pair are in their mid-teens, Elordi is in the unenviable position of "being both too old and too young", said Gunning.
The casting "seems fundamentally, egregiously wrong" at first glance, said Barber. But Robbie and Elordi are "brilliant actors" and if anyone can make this "problematic casting" work, it's them.
