Wuthering Heights Review

For a time, it looked as though this new version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights would not be made. The project bounced from director to director with actors and actresses as varied as Natalie Portman (wrong nationality), Michael Fassbender (interesting), Gemma Arterton and (shudder) Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick attached at different points to play Cathy and Heathcliff. Eventually the film found its way into the hands of Andrea Arnold, and received the most radical stripping-down a period film has ever received, which is impressive given the amount of corsets that have collectively been ripped off throughout the genre’s history. This is a hard, visceral world with all romance or pretence of it buried beneath an obscene volley of “niggers”, “fucks and “cunts”.

The structure of the novel has always presented problems for screenwriters, with framing devices, minor characters and the small matter of the maturing of two generations condensed into a single book. Arnold’s version cuts the character of Lockwood and begins with Mr. Earnshaw leading the foundling Heathcliff (Solomon Glave in adolescence and James Howson as an adult) across the moors in the dead of night towards Wuthering Heights. Physically and verbally abused by his skin-headed adoptive brother Hindley (Lee Shaw) because of his race, he finds solace in his friendship with Hindley’s sister Cathy (Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario). The two grow up roaming the moors together, but when Cathy opts to marry wealthy neighbour Edgar Linton, Heathcliff leaves, only to return years later, mysteriously rich and craving revenge against Hindley along with Cathy’s love.

With so many unremarkable costume adaptations of the novel in existence, a change of direction and style was clearly needed. Arnold has merged the grit and handheld camera approach of her first two films, Red Road and Fish Tank, with the sense of wonder at the natural world always so prevalent in the films of Terrence Malick. The shaky framing as we follow the two tearaways fleeing Heathcliff’s baptism leaves us as breathless as if we had run with them, and generates a shockingly intimate atmosphere as we watch their relationship build. However, while the focus on the moors and its assorted wildlife provides a relatively peaceful counterpoint to the human drama engulfing the two families, it was overused – no film with such rich dialogue in the source material needs six establishing shots of diving falcons and waving grass before every scene.

Arnold’s casting of an unknown, untrained and inexperienced actor in James Howson as the adult Heathcliff was a gamble that has worked well for her in the past, with previously unknown Katie Jarvis giving a breathtaking performance as the lead in Fish Tank, but falters slightly here. The complexity of Heathcliff’s character is one of the novel’s most enduring aspects, and Arnold might have been better off searching casting agencies instead of job centres for her leading man. That said, Howson makes a good stab at the role, at the very least equalling Tom Hardy’s performance in the 2009 ITV version. Scodelario captures the adult Cathy’s manipulative, childish essence well considering that she had not read the book, but the film is stolen by Glave and Beer as the younger versions of the characters. I was enthralled watching the children in Super 8 during the summer, and felt the same here. As soon as Glave storms off into the windswept, stormy night at the end of the first half, I almost wanted the film to end until he and Beer had grown up enough to portray the adults, such was the power of their onscreen chemistry.

Although this adaptation is by no means perfect (especially the ending, which leaves the characters of Heathcliff, Hindley and Isabella unresolved), there is ultimately enough new perspective here for any subsequent director to try and perfect this unfilmable, tempestuous novel once and for all. 

3.5/5