Synopsis
Andrea Arnold’s version of Emily Bronte’s story about Kathy and Heathcliffe. The film tries to take in most of the novel.
Criticism
We’re used to costume dramas with bonnets and posh voices. Laurence Olivier played a 30’s Heathcliffe and Merle Oberon played Kathy, and of course it was very Hollywood. We’ve even had Cliff Richard as Heathcliffe for Pete’s sake! In the novel Heathcliffe is described as a gypsy but here he is black and so it’s an original view. If white guys can play Othello, why not black actors playing Heathcliffe, and here it works. There is the racial edge to the brutal treatment he gets from Kathy’s brother and local workers. He sets off their stolidly resentful xenophobia and it’s very raw along with sexual passion and revenge, just like the weather on the Yorkshire moors. In fact there’s an awful lot of wind and rain which of course dramatizes things. If there’s a good rainfall no character will miss the opportunity to go outside and sit in it. The hand held camera practically pushes our faces into the mud and grass. Sometimes it looks stunning, quite primeval, as in the rain the moors can look like churned up graves or trenched up mounds of slave laboured earth. However for me this film is a bit of a cop out because it grabs you by the throat and forces attention as if Arnold might be afraid that if she shows people sitting on the moor and talking in calm weather then it wouldn’t be exciting enough, she relies on the weather to propel the action and dialogue.
We get lots of visceral wallowing in nature all raw, we see trapped rabbits and the slaughtering of a sheep. The interior of the house is so dark, any candle or firelight only seems to accentuate the gloom. After all, it’s always grim oop north!
I don’t think Arnold’s film is as radical as it likes to think it is. The breathless running around in bad weather, the handheld camera shots are just as much a convention as the black and white films of the 30’s and 40’s. Each is dramatic in a different way, but this Wuthering Heights is a pared down, Ted Hughes, view of nature and people which suits its arthouse orthodoxy. I kept expecting the kid from Kes to come running across the moors. The later part of the film, when Kathy has married Linton, looks more like a conventional costume drama. The young Kathy is dark haired and square faced, the older Kathy is thin faced like a young Greta Scacchi, the difference is ludicrous. Linton himself is wimpy.
Still, whether intentionally or not, Arnold’s Wuthering Heights forcibly draws attention to the brutalities of suffering, sex, money and power that for all their frills and bonnets, costume dramas can never really distract from.
jkinsleyfilm 