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Heathcliff: two syllables that summon haunting landscapes and breathtaking heights. These two concepts coexist perfectly in this stunningly visceral yet imperfect rendition of an Emily Brontë novel, which Arnold has passed off as a bold incursion into the domain of English Literature. Arnold and Ryan have brutalized the narrative until it is devoid of everything save for anguish, rage, and love.
In the beginning, the film completely omits the period choreography expected in a literary adaptation, which was so radical that for a few minutes, I believed this Wuthering Heights was set a century after a nuclear holocaust. This adaptation resets the story to a form of social realist zero. It eliminates the “flashback” prologue, diving pretty much headfirst into the action. However, this version, as with the Wyler, is limited to the first part of the book which focuses on the “first generation” half.
The stark and rugged strength of the Yorkshire moor, and the harsh life of the 19th-century farmhouse settlers may not have been truly captured in the past as it is today. The world of nature is untouched, and it is as wild as the human and animal world can get. Heathcliff’s character is transformed not as a somewhat alluring dark-skinned Gypsy but simply black. He now bears the consequences of being a black man as his new family is abusive and treats him like an animal rather than a person.
Portrayed as a youth by Solomon Glave, Heathcliff is a street urchin who was found wandering in Liverpool by the mute Mr. Earnshaw (Paul Hilton). In the guise of Christian benevolence, Mr. Earnshaw returns with a plan to make Heathcliff perform menial tasks so that he can stay at the mercilessly isolating Wuthering Heights, but also enjoy equal status with the other two children: the elder boy Hindley (Lee Shaw) and the younger girl Cathy (Shannon Beer). Naturally, he overtakes Cathy on the moor, and they spend all of their time outdoors: a tender childhood love that is utterly sexual, has innocence but knows far too much, is fostered and made more wonderful by their already existing sibling bond.
The two ride together on a single horse: Heathcliff leans over and smells the perfume coming from Cathy’s hair as he pets the side of his horse. He beats Cathy for her insolence and calling him idle, and she beats him for his insolence, and then she literally licks his wounds: a moment both ecstasy and rebellion. But as they grow to adulthood, Cathy accepts a proposal of marriage from the rich neighbor, Edgar Linton (James Northcote). Heathcliff is deeply angered, so he runs away and returns years later a man full of love and vengeance, intent of reopening old wounds. He is now played by James Howson and Cathy by Kaya Scodelario.
In my opinion, the extraordinary part is Arnold’s pre-literary reality effect. Her film does not serve the purpose of being yet another layer of interpretation bound with the classic and all other versions, and instead opts to attempt to engender a scenario that could have framed the book, a mishmash of events lacking coherence that were eventually refined into a literary masterpiece. That’s, of course, an illusion, but a pretty captivating one.
More than anything else, Arnold presents the most striking aspect of the Cathy and Heathcliff love affair. This love affair is between two people on the same social level, rather than a woman with “erotic capital,” and a successful man. Cathy and Heathcliff are both nonconformists: a woman who is dependent on a suitor’s marriage proposition, while a man is merely a recipient of a patron’s goodwill. Also, it is a love story between youngsters. Their capacity to love is most joyous and unqualified, and I suspect, most evidently, doomed.
Having said that, the choice to have separate actors for younger and older Heathcliff and Cathy for me was a little unsettling. I understand, of course, but the younger leads are, in reality, not as young, and their older counterparts are not as older, and the apparent change is an oddly artificial impression.
There is so much that is breathtaking in Arnold’s film that this point is not as significant. Characters in one scene seem to enjoy the strong, wild winds of a hilltop which reminded me of people doing literally the same thing at the top of a grim tower block, with an open window, in her 2006 film Red Road, and the comparison is not, however, ironic. It is so stark that the landscape could be urban, the crags and fields could as well be concrete walkways, therefore they have a stark beauty, and Arnold and Ryan are tackling what we consider beautiful in the first place. The film surprised me in a way that I didn’t think possible with any great adaptation of literature. It was the first time I received the shock of the new.
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