Burning
passion, gothic shiver, emotional force, idyllic but bare grassland: those are
the images that strike your mind when we think of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Of the three sisters,
Emily Brontë used to be the proud, reserved and independent character whose
only novel dating from 1847 would become known worldwide. What was originally a
novel with a high degree of emotional force and a sophisticated narrative is
now turned into a rough story of blind love and blind revenge. Andrea Arnold’s
adaptation contains little dialogue, almost no music but instead reveals intense images of the Yorkshire Moors, which makes us feel cold from the inside.
The
basic story lines are kept the same: Catherine Earnshaw, daughter of a
respectable and ancient standing family, is to be confronted with her
disastrous fate when her father accommodates an orphan boy from Liverpool, who
is given the unchristian name of Heathcliff. They grow op together and fall in love as teenagers until Catherine’s strategic marriage to Edgar Linton
and Heathcliff’s mistreatment at the hand of her brother Hindley fill
Heathcliff with an enormous passion for revenge. The effect of this revenge,
which was Brontë’s sequel, is hidden in this film adaptation. Nevertheless,
Heathcliff’s eyes and emotions give away what he aspires after Catherine’s
death. Moreover, the movie contains several images of the young couple roaming
the moors in seemingly indissociable union – an aspect that pulls in the commemoration
of Brontë’s original romantic novel. However, the average images are not always
as sweet as one might expect after reading the novel. The house of the
Earnshaws, with little comfort except for the heat of a big fire, is
represented the same way, only covered with gloom and despair. Arnolds’s
naturalistic style and numerous close-ups reveal a melancholic and depressed
universe. As a consequence, there’s little left of the novel’s romantic concept.
Another element that deviates from the original version is the focus on
Heathcliff. This was precisely what Arnold wanted since his personality is
profoundly mysterious, quick tempered and not very noble. Unlike the
representation of Heathcliff as a gipsy in Brontë’s novel, a black Heathcliff
performs the character in the movie.
Arnold
clearly has a preference for working with non-famous actors. Virtually none of
the faces in the movie were ever seen on screen before. In an interview with
Focus Knack, a Belgian magazine, the director confesses she prefers to work
with amateurs. According to Arnold, amateurs still preserve a raw spontaneity,
but as soon as they’ve acted, they are spoiled for good. Nevertheless, the
entire cast proved to be professional to work with, so we may conclude that
their latent talent for acting is certainly discovered now.
Yes,
Andrea Arnold reaches ‘wild heights’ with her masterpiece. However, Brontë’s
over romantic love story with the yearning for unity as pointed out in
Catherine’s line “Nelly, I am Heathcliff”, is no longer. Nevertheless,
Arnold proved with this adaptation that her naturalistic and gothic style very
well match Brontë’s tormented universe: a clash between social classes, broken
families as well as love and revenge under extreme circumstances. Do not expect
extensive dialogue or tragic music who fits their state of mind, but that does
not impede the strong emotional impact of the story. If there’s one version
that is most engrossed in the personality of its doomed characters, then it
certainly is Arnold’s adaptation. All things considered, we may regard Wuthering
Heights as rough, yet poetic and compelling.
-I
lingered round them and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet
slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth-
