As a post-Valentine treat, I watched “Wuthering Heights” in its latest cinematic version, expecting it would not look, sound, or feel modern as it was meant to be a costume picture. No skyscrapers because there would only be windswept moors, no traffic on the streets because there would only be grass and meadows.

The argument against creating a 21st century look is that the passions that inflamed Emily Bronte’s book (1847, one year before she died at the age of 30) would not be appreciated in the 21st century. How many young people today — let’s say teenagers — would die for love, for example? Typically, wouldn’t they simply, merrily move on from one failed affair to the next, what’s the big deal, anyway?

Emily Bronte wrote poetry, the longing sort, at least what I have read, with or without her sister Charlotte’s help, and there is no record suggesting she ever fell in love or had a beau. So who were the inspiration for Heathcliff, the “tempestuous” lover of Wuthering Heights, and his beloved Catherine? Was the wild and handsome Heathcliff born out of the writer’s longings, purely out of her imagination? Or, had she somehow, somewhere met someone like him?

Emily Bronte’s one and only novel has survived generations of lovers and inspired countless cinematic versions, including Carlitos Siguion Reyna’s “Hihintayin Kita sa Langit,” which was filmed in the windswept Batanes 35 years ago.

In my imagination, it would be hard to fall tempestuously, desperately in love in today’s world, for the simple reason that it’s not how we do things today (ehem!). The last time I heard about someone getting sick for three months, during which she was confined in a hospital, was more than 20 years ago, when she learned that her true love — since they were in high school — had jilted her for a girl who engineered what my friend described as a shotgun wedding.

Since then, I have not come across a similarly traumatic ending in real life. Charge it to the changing mores of the times? Gen Z and their descendants know better than to cry over spilled milk.

Dear reader, do you believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?