The information that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are starring in Emerald Fennell’s tackle Emily Brontë’s romance has triggered a storm – no shock in an age of elevated casting scrutiny.
Catherine is a youngster who lives on a farm in England within the late-1700s. Heathcliff is a dark-skinned foundling of across the identical age. Because the heroine and hero of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, their love story has been imagined by numerous readers for the reason that novel was printed in 1847, however not lots of these readers may have pictured them because the spitting pictures of Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Jacob Elordi (Elvis Presley in Priscilla). Nonetheless, Emerald Fennell just isn’t like the remainder of us. The Oscar-winning writer-director of Promising Younger Girl and Saltburn is making a movie of Wuthering Heights, and he or she introduced earlier this week that her Catherine and Heathcliff could be performed by two impossibly handsome Australians, one aged 34, the opposite aged 27.
The net response hasn’t been wholly optimistic. Brontë followers on social media referred to as the casting “disappointing”, “horrible” and “weird”, and The Impartial’s movie critic Clarisse Loughrey requested: “Did anybody really learn the ebook earlier than deciding this?”
To be honest, we do not know what Fennell has deliberate. Perhaps her adaptation will likely be a glitzy and irreverent replace with a disco soundtrack and a unadorned dance routine on the windswept Yorkshire moors. However there is no such thing as a doubt that initially look the casting appears essentially, egregiously unsuitable: it has that mind-boggling, what-were-they-thinking high quality which brings to thoughts a crass producer in a Hollywood satire, barking: “Wuthering Heights is kinda drab – let’s get Barbie and Elvis to play Cathy and Heathcliff!”
The wrongness comes all the way down to a number of components – the components that separate fascinating and even divisive casting from casting that has irate residents waving on-line pitchforks. One such issue is the disparity between the ages of the characters and the actors. When the 45-year-old Kevin Spacey starred in Past the Sea as Bobby Darin, a singer who died aged 37, Mick La Salle of the San Francisco referred to as it “some of the embarrassing spectacles of 2004”. The truth that Spacey directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the movie solely made issues extra cringe-worthy.
Questions of judgement
Within the case of Wuthering Heights, you would argue that Fennell was merely sticking to Hollywood custom: Laurence Olivier was in his 30s when he performed Heathcliff within the basic 1939 movie of the novel. However we’re much more judgemental about age-inappropriate casting than we was once. With Wikipedia only a click on away, it is all too straightforward to test whether or not a star is pinching a job from a youthful or older actor, and it is all too onerous to miss it. Why, the world puzzled, did Oliver Stone solid Angelina Jolie (born in 1975) and Colin Farrell (born in 1976) as mom and son in Alexander (2004)?
We’re extra delicate, too, to questions of authenticity and illustration, particularly the place race is worried. Talking of Olivier, he wore skin-darkening make-up to play Othello within the 1965 movie of Shakespeare’s tragedy, however at the moment that might be as unacceptable as Mickey Rooney’s racist flip as Holly Golightly’s Japanese neighbour in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), or John Wayne’s as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956). The whitewashing of a number of characters wasn’t the worst factor about M Night time Shyamalan’s The Final Airbender (2010), for example, however it deepened the impression that the movie obtained nearly all the things unsuitable.
The problem with Wuthering Heights is that the darkness of Heathcliff’s pores and skin is talked about a number of instances within the novel, so it appears perverse of a brand new movie to disregard it. Contemplating that Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights featured a black Heathcliff (James Howson), Fennell’s alternative can not help however really feel like a leap within the unsuitable route.
The rise of ‘iPhone face’
A extra obtrusive difficulty is that each Robbie and Elordi appear too shiny and glamorous for his or her roles. They belong on a purple carpet, not in a muddy subject. One facet of that is that they’ve so-called “iPhone face” or “smartphone face”, a time period utilized to actors who look too up to date to be credible in a interval drama. When somebody has pearly white tooth, flawless pores and skin, smooth hair and a gym-honed physique, then it is virtually unimaginable to purchase them as residing within the days earlier than stylists, nutritionists and private trainers.
Consider Cameron Diaz in Gangs of New York, Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Tom Cruise in Far and Away: all three actors are solely actually at dwelling in snazzy environment within the late-Twentieth and early-Twenty first Centuries. They should not play any character who hasn’t pushed a high-performance bike to a seashore in California. As for Robbie herself, in Mary Queen of Scots (2018) she performed an ageing, raddled Elizabeth I who was jealous of her cousin Mary Stuart’s (Saoirse Ronan) youthful magnificence. Fairly a little bit of suspension of disbelief was required.
Nonetheless, it is their very glamour that accounts for Robbie and Elordi’s casting in Wuthering Heights. When two actors have the recognition and the intercourse attraction that they do, the prospect of seeing them each in the identical movie will, in principle, be an excessive amount of for audiences to withstand. One other small level is that Robbie did not simply star in Barbie, the very best grossing movie of 2023, she produced it, too – and he or she additionally produced Saltburn. If she needs to star in Wuthering Heights, then who’s going to cease her? Tom Cruise, once more, just isn’t recognized for his mountainous peak, his bulging muscle groups or his blond hair, however he was the A-list producer of the 2 Jack Reacher movies, so when he made the ridiculous resolution to play Lee Kid’s large vigilante, no one was going to say no.
The excellent news is that no matter else Robbie and Elordi could also be, they’re additionally sensible actors. If anybody could make such problematic casting work, then they’ll. Lastly, we should always keep in mind that issues may all the time be worse. In 1996, there was a Wuthering Heights musical referred to as Heathcliff, which starred and was co-written by Cliff Richard.
The present opened simply after Richard’s 56th birthday.
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