Likable? Subtle? Sometimes that’s not needed

Movies, we’re told, need to have likable characters. They need people who are easy to root for.
That’s true … unless it’s a really well-made movie. Then rules are discarded.
Which brings us to HBO and its current streak: One Saturday (April 25), it had “Marty Supreme”; the next (May 2), it will have “Wuthering Heights”(shown here).
Both films (each reaching HBO Max a day earlier) center on hugely selfish and obsessive people. “Wuthering Heights” goes even further by giving us no one to like; even the servant girl is nasty.
And yet we watch for the best of reasons: Everything — the visuals, the dialog, the performances — is brilliantly executed.
Hollywood has always liked anti-heroes, but these are different. Sure, those folks — Bonnie & Clyde and Butch & Sundance and such — robbed banks. But they were also charming people who cared about others.
Not these characters. Marty obsesses on a being a ping-pong star; Catherine obsesses on money and — once she has it — on her love/lust for Heathcliff.
Emily Bronte’s only novel was published in 1847 and — like this latest movie — drew strong reactions, pro and con. There have been at least seven film versions, with Heathcliff played by Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and Timothy Dalton.
This time, writer-director Emerald Fennell set aside any subtleties and stuck strictly with the raw passion.
Fennell, now 40, is also an actress. She was Camilla Parker-Bowles in “The Crown” and the pregnant Midge in “Barbie.”
Then she cast Margot Robbie (the “Barbie” star) in the very different role of Catherine. Jacob Elordi, co-star of Fennell’s “Saltburn,” was Heathcliff; at 6-foot-5 and fresh from playing the creature in “Frankenstein,” he’s one of the few people who could make Robbie believable as a swooning damsel.
And for Catherine’s loud, drunken father? Fennell cast Martin Clunes, known as the low-key, stone-faced centerpiece of the delightful “Doc Martin.”
In the hands of a talented director, all of this worked. “Wuthering Heights” drew mixed reviews, but did well at the box office, especially overseas.
It filled the screen with beauty and rapture. It proved that some films can hold us, even when there’s no one to really like.