Wuthering Heights, the film!

Occasionally our book club will watch a film of the book we’ve read, we watched ‘The History of Mr Polly’ which was charming in its way, and ‘Women in Love’ which was absurdly dated and we laughed a great deal. Last night we watched the 2011 version of ‘Wuthering Heights’.

The book by Emily Brontë is one I read as a child and found it enormously powerful; rereading it for book club there were aspects of it which I saw in a new light although having read it so many times before it was so familiar to me. With the eyes of 2013 I was astounded at the brutality of the book, and surprised at how liberated Catherine seemed, outspoken and running wild, poking fun at the dreadful old bigot Joseph and defying her father. I had forgotten the dreadful beatings and physical attacks on the children, the casual blows and use of objects to punish and hurt. Considering it was written in the 1840’s by the daughter of a vicar, and it was set decades before, it struck me as surprisingly ‘modern’.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens in the book: in the 1770’s, Mr Earnshaw left his bleak Yorkshire farmstead to walk to Liverpool, promising to return with presents for his children. When he does return, the presents have been broken because he has carried an abandoned child all the way home with him. The child is named Heathcliff and is described as a Lascar (east Indian) and gypsyish. He and the daughter, Catherine become so close they are more than siblings, more than friends, but in an innocent way. The son Hindley hates and resents Heathcliff, and when Mr Earnshaw dies Heatchliff has to live with the animals and is appalling treated. Cathy meets and promises to marry the son of a local wealthy landowner and heartbroken, Heathcliff leaves. He returns a rich man and proceeds to take his revenge on Hindley and pursue his relationship with Cathy, now married. The characters are doomed, doomed by the passion and impossibility of their love, but the next generation somehow find happiness… read the book, you’ll enjoy it, but I think you will find that one of the major and most influential characters is the Yorkshire moors!

The film starts with the adult Heathcliff drunk or disoriented, staggering around the old farmstead of Wuthering Heights; the handheld camera and sudden close ups are, at first, disconcerting and almost an irritant but within a few moments this technique draws the viewer right into the film. The first few scenes, going back to when Heathcliff was first brought home by Mr Earnshaw, are set inside the old farm and so dark and gloomy it is difficult to make out who is here or what is happening – but of course, two hundred years ago, there was no blinding electric lights, only flickering candles and smoky oil lamps and the light of the fire. The young actors who play Cathy and Heathcliff are incredible, Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer have great futures ahead of them – especially Shannonn who shone off the screen.

The director, Andrea Arnold, has been very bold in the way she has taken the heart of the story and cut away a lot of incidental scenes and characters in order for it to hold together as a film. The film is shocking, powerful, upsetting, enchanting and Arnold has allowed the other main character, the Yorkshire Moors a dominant role. The first half of the film with the two young characters has images which are unforgettable, expressions on faces, hand-held camera shots, nature very red in tooth and claw, brutality, sexuality, love, hate…. it has everything. The second part of the film, when Heathcliff returns a wealthy man does not have quite the same power, although James Howson is tremendous as Heathcliff, I just felt that Kaya Scodelario was not quite right for the part… she seemed too thin, too insubstantial, with none of the feisty fury and bold impertinence and courage that Shannon Beer put into young Cathy. I am not criticising her acting, but the casting.

Isabella Linton, another character who is often portrayed as feeble and wimpy here was played with pert insouciance by Nichola Burley, another really talented actress, acting with everything, including her fingers! When she was on screen, she made Cathy seem peevish and slight – which is the other way round to how the characters should be. Lee Shaw took the part of Hindley, a brute and a bully, and he played him brutishly and with all the violence and hate of a real bully… Lee was able to invest something in the character which made his actions and behaviour understandable if not forgiveable… I think it was a difficult part to play but Lee made Hindley into a rounded and very believable figure.

Something which struck me within the first few minutes of watching the film… there was no background music! Oh joy! To hear the wind wuthering around the house or whispering in the moorland grasses, the lapwings and other birds singing, it enhanced the whole film, and really added to the character of the setting, remote, unforgiving, bleak.

I could write so much more, the use of seasons, the use of light, the rain, the rain, the rain, mud and muck and blood and tears… a great film, watch it!

An interesting article:

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/britaina-s-new-film-talent