‘Don’t leave me here where I can’t find you...’
I went into the classic novel Wuthering Heights with a withering disdain when I first read it many moons ago. I wrongly dismissed it as just a romance novel when it is probably the most heartbreaking book ever written. As with so many classic books, there will never be a film adaptation that does it justice. The novel is dense and sprawling, taking in an entire lifetime’s worth of story from the point of view of numerous narrators. Indeed, the two main narrators of the novel, Mr Lockwood and Nelly, are either bit players or absent entirely from this adaptation. While it may struggle to channel the raw emotional power of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, this iteration still has much to recommend it…
We all know the plot of Wuthering Heights by now so I won’t relay it here. Heathcliff is played by Solomon Glave as a boy and then James Howson as a man while Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario play the two incarnations of Catherine. All the other notable characters are present and correct, Joseph, Isabella, Hindley and the rest, but director Andrea Arnold chooses to focus entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff. While this is understandable, it is also to the film’s detriment. It’s difficult to hang a two-hour film on the heads of two sullen and hateful characters who barely speak.
This is a slow film. Arnold spends so much time focussing on the Yorkshire countryside when she should have been world-building. The result is a frustrating film that has fleeting moments of brilliance but too often feels ponderous and plodding. Howson breathes new life into Heathcliff, and both the child actors do a great job, but Scodelario feels miscast as Cathy and this scuppers the entire second half of the film. This, combined with the fact that the third act feels rushed and unsatisfying, makes for an uneven adaptation that Arnold herself has since claimed to be unhappy with.
In the end, this take on Wuthering Heights is a decent cover version, but you can’t beat the original. Read the book instead.