Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has ever happened to her.

This is how one Letterbox’d user described writer-director Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Brontë’s classic tale.

Reviews for the film are mixed at best. While some critics have praised the visuals, detractors return to the same argument: it is not a good adaptation.

Good adaptations take advantage of the affordances the cinematic medium provides, so some changes are permissible. Fennell goes well beyond this, altering essential characters, relationships and themes to the point that the film feels like erotic fan-fiction with a Hollywood budget.

To synopsise, Brontë’s story is a tragedy of intergenerational trauma. It follows Heathcliff, an abused serial abuser, and Catherine, an intergenerational manipulator. The pair’s toxic relationship – and mutual revenge on everyone they knew (beyond the grave in Catherine’s case) – wreaks havoc.

Visually loud, emotionally mute

Given its tagline “the greatest love story ever told”, Fennell’s film was destined to make some changes.

The frame narrative of the novel is missing. The novel is told through housekeeper Nelly Dean, who is recounting it to Heathcliff’s tenant, Lockwood. The film, meanwhile, starts in Catherine’s childhood and ends at her death.

This also means Fennell stops short of the final act of the novel. In doing so, she omits an entire generation of important........

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