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 The heath outside is like an unknown land, where the mansions from Brontë’s original story have been replaced by derelict farms, closed off from the world.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
- Country of production
- United Kingdom
- Year
- 2011
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2012
- Length
- 130'
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
