Film Review: Wuthering Heights

Literature is open to interpretation, as are its icons. Batman & Robin screenwriter Akiva Goldsman even defended his nippled, butch-camp iteration of The Caped Crusader as what icons needed, to be reworked and redefined. However, where is the threshold that limits this? When is far enough truly enough? Conventional wisdom is frustrating, clearly a sentiment at the heart of Andrea Arnold’s (director of breakout Indie Brit-drama Fish Tank) apparently unorthodox rendition of Emily Brontë’s classic novella. It already host to multiple adaptations (imdb.com lists 15 adaptations in the past century and decade) so naturally Arnold has set out to carve out a niche for her version, the carving implement however is a blunt one.

As someone who accepted the Oscar for her short film Wasp by declaring it (before a bemused crowd of Academy voters) ‘the dog’s bo****ks’, Arnold isn’t known for her subtlety. Her now trademark use of 4:3 aspect ratio, coupled with volatile close up handheld camera (obviously reverse engineered from the Dardenne Bros’ Rosetta). Arnold is conscientious of the typical sweeping orchestral score of costume drama; by abandoning it the sound design is forced to take its place. The environment is loud, pounding and wearing. The camera is furious, close up and turbulent. The editing darts from sequence to sequence, frantically infusing the existing scenes with extreme close ups of the muddy surroundings. That 4:3 aspect ratio in this case, rather than immersing the viewer vertically (akin to IMAX aspect ratio) simply tightens your view. The sound pummels you whilst the film constricts around you: an audio-visual bottleneck.

Arnold seems hell-bent on declaring every facet of the Yorkshire landscape erotic. Mud is fondled, ravines are ogled like vaginas, shrub is tugged and groped in euphoric bursts. Arnold even goes so far to juxtapose a ‘dogging’ couple with a pair of frolicking dogs. With such an assaultive and crass arrangement on display, conventional wisdom states that the film should be unbearable. Thankfully there is enough reverence to the source material to justify the sturm and drang. The story at its core isn’t the romance we expect, but a revenge narrative closer in fact to Shelley’s Frankenstein. Brutality begets retaliation and misery indeed made Heathcliff- the young gypsy adopted by a Yorkshire family- a fiend. Arnold here depicts Heathcliff as black and directs the animosity toward the character as purely racial, something evident in part in Brontë’s source material. Consequently, the antagonist Hindley is now painted in broad strokes as the buzz-cutted racist, working class white man. The dialogue has now been infused with strong profanity (notably the ‘f’ and ‘c’ bombs) and one particular racist epithet (begins with ‘n’, sounds like ‘digger’ etc). None are anachronistic given that examples of f**k date as far back as the 1500’s, but the impression gained is that Arnold seems to think these choices are arch and bold. They become more distracting than they ought to, the thematic justification does exist however.

It’s a shame that Arnold’s methodology has no time to take in idiosyncrasy or nuance. James Howson makes for a more than acceptable older Heathcliff, his shortcomings in characterisation appear to lie more in the writing and direction of his role.  We can’t appreciate the performances as they are shrouded in a blur, wrapped in bluster. There is intent amongst this piece, Arnold is certainly in a dialogue with the material, but she is reacting against existing versions by extrapolating the aggression of the story aesthetically. Compared to the other recent Brontë adaptation of Jane Eyre (featuring Mia Wasikowska and the always excellent Michael Fassbender), that adaptation was indeed conventional but it was a piece that can be remembered as an effective whole. Jane Eyre is the better film, Wuthering Heights is the more honest adaptation however. Arnold aims toward anarchy in her rendition of Wuthering Heights, unfortunately she very nearly ends up out-shouting previous versions. That said Brontë fans will find plenty to admire thematically, in that respect, one can’t help but wonder whether or not the film’s blur of fury was actually its greatest success all along.