Emerald Fennel’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic novel is called “Wuthering Heights”, with the double quotes. This smirky attempt at pointless irony sets the tone for the whole movie, where the sharpest points are made by jawbones, and the most “transgressive” scenes are about Mills-and-Boon-ey sex. If the movie has any larger point, it is that #hotlivesmatter, and that the untrustworthy lower classes might kill you.Fennel has made a visually fantastic movie. Margot Robbie is beautiful and wears beautiful clothes, Jacob Elordi is beautiful and wears a gold tooth. Edgar Linton’s home, where a lot of the movie takes place, is dollhouse-pretty. The problem is what Fennel takes out to make space for dazzle and sizzle — every bit of class tension, political consciousness, and emotional complexity, from one of the most horrifying English novels of all time. If Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a bubbling cauldron of toil and trouble, Fennel’s is a toy tea party, with neither flavour nor kick.Emily Bronte’s haunting book is about how a society of inherited wealth and class corrupts individuality and individuals. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned foundling with no security of status or connections. Catherine is a spirited child who struggles with docile #softgirl femininity. Both are destroyed because they don’t accept the positions they were born in. But they are too spirited to be tragic hero and heroine, and so they become villains, destroying everything they touch.The novel is also a tale of what happens when children are treated cruelly. They either collapse (Edgar, Isabella, Linton), or turn mean and vindictive (Heathcliff, Hindley, both Catherines).Bronte’s world is unrelenting. Being religious is no virtue, it can make you small-minded. (Joseph). Narrations are unreliable, because people speak from their locations of class and attachment (Nelly, Mr. Lockwood). And there is eye-watering cruelty. Just one small section of the book involves the abduction and forced marriage of a teenager, the death of said teenager’s father, the dead father’s property then passing on to her husband, and then the death of the husband, so that all the property passes to the abductor, who wanted revenge on her father.There is beating and flogging and cursing. There is unspeakable emotional (and implied sexual) abuse, age no bar. A pet dog killed and hanged as a warning gets just a one-line mention.But there is also redemption. Amid the storms and mists, the sun shines. Tenderness and strength of character eventually win the day. In the last 50-100 pages, the reader releases the breath she had been holding and feels like she can smile again.Story continues below this adMost importantly, the novel has skill. Bronte is a terrific writer. Her words create atmospherics few movies can rival, she switches from raw and passionate to cool and shallow so fast the reader is spellbound. Heathcliff can convey grief, menace, and grandeur in one sentence. Catherine’s wild grief can shake you even as she exasperates you.Bronte’s novel has a throbbing heart, a moral core, and a sharp, clear-eyed brain. None of which can be said about Fennel’s juvenile gothica.Fennel’s withering lowsFennel has said the movie is what she had imagined when she read Wuthering Heights at 14. The movie’s emotional maturity does make it look like it was written by an edgy 14-year-old.If it was simply a bad movie (which it is), the book’s lovers wouldn’t be angry. The problem is that the movie is an obvious, cynical rage bait. Fennel is savvy enough to know that nothing spreads faster than outrage. Each aghast review has acted as free publicity for her movie.Story continues below this adIn Bronte’s book, Heathcliff is targeted not because his benefactor is a violent drunkard, but because he looks like a “gypsy” or a “lascar”. Hindley Earnshaw can abuse and degrade Heathcliff because he inherited his father’s money and property. Heathcliff then acquires money and property to victimise the next generation of Earnshaws and Lintons. Nelly Dean, for all her close association with the families, is a servant, and has limited influence over outcomes.In Fennel, Heathcliff is a handsome hunk who just happens to be poor. Individual poverty can be overcome (which Heathcliff does), but marginalisation based on caste and skin colour can’t. Fennel, coming from vertiginous privilege herself, doesn’t want any such downers in her movie, just like Karan Johar in Dhadak.The servants in her movie are either small-time deviants indulging in horsey BDSM, or schemers who part lovers and eventually cause the heroine’s death.Nothing in the movie speaks of conviction. After choosing a handsome Heathcliff because the posters had to look for Valentine’s Day release, a half-brown actor is chosen for the the pale and blonde Edgar Linton and Nelly Dean is played by an actor with Thai heritage, because experimenting with ethnicities of classic characters is the in-thing to do.Story continues below this adThere is no horror or tension, because the hulking villain of the book here is a dreamy sadboy, whose most shocking act is BDSM again, this time canine-leaning and consensual. In the book, both Cathy and Heathcliff die, because love like theirs could have no other ending. In the movie’s grand climax, Cathy dies, and Heathcliff…looks mildly sad.If the movie had some other name, it would have been a silly but visually pleasing watch. Because Fennel chose to sell it as “Wuthering Heights”, the movie becomes something much worse — dishonest and devious.See you next month,Yours Literary,Yasheeyashee.s@indianexpress.comP.S: If you love books, write to me with what work I should discuss next. If you are not a reader of novels, follow along, and maybe you will begin to delight in the wonder and wisdom, the practical value, and the sheer joy of fiction.