WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2011), adapted by British director Andrea Arnold, tells a truth. The international film industry has seen many adaptations of Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic novel — often construed as a tale of forbidden love and irreconcilable differences with some directors opting for a more strict approach and others setting their imagination loose upon the material. But as the first adaptation to cast a Black actor in the role of Heathcliff, Arnold does not gloss over the fact that this character is brown as written in the original text. Arnold, known for her 2016 road-film American Honey as well as multiple jury prize wins at the Cannes Film Festival for lesser known films, chooses the path of realism in confronting the difficult realities held within Emily Bronte’s classic novel.
In Arnold’s Wuthering Heights,Heathcliff’s character extends far beyond that of love interest into the main character around whom the central struggles of the story revolve. Though the original story contains multiple frame narratives from the perspective of white characters, this version offers Heathcliff’s experience without the intervention of censorship or white guilt. Heathcliff’s arrival to the Wuthering Heights, shrouded in darkness and anonymity as rain thunders down on his cloaked form, is met with hostility from the agrarian Earnshaw family who are supposed to be his caretakers. He encounters racial slurs and harsh lashings from the pious family, only finding solace in the company of Catherine, who introduces him to the beauty of the whistling moors. She defends him from the hateful violence of the men around them, seeing the inherent innocence of Heathcliff’s nature. Their relationship is characterized by long glances into the waves of grass and a shared fascination with the feathers of strange birds. They drift apart as Catherine takes an interest in the wealthy neighbor boy, Linton, and Heathcliff is made to undertake the ritual violence of killing for food. Betrayal. Revenge. Sadness. It all comes to pass.
Brutality is persistent, Arnold shows us, and Heathcliff is made into a brute by the cruelty of his environment. This adaptation dwells in the world of realism, with its lack of score, handheld cinematography, natural lighting, and minimal though period-appropriate script culminating in a film that deliberately does not sexualize the “brutality” of its protagonist. There is power in this choice, as it does not allow for the romanticization of trauma and abuse so common across WT adaptations. In a final shot, Hareton, a child and third generation of Earnshaw men, proves he is the manifestation of generations of cruelty seeping down into one person. R. 129M. STREAMING.
“WUTHERING HEIGHTS.” Is this satire? Is this a comedy? These are the notes in my journal from my weekend viewing of Bronte’s Wuthering Heights as adapted by Emerald Fennell. Fennell, recent director of the controversial Saltburn (*cough* The Talented Mr. Ripley *cough*) — a film the gaudiness of which looks tame in comparison to the director’s newest exploit, is concerned almost exclusively with the desirability of her stars and squeezing significance out of clumsy, juvenile appeals to “the power of love”(as dictated by the conventions of the literary Romantic movement, that is).
I’ll lay it all out on the table: Going into this movie, I was not hopeful that it was going to be anything but a self-indulgent, over-sexed romp — and sometimes I like that in a movie! I can agree with those who claim that Fennell was never interested in making a serious movie that departs from melodrama in favor of realism; there is nothing real about this movie other than unaltered dialogue and the unsimulated tongues that refuse to stay in their owner’s mouths. However, Fennell’s frivolous writing and neglect of key, existential details has legitimately offended me. Audiences deserve to know that the source material with which Fennell has tampered is not a story singularly occupied with libidinal desires and betrayal, and to suggest as much is a slap in the face to the story of racialized violence and generational trauma that Emily Brontë wrote nearly 200 years ago.
In a January interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fennell said, “You can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.” This would be forgivable — me being a huge fan of the recent Frankenstein adaptation by Guillermo Del Toro — if it weren’t for Brontë’s explicit clarification that Heathcliff, the story’s tortured and abusive love interest, is a person of color, described as “dark skinned,” “black” or possibly Indian or Romani. It is why he is perpetually subject to the cruelty that transforms him into a brutal man. It is for this reason, combined with the seemingly inescapable reality of his intersection with poverty, that Catherine, subconsciously or not, believes that to marry him would “degrade her,” breaking his trust and heart. To neglect these facts is to disregard Brontë’s criticism of racist and classist distinctions — the crux of this story. R. 136M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
Sasha Senal (she/they) is a writer, environmental educator and aspiring farmer. She can be found exploring Humboldt forests (not unlike her home redwoods on the Sonoma Coast) and considering Black eco-feminism.
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Due to the holiday, updated listings from Broadway Cinema were not available at press time.
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Na’vi-on-Na’vi violence in the latest installment of James Cameron’s sci-fi action franchise. PG13. 195M. BROADWAY (3D).
BENEDITIO CORAZON. Religious period drama about the sacred heart. In Spanish. NR. 86M. BROADWAY.
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DRACULA. An aging European monster in fancy clothes wields evil powers to endanger young women but that’s just how director Luc Besson rolls. R. 129M. BROADWAY.
GOAT. Animated sports comedy about an ungulate underdog with the unfortunate slogan “Smalls can ball.” PG. 100M. BROADWAY (3D), MINOR.
GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE. Time traveling Sam Rockwell shows up in an LA diner with a plan to defeat an apocalyptic AI in a comedy-adventure. But you could literally just stop asking Chat GPT to make cartoons of you skinnier. R. 134M. BROADWAY.
IRON LUNG. Post-apocalyptic sci-fi submarine trip through a sea of blood. Co-written, directed and starring Mark Fischbach. R. 127M. BROADWAY.
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OSCAR SHORTS. Documentary, animation and live action shorts nominated for Academy Awards this year, showing Feb. 20, 21 and 22, respectively. NR. MINOR.
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SOLO MIO. Romcom about a man (Kevin James) in Italy on his honeymoon trip after being left at the altar. PG. 96M. BROADWAY.
THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 3. The latest installment tries to make sense of the senseless masked killers. R. 91M. BROADWAY.
STRAY KIDS: THE DOMINATE EXPERIENCE. Concert documentary of the K-pop group’s show at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. NR. 146M. BROADWAY.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Wild costumes and enough red flags to fill the moors in the latest adaptation of Emily Bronte’s supernatural psychological drama. With Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. R. 135M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
ZOOTOPIA 2. Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman return to voice the rabbit and fox crimefighting duo in the animated comedy adventure. PG. 108M. BROADWAY.
For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in 2026 Pet Photo Contest.