Wuthering Heights (2011)

After seeing William Wyler's 1939 version of Wuthering Heights, the one most people know, I was keen on seeing the most recent version, a 2011 adaptation by British miserabilist Andrea Arnold, who many might think the last to tackle a literary classic. Well, what she did was make into a piece of British miserablism.

The plot outline is the same, though it makes key changes. The framing device of the maid telling the story of Cathy and Heathcliff is gone. We start right out of the chute with Mr. Earnshaw bringing back a foundling from Liverpool. In the book, Heathcliff is referred to as a gypsy, but here Arnold casts a black actor (two, actually--one as a boy and one as a man) to accentuate the outsider nature of the character.

Young Heathcliff is treated abysmally, more so when Earnshaw dies and he's beaten regularly by Cathy's brother Hindley. But Heathcliff stays because of Cathy (played as a girl by Shannon Beer, a nonprofessional who is wonderful). Eventually, though, she meets the rich neighbors, the Lintons, and marries Edgar, compelling Heathcliff to leave.

Arnold was determined not to make a Merchant-Ivory type film, and she has succeeded. There is very little dialogue, especially in the first half, when Heathcliff hardly says a word. Wuthering Heights is not so much an estate, as a ramshackle farm (I don't think the words Wuthering Heights are ever uttered). The elemental way of life on the farm is emphasized--the dirt, the insects, and the beauty of the moors (the cinematography by Robbie Ryan is breathtaking). So we don't get scenes of fancy balls and pouffy costumes--instead we get hand-held cameras racing along with the kids as they explore their surroundings, riding horses, or flirtatiously wrestling in the mud.

As a character Heathcliff has never been considered a good guy, and here he is like a wild child that has never been tamed. In the scene in which Cathy and Heathcliff sneak onto the Linton grounds and are attacked by dogs, he tells the Lintons to "fuck off you cunts," something I can't see Laurence Olivier saying. Played as an adult by James Howson, Heathcliff returns to Yorkshire to get revenge on Hindley and kill himself, but when he sees Cathy again (now played by the lovely Kaya Scodelario, the only professional actor in the cast) he realizes he can never leave her again. So basically he fucks everyone's life up, including Linton's sister, Isabella, and his own.

This is a brilliant take on an old classic, contemplative and wild. It does go off the rails a bit near the end, when Cathy is dying and Heathcliff basically loses his shit. After she's dead he sneaks into her house and gets a little too familiar with the corpse, which is certainly an interesting artistic choice but too creepy for my taste.