Andrea Arnold filmed Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights as the story was intended: dark and sensual. Words are barely audible, eyes see eyes, skin touches skin when no one is looking and the seething rain batters the windows. The heath outside is like an unknown land, where the mansions from Brontë’s original story have been replaced by derelict farms, closed off from the world.
This eighteenth adaptation of the novel turns Heathcliff into even more of an outsider than he already was, as a result of casting the black actors Solomon Glave and James Howson as the young and older Heathcliff. The mood is more hostile than ever: the first time the kid appears, he gets spat in the face. Wuthering Heights was never about romantic love, Arnold stated in interviews, but about obsession. She managed to capture that obsession, that uninhibited, destructive energy.
Film details
Productieland
United Kingdom
Jaar
2011
Festivaleditie
IFFR 2012
Lengte
130'
Medium/Formaat
35mm
Taal
English
Première status
None
Director
Andrea Arnold
Producer
Robert Bernstein, Douglas Rae, Kevin Loader
Screenplay
Andrea Arnold, Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Emily Brontë