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

How To Film Wuthering Heights

NOTE: This was an article I wrote for Don't Panic when Wuthering Heights premiered at Venice, but for some reason I missed putting it up on here when I was putting up the other Don't Panic articles. I'm putting it up now because I'm seeing the film tonight and I'm going to review it at some point in the near future.

Andrea Arnold’s take on Wuthering Heights premiered this week at the Venice Film Festival, but it appears to be yet another adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic novel which has fallen short. Just why is it so difficult to film?

For fans of the book, there has never been a satisfactory film or TV adaptation of Wuthering Heights. There have been more adaptations than you can shake a stick at following the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon 1939 version, all of which have had varying degrees of success but never quite managed to capture the book’s spirit. The early reviews coming out of Venice this week suggest that Andrea Arnold’s adaptation will be consigned to the same scrap-heap as all of the others – despite a bold style reminiscent more of Terrence Malick than Merchant-Ivory, a ‘crucial lack of chemistry’ between the two leads has been cited as the film’s main problem.

The main problem is that Wuthering Heights is really two novels in one, the first featuring Heathcliff, Catherine, Hindley and the Lintons; the second featuring Heathcliff, Cathy, Edgar and Hareton. The first part is undoubtedly more dramatic than the second, but the second completes the saga and offers closure and hope to the story – those adaptations that discard the children always feel unfinished. Arnold has cut the story of the children, though she still follows Heathcliff until his death. Surely a straight adaptation of the book minus the character of Lockwood could be done in 150-odd minutes? Failing that, just go the whole hog and do a three-hour-long film – it might become The Godfather of period adaptations.

Then you’ve got to get the casting right. Olivier’s Heathcliff was too tidy and cultured and Juliette Binoche, who played both Catherine and Cathy in the 1992 version, was FRENCH for God’s sake. There have also been issues with the ages of the actors as opposed to the characters they are portraying. For the majority of the novel Heathcliff and Catherine are around 20, but they consistently been played by actors 10 or 15 years older (Tom Hardy in ITV’s 2009 version was 32), with Heathcliff, described as a dark-skinned gypsy, always played by white actors. Arnold has rectified this in her version, casting unknown Leeds actor James Howson as the first black actor to play the role, with Skins’ Kaya Scodelario as Catherine. Howson is 25, Scodelario is 19.

Finally, it is crucial for the director to get the tone and feel of the book right. Arnold, who won acclaim for her films Red Road and Fish Tank, has by all accounts gone for the same gritty approach that made her name, albeit on 1800s moors rather than modern-day council estates, and seems to have got this right in terms of presenting the desolation and wildness of the moors, but I have yet to see a Heathcliff and Catherine display any of the passion Bronte describes. This is also a casting issue, but a director’s job is to guide an actor towards the performance they want in order to best represent the story. None have succeeded so far, and it is this, more than anything else, that determines whether a Wuthering Heights adaptation lives or dies.

Those not lucky enough to be in Venice this week will have to reserve judgement on Wuthering Heights until it is released in the UK on November 11.