Withering Depths

I attended the picture house in Leicester last week. A special offer ticket price of £4.99 (plus a £1 booking fee!) made it the more attractive. Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights I thought would be a pleasant conclusion to a day’s travel and church grabbing. Although one expects adaptations to actually adapt and not be slavishly faithful to the original, I was a little surprised by the content. While Heathcliffe, whose ethnicity is ambiguous, might have been played by a black man (but wasn't), various other characters are Indian, Chinese and black. I can live with that: adaptations ought to be creative. Unfortunately, the other aspects were quite disturbing. Although few would describe even the original as a heartwarming tale, this film's depictions of sexual bondage, onanism, aroused corpses, endless rounds of adultery and even, naturally, a hint of homosexuality, combined to make it rather seedy. It will tell future historians a great deal about the 2020s but nothing much about the 1770s and 1840s. As Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “[Fennell] gives away all the story's power of spiritual and sexual longing without gaining a thing.”

I marvel at the human race’s, and our particular times’, abilities to corrupt, descend, pervert and deviate. This degenerate film will give pleasure to many, and more is the pity. The entire history of humanity can be summed up in one horrid word: corruption, while the gospel of Jesus Christ can be summed up in one glorious word: redemption.

A.  D