flora

very easily one of the smartest horror movies of the decade so far

okay so i wrote down a long list of complaints about this film in a notebook- here it is in a better format  - the ecus are unnecessarily jarring and make the film look like its shot on iphone, it almost seems like she was trying to take inspiration from cries and whispers, but the only cries and whispers were the ones coming out of my mouth during this movie so i wouldn't straight up walk out. for such beautiful production design, truly a waste with the weird, out of place close ups and jumpy editing that feels like a comedy. the theater was audibly cackling the whole film which i also think says a lot - obviously, the white washing of heathcliff was mine and most people's main gripe with the film. i understand loosely adapting a novel, but taking away the fact that heathcliff is a person of color takes away his entire character arc, and reduces him to someone who is broody and abusive purely out of spite and not because of enduring years of racism and social isolation. it especially bothered me since shazad latif could have played heathcliff so well but instead he plays edgar which is a really odd casting choice to me. it also seemed like every person of color she cast, she cast them as a character that's meant to be deemed or looked down upon in some way, even edgar. i also feel like she watered down heathcliff's actions so much, and the beauty of the whole novel was heathcliff's complexity, how we as readers saw him constantly abused and ostracized in his childhood, to later see the person he grows up to be, a mirror of all the things he tried so hard to escape from. in the movie, he's a sadomasochist with anger issues, and almost no motive or reason to justify it.  - WHY did they make isabella like that. i mean, i understand a more comedic approach to the character, but it was weirdly infantalizing and the dog collar scene was incredibly unnecessary, especially considering that heathcliff fucking hangs her dog in the book. it wasn't an adaptation, it was commodification for people who don't read, which sucks considering the lack of people that actually read, especially books like this. it was almost fucking insulting, honestly. in the book, isabella is a victim of heathcliff's abuse, she is terrified and isolated, using her letters as a cry for help. but what makes the handling of the abuse so different in the book is that isabella manages to escape heathcliff and go to london, something that was huge at the time, since abuse was so normalized and often still is. and to make that into isabella essentially being heathcliff's punching bag who enjoys crawling on her knees wearing a dog collar, becoming his pet is an insult to women. i never walk out of movies, but i very nearly did - i hate hate hate hate the script. DID I MENTION THAT I FUCKING HATE THE SCRIPT jesus fucking christ PICK A TIME PERIOD. it seemed like she was trying to mix modern language with quotes from the book and it sounded like someone trying to write an essay and looking up fancy synonyms to sound smarter but it just makes no sense. it also felt like all of the characters were either yelling or whispering the whole time which was just weird and annoying to listen to, are they aware that they're allowed to talk? - and of course, the timeline. another beautiful thing about wuthering heights is the cycle of generational trauma shown through cathy and heathcliff's children after cathy dies, which was completely eliminated from the film. however, i do think that a lot of people even water down wuthering heights into just abuse and racism, when there is a lot to be said about cathy and heathcliff as a romantic pair. there is an element of romance, and absolutely a sadomasochistic side to it (in a more subtle way). the masochism is their entire relationship, how they are doomed by their circumstances but continue to come back to one another, because they'd rather hurt together than be happy apart. this aspect was ALMOST really good in the film if it hadn't been for the god awful dialogue and fifty shades of grey type sex scenes.  - back to the script, i just overall hated how bad the foreshadowing and irony was, it was all so on the nose even to people who haven't read the novel. emerald fennel has an advantage that the book did not have, which is visual storytelling, which she did not use for anything other than flashy (but very pretty!) set design.  - one thing i was excited for was hong chau as nellie, who gave a great performance, but was ruined, again, by the script. in the book, nellie is the unreliable narrator, not even really a character at times but a presence that's always there, representing us as readers, and making the readers connect with nellie and even form more of a relationship with her as a character than the other people in the novel. in the film, nellie was way too far at a distance for us to really connect with her it seemed. she is the one really orchestrating the chaos, seeing all sides of everything and letting it all unfold, like the nurse in romeo and juliet (a comparison that the film sort of made that i thought was actually quite interesting!) - the decision to change the themes of racism to classism is certainly a choice, seeing as they're very intertwined in the book. but emerald fennel had absolutely nothing to say about it, and offered a surface level jack and rose type tragic commodification to something that is so complex and relevant today. she seemed to almost take amusement in making a melodrama out of very serious issues - i will shout out the acting in this, margot, jacob, hong, shazad, and the young versions of the characters did amazing work with what they were given, particularly margot robbie. she brought such a truthfulness to cathy that really humanized her and made me forget if she's really a bad person or if margot's performance was so truthful that i was just so enamored by that  overall, i went in, expecting to dislike it, and i did. i was truthfully not suprised by anything in it considering what i'd seen on the internet before it came out. would highly recommend reading the book!!! but i am happy that we got a new charli xcx album yay