Sex, lies and Margot Robbie: "Wuthering Heights" has become an erotic thriller
Western critics quarreled over this film adaptation: top scores alternate with demonstrative "ones". An aesthetic reading of the classics or instructions on BDSM practices in the style of "Forty Shades of Grey" - there is fierce debate about the new "Wuthering Heights" by Emirald Fennel. The plot of the book has undergone major changes, and visually the film looks like a fusion of German expressionism of the ten-twenties of the last century and the cinema of David Cronenberg with its perverse tactility and chilling metaphors. After a series of secular premieres, where Margot Robbie paraded in provocative dresses, the film was released this week in wide distribution almost all over the world. Izvestia tells us how the scandalous "Wuthering Heights" turned out.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi's Screen romance
It will take a while to forget those two-plus hours. Emirald Fennel's "Wuthering Heights" is amazing, even if you've seen the previous few dozen film adaptations, from classic to experimental. First of all, because it is a spectacle.
Fennel chose not just to film, she turned to the VistaVision format, the one in which "Vertigo," "North by Northwest," and "The Ten Commandments" were made. It was also used for "Brutalist," "Bugonia," and "Battle after Battle." It's immediately clear what the ambitions of the filmmakers are and why Oscar winner Linus Sandgren was called in as a cameraman.
Through the eyes of the latter, we saw not only "La La Land", but also the last "Bond", "Babylon", "No Time to Die" and "Jay Kelly". He was hired to work on the third Dune. At the same time, it's fair to say that "Wuthering Heights" is the best of what the cameraman has shot so far. And why — more on that below. You just have to keep in mind that this movie can only be watched in the cinema.
In the meantime, let's talk about what worries millions of people around the world the most, who admired Margot Robbie's gorgeous outfits at premieres in North America, Europe and Australia and waited for the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about and why one of the superstar's dresses seemed to be made of hair.
The opening scene is a dirty town square, a crowd and a gallows. We are shown in detail the execution process, the convulsions of the victim and the reaction of the mob who came to watch her torment. This is how the main themes of the film are stated from the very beginning, one might say, the keywords of the film: death, body, trap, torment, mystery, violence, passion.
And in this way they make it clear to us that they will not stand on ceremony with the text of Emily Bronte's novel here, it is rather a work based on motives that Emirald Fennel rewrote for herself.
Of course, the audience doesn't like that you can't immediately see Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, you first need to go through the childhood of the characters. To see how little Heathcliff appeared in Mr. Earnshaw's house and how he became the best friend of the girl Catherine.
In the gloomy environment of a poorer home, the children come together as much as social conventions allow: Heathcliff is kept as a servant, and no bright feeling seems to be able to break through the class barrier. And then Emirald Fennel introduces the erotic tension into the narrative, which will then increase as the film progresses.
Among the dirt and cold between the children, the air is sometimes so electrified that when we flash forward a few years and see 35-year-old Robbie as Catherine's girlfriend and 28-year-old Elordi as Heathcliff in the place of the young actors, we need a little time to "believe" in their on-screen existence. We stop paying attention even to the fact that Catherine looks more like Scarlett o'Hara than an 18th-century English girl from the countryside.
Fennel turns the handle with the inscription "sexual tension" to the maximum in such a way that it soon becomes clear: yes, the distance between the characters is as insurmountable as between ours and that time. But this does not mean that it cannot be reduced.
But when Catherine and Heathcliff enter into a "criminal" relationship in the second half of the film, none of the viewers will have any questions about where they got such strange sexual games and why Heathcliff then adds ingenuity to his creepy marriage with Isabella. The idea of the authors of the film is quite transparent: if you are around all the time, but you can't be with each other, perversions will form and multiply like mushrooms after the rain, so you don't have to be surprised later.
Add to this the physical abuse to which Heathcliff was subjected, his trials in the search for wealth, and Catherine's nasty, moody character, who also could not have been different in these circumstances. Let's add to the picture the climate, poverty, social norms and the presence of other people's eyes, always watching them. This simple construction kit will create a dramatic Catherine and Heathcliff line, which the film is dedicated to, discarding the entire second half of the novel as unnecessary.
Wuthering Heights is an erotic thriller. It was shot quite chastely, Margot Robbie doesn't have a single explicit scene. Sometimes it's even comical, because there are too many moments when the logic of the scene suggests, let's say, some nudity. But feminist Emirald Fennel doesn't want to be objectified, so she shows Elordi's pumped-up torso a couple of times and stops there.
You can, of course, look for artistic reasons here. For example, to say that the characters wear clothes all the time — and this symbolizes that they are not together to the end anyway, they are always separated by something. Or that it's just more interesting to have the characters buttoned up to create erotic tension. And all of this will be true, but only up to a certain point. In the end, it looks more like conformity, which many will not forgive this film.
But at the same time, Robbie and Elordi really made up such a duet that the gossips were already in a hurry to announce their romance. They did not believe that it was possible to play such an almost physically tangible attraction that exists between Catherine and Heathcliff. It's so strong that at some point we don't understand how the characters keep from rushing into each other's arms. And, of course, we cannot condemn them when it does happen.
We forgive Elordi for the ridiculous gold tooth and earring in his ear, and the fact that he doesn't look too much like how we used to imagine Heathcliff. And Margot Robbie, who plays the heroine at different ages, looking exactly the same, is also forgiving. We pity, hate, despise, and love her Catherine, she is so lively, stupid, and unhappy that there is no other way.
The maid Nelly (Hong Chau) is brilliantly bred, vindictive and caring at the same time. When Martin Clunes appears in the image of the degraded Mr. Earnshaw, disgust in us is juxtaposed with pity for this man, shitting wherever he is.
Practically, Shazad Latif became Karenin in the film as Edgar. In general, there is a lot of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the picture, perhaps even more than from Bronte. And Alison Oliver saw her Isabella as a fool Ophelia, who was also the victim of prolonged sexual abuse.
Visual perfection
It's difficult to shoot "Wuthering Heights" after Andrea Arnold, who also made a very visually intense and profound work 15 years ago. It's not for nothing that the outstanding cinematographer Robbie Ryan was awarded a prize in Venice for that picture. But Emirald Fennel and Linus Sandgren found some very striking visual, stylistic and dramatic solutions that ultimately make this film so spectacular and memorable.
We said earlier that this film can only be watched in a cinema (unofficial distribution in Russia will probably begin next weekend). Even if we put aside all the following explanations, we should limit ourselves to the simple fact that you simply won't be able to see anything on a small screen.
Darkness, twilight, and shadow fill almost every frame of the film. Whether it's a room where you can't see much even by candlelight, or a street where there's almost no good weather. The film crew worked specifically in Yorkshire, looking for rocky inhospitable hills, where it is always chilly and uncomfortable. Everything is hidden from us and from the heroes, there is no clarity, no honesty, only an infernal twilight, where only danger can lurk.
Linus Sandgren often uses the same frame composition here: in the darkness there is a kind of bright "window" where hope seems, where there is genuine life, from where this light should have been shed and — to save everyone, to give an opportunity to see the light. But either this eternal night is too strong, or hope is illusory — and each time we move from one to another, almost black frame.
This is the end-to-end image of the film, which is quite relevant, very present-day, leading to the fact that the viewer's feeling of claustrophobia is replaced by despair. And the thriller turns into a tragedy, it's no coincidence that poor Isabella retells "Romeo and Juliet" in too much detail in one of the scenes.
The darkness opens up opportunities to play with the aesthetics of expressionism with its broken lines, metaphorically reflecting the mental traumas of the characters. Here, houses, landscapes, and interiors abound with bizarre outlines, and the authors have ensured that some of the "backdrops" look painted.
As in some expressionist films, first of all in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", of course. This enhances the degree of pathology set by the plot, and it's also just very beautiful and unexpected, especially in the "lamp-like" and therefore also slightly alien VistaVision format.
From David Cronenberg, a specific perverted physicality came into the film, which is inherently associated with all sorts of mysterious substances. We have to watch the dying hangman for a long time and in detail. Then you will have to contemplate the scars on Heathcliff's body in close-up, and Catherine's cheeks will turn into the walls of her bedroom through her husband's efforts (one of the highlights of the film). Women's backs will crack from the laces of the corset, which do not allow them to breathe.
Everywhere we see the mutilations and feel the physical pain of the characters — and we understand that this causes a special kind of sexual arousal, like Cronenberg's in his best films. The parallels are reinforced by the fact that saliva from dirty mouths and sweat from unwashed torsos mix here with the liquid yolk of broken eggs, the mucus of a crawling snail and rivers of blood that sometimes begin to flow here. All these liquids are the quintessence of the feelings of the characters, their sufferings and, perhaps, their whole life, so fluid, impure and at the same time saturated, containing energy that promises disaster.
Continuing to create this detailed metaphor, Linus Sandgren periodically oversaturates the scene with some color. Most of the time, of course, it's blood-red, so that in our eyes everything looks like Lady Macbeth in the fifth act of Shakespeare's masterpiece. To make it clear that we are not watching a romantic story, but discovering how scary and terrible everything can end if you allow the world around you to subjugate you and force you to give up love and freedom.
This is how a BDSM thriller and a civil statement merge into one, and the plot of a classic novel warns against mistakes that can be made outside the cinema. The stakes are too high, the authors of Wuthering Heights remind us, so, as one of the characters says, "behave with dignity and finally get together."
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
