Category: Reviews

Wuthering Heights

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

There is a difference between intensity and depth. The 2026 adaptation of Wuthering Heights mistakes one for the other — and in doing so, does not merely reinterpret Emily Brontë but systematically simplifies her.

Directed by Emerald Fennell, with a screenplay adapted by Fennell herself, the film presents itself as daring and contemporary. What it delivers instead is a narrowing: a deliberate exchange of metaphysical passion for corporeal spectacle.

As someone who reveres Brontë’s novel, I left the cinema not stirred, not haunted, but cheated.

Brontë’s book is architecturally complex. Its nested narration — principally through Nelly Dean — creates moral distance, ambiguity, and irony. In the film, Nelly (played with gravitas, though undermined by the script) is reframed as a near-villain, a manipulator rather than the morally ambiguous mediator of class and conscience she is on the page. By collapsing her narrative function into something sinister, the adaptation dismantles the interpretive tension that gives the novel its sophistication.

Most unforgivable, however, is the complete removal of the second generation. Young Catherine, Hareton, and Linton are not decorative additions in Brontë’s structure; they are resolution. The novel is cyclical: violence breeds violence until tenderness interrupts inheritance. Hareton’s transformation from brutalised child to educated, loving man is the moral hinge of the text. By excising this arc, the film amputates redemption. What remains is unrelieved obsession — two destructive figures locked in themselves.

Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw is rendered impulsive and overtly sexualised, rather than the fiercely divided woman torn between class ambition and metaphysical attachment. Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff broods handsomely, but without the volcanic stillness and inherited trauma that define him in the novel. Hindley Earnshaw’s absence strips Heathcliff’s vengeance of context; rage becomes aesthetic rather than psychological.

The treatment of Catherine’s motherhood further distorts the novel’s design. In Brontë, her daughter survives; renewal is possible. The film’s decision to have Catherine lose her child pushes the narrative into gratuitous nihilism, dismantling the brutal yet balanced symmetry of destruction and repair.

The sexual explicitness is perhaps the most glaring misreading. In the novel, Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is metaphysical — “I am Heathcliff.” It is identity, not carnality. Their relationship is defined by repression and spiritual fusion. Here, consummation is foregrounded. Erotic tableaux — including a baffling BDSM-tinged encounter involving Joseph — substitute shock for depth. The aesthetic often feels indebted to decadent modern erotica rather than nineteenth-century Gothic intensity. In Brontë, desire is powerful because it is contained. Here it is displayed — and diminished.

Isabella Linton’s portrayal compounds the confusion. In the novel, her suffering is delusion turned horror — romantic fantasy collapsing into brutality. In the film, her torment at Heathcliff’s hands is stylised to the point of ambiguity, unsettling not because it is violent, but because it seems unmoored from moral critique.

Visually, the insistent palette of blacks, whites, and aggressive reds proclaims symbolism rather than allowing it to accumulate organically. The moors in Brontë breathe; they are psychic landscapes. Here they feel curated — aesthetic rather than elemental. Stylisation is not inherently flawed, but when style replaces psychological layering, the result is aesthetic noise.

Only fleetingly — in the childhood confession of love, Catherine smiling as Heathcliff sleeps — does the adaptation approach Brontë’s emotional truth. In that moment, innocence and inevitability coexist. It reminds us of the tragedy’s origin. And of what has been lost.

This is not an interpretation; it is a truncation.

By removing the second generation, altering Catherine’s fate, villainising Nelly, erasing Hindley, and substituting erotic spectacle for metaphysical passion, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation loses more than half the novel’s complexity.

Brontë wrote about obsession, inheritance, cruelty, repression, and the fragile possibility of grace.

This film offers sex without structure, shock without substance — a Gothic symphony reduced to a single, discordant note.

It does not dare too much.

It understands too little.

Sabar Bonde

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I watched Sabar Bonda at its 4:20 show at PVR Andheri — an experience that turned out to be more than just cinema, but a mirror. What most gay men go through, irrespective of class. A simple thing like a parent being worried about the future of his gay son. 

It began with death. A father passes away, and rituals immediately take over: what to wear, what to eat, how to mourn, what to suppress. That opening sequence pierced me deeply because my bua — whose birthday coincidentally fell on the day of my viewing — was like a father to me. The grief, the weight of conduct, and the demands of tradition all struck a profoundly personal chord.

What makes Sabar Bonda so powerful is that the protest it mounts is whisper-quiet. It doesn’t erupt in melodrama; it lingers in what society insists upon — in colour, rules, and ritual. A grey shirt Anand is told to change. Much like how people ask us to change, to convert. The slippers he wears – bringing comfort to his feet – but only in the company of his lover, because ritual forbids it. The shadows of who he is, pressed against the mould of what he’s “supposed” to be. The film reveals itself in the texture of small moments: Balya’s gift of cactus pears, the shared silences, the tension between city and village, heartbreak and love, grief and continuity.

Anand’s mother is the film’s moral and emotional backbone. She loves, supports, and resists in her own way. His father’s eventual acceptance, Balya’s steady care, and the hesitancy threaded through each character are rendered human. There is no villain here — only systems and traditions, and people trying to navigate them quietly.

Critics have largely echoed these impressions. Moneycontrol calls it “a gentle story of grief, memory, and love told with quiet honesty. It lingers in the silences and small moments …” Times of India writes: “to enjoy the sweet taste of cactus pears, you must first carefully remove the sharp spines from the skin of the fruit … meant to be savoured exactly like that.” That metaphor mirrors the story’s truth — love, identity, and acceptance are like a fruit you crave, but you must first tend to the pain. Indian Express highlights the film’s visual poetics: the still camera, wide frames, and static gaze that holds ritual, grief, and distance until intimacy seeps in. Hindustan Times calls it “a tender, deeply moving study of queer love in one of the year’s best films,” noting how customs, everyday pressures, and quiet longing are handled with exquisite precision.

Where my own experience diverges is in how deeply the symbols resonated. The cactus pear, unlike the peach in Call Me By Your Name, isn’t about erotic awareness, but about care, concern, and tenderness — love that is rare, difficult to find, but sustaining. The rituals aren’t simply a backdrop; they are choreography, dictating what must and must not be done. Anand’s protest is not loud — it is embodied in small refusals, in gifts, in a silent embrace.

Long after leaving the theatre, certain truths lingered. Rituals and rules aren’t just external constraints; they are the inner architecture Anand must resist and reshape. The sensory texture — touch, clothing, light, the sound of goats, footsteps, and fields — builds an emotional world as vivid as any dialogue. There is the courage of saying no to what one is “meant” to be, and yes to a hidden version of self. And there is the way family, particularly the mother, becomes both an anchor of tradition and a wellspring of possibility.

Some critics have noted the film’s pace is slow. I felt that too — but its slowness isn’t a flaw. It forces us to sit with grief, longing, and ritual as the characters themselves must. It may not satisfy those expecting dramatic peaks, but its reward is in its lingering — in the way it teaches us to notice what we otherwise overlook.

The caresses are felt through the screen. The running of hands in the hair. The embrace to ward off the cold. The closeness found at last in the privacy of the city. They permeate through the screen and fall into your hands and heart. The emotion there becomes visceral and that’s what makes the movie brilliant – it’s like reading a book, you are pulled into deeper nuance and feeling.

Sabar Bonda doesn’t shout its declarations. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it builds a space where grief, yearning, and identity coexist in fragile balance, where society’s insistence collides with the quiet affirmations of love and humanity. It reminds us that love can be radical, even when soft. That rituals can suffocate as much as they anchor. That resistance doesn’t always roar — sometimes it whispers, gently, persistently, and all the more powerfully.

If I were to give it a frame, I’d say: Sabar Bonda is a film of small revolutions. It doesn’t overthrow. It loosens. And in that loosening lies its beauty — because it allows tenderness the room to breathe.

Superman

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Light Restored: David Corenswet’s Superman Shines

I went to the first-night late showing of Superman with zero expectations—especially not expecting anything from star David Corenswet. But from the very opening, the film radiates light in a way Henry Cavill’s brooding take simply never did. Cavill’s Superman was relentless, vicious, bleak—more dark Batman than hopeful beacon. Corenswet, on the other hand, embodies everything good Superman should be: optimism, warmth, light.

From the start, the film introduces Superman at his most vulnerable—hurt, uncertain—and brings in Krypto, his loyal super‑dog, at just the right moment. Krypto’s entrance is delightful: “the canine sidekick steals the show, and his goofy interactions with Superman will resonate with anyone who loves dogs”. It was a moment that brought me—and, I suspect, dog lovers everywhere—to tears of joy.

Corenswet as Clark Kent / Superman reminds us of a young Christopher Reeve: dimpled, earnest, charming. He truly “soars as the Man of Steel”  , balancing vulnerability with heroism, sunlit goodness with real human emotion. As one review put it: “David Corenswet is just right for the dual role”.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor brings a modern tech‑tycoon je ne sais quoi—smart, menacing, magnetic. Many critics praised his turn, though some felt his performance didn’t match Gene Hackman’s classic menace.

The supporting cast includes: Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane: vibrant, sharp, independent. Critics say their chemistry is one of the best since Margot Kidder. Jimmy Olsen – Skyler Gisondo. Guy Gardner / Green Lantern – Nathan Fillion – is always a pleasure to watch. I couldn’t help remember him in Firefly. He’s back to his forté. Hawkgirl – Isabela Merced – brought in that element of darkness whereas Mister Terrific – Edi Gathegi – was indeed terrific. I liked the inclusion of Metamorpho (substance-shifter) – Anthony Carrigan – it brought in someone we hadn’t seen in the DC verse so far. These characters, dubbed the “Justice Gang” in a nod to the Justice League, provide depth and interactivity— and though some critics found the ensemble slightly overloaded – for me, it was just right. 

Director James Gunn steers Superman away from darkness. Thankfully! The film bursts with colour, lightheartedness, and earnest hope—exactly what the genre needed, described as a “colourful, breezy reinvention”. One critic noted the tone rejects “grim and gritty” in favour of “empathy… a radical tenderness over traditional machismo”.

The story skips a long origin arc and jumps into Clark’s life as a reporter and a hero. The film is tight, fast-paced, and brings back the classic John Williams–inspired trumpet theme—rejuvenating that sense of nostalgia I felt as a child growing up with Reeve.

Yes, there are a few hiccups: Some plot lines feel overcrowded—global politics, misinformation, and pocket-dimension mayhem. And let’s not forget the white man protecting the brown population from imperialists is an age old-trope that doesn’t sit well with me but even the CGI quality varies, especially in later action scenes.

Despite the missteps, Superman is an earnest, uplifting ride. It’s a heartfelt tribute to the Christopher Reeve era—sunlit, moral, full of hope. As one critic said: “I went into ‘Superman’ with low expectations… this reboot… is infused with heart, humour and a fresh optimism that the franchise desperately needed”.

So, if you’re longing for the Superman of light and goodness—not darkness and cynicism—this Superman is your film. It wants us to believe again—and it succeeds. This Superman is light reborn: hopeful, sincere, and undeniably fun. If you’re tired of the brooding, Nolan‑style heroes, let Corenswet’s Superman carry you back into the sun.