Directed by Andrea Arnold. Starring Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Solomon Glave, Shannon Beer 15A cert, Cineworld/IFI/Screen, Dublin, 128 min
An indestructible classic is given a proto-realistic cinematic makeover, writes DONALD CLARKE.
EVERY INTELLIGENT director, when approaching a classic text, knows deep down that he or she should do everything possible to avoid turning in something drably literary. Those cameras and those microphones are there for a purpose, you know. Yet too often we end up with a work that appears designed for Mrs O’Reilly’s least attentive Leaving Cert class.
This is very definitely not the case with Andrea Arnold's jarring, austerely attractive take on Wuthering Heights.Renowned for harsh social realist pieces such as Red Roadand Fish Tank, the director has stripped away most of Emily Brontë's dialogue, muddied up the characters, introduced an amount of swearing and withdrawn any hint of Christian charity.
Forget the wispy, melodic strains of wee Kate Bush. The proper accompaniment to this Wuthering Heightswould, perhaps, be the sound of a knobbly stick being hammered against a weather- beaten sheep's skull. Its unrelenting bleakness occasionally nudges us towards the parodic rusticity of Stella Gibbons's Cold ComfortFarm. (Lord alone knows what nastiness lurks in this lot's woodshed.) The acting is inconsistent. But no previous version of the book has been so successful in jettisoning the literary baggage and encouraging the story to find its cinematic legs.
The film begins as it means to go on: among repression, torment and heartache. After a brief prologue, during which a teenage Heathcliff rams his head against a wall, we flashback to the point at which he was introduced into Catherine Earnshaw’s household. Her father takes pity on him while visiting Liverpool and presents him to the family as one might unveil a puppy.
When it was announced that Arnold had cast black actors in the role of Heathcliff (Solomon Glave then James Howson), muttering about political correctness ensued. In truth, the racial tweak is plausible – Brontë makes many references to the character’s darkness; Liverpool was a busy port even then – and fits comfortably with Heathcliff’s position as the ultimate outsider.
Though, as in many adaptations of Wuthering Heights, Arnold has cut much of the next generation's adventures, the film remains largely faithful to Brontë's indestructible story. Cathy (Shannon Beer, then Kaya Scodelario) and Heathcliff establish a class of elemental bonding while stomping the more than usually bleak moors. But, as the children of the storm grow up, Cathy becomes drawn towards civilisation. An unfortunate marriage takes place. Heathcliff heads off to make his fortune.
So pared down is the story that those unfamiliar with the novel may have trouble working out who is barking at whom and why. Indeed, the film is so determinedly stark that it takes on the quality of folk cinema. You could never tell that this Wuthering Heightsis set in a country that was building one of the world's mightiest empires. One half expects to see the locals worshipping pigs' heads on sticks.
That’s how it should be. For too long, the most fiercely horrific of English romances has been treated as either a flouncy bodice ripper or a hippie-dippie tale of free love.
Much of the credit for reintroducing the pagan menace must go the way of Richie Ryan. The Irish cinematographer, whose camerawork was honoured at the Venice Film Festival, finds endlessly sinister ways of making striking images from natural decay and bare interiors. A baby is born bloodily in a field. The light from a chandelier casts spectra about a room. Wuthering Heightsis never pretty, but it's always beautiful.
Some critics have found the romance a little less tumultuous than we have come to expect. Perhaps. But Arnold reminds us that, for much of the story, we are dealing with children. They sulk. They mutter. It was ever thus.
