O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes

Like other reviewers I have read Emily Bronte's novel, but I am not sure we were reading the same book. My strongest impression from first reading was wonder that the book could be so engaging without a single character with whom to identify.

The characters in Wuthering Heights are unlikeable; Heathcliff and Hindley are downright nasty. Hatred, contempt and jealousy are the overriding emotions of the story. Certainly there is love – strong passionate love too – but it lives in dark corners and is ultimately destructive.

This film captures much of the emotion of the book. The first half, with Heathcliff, Catherine and Hindley as children is played very well indeed.

Heathcliff's character is determined in these early years at Wuthering Heights, and so it is in the film. When Heathcliff returns as an adult, inexplicably played by another actor, his heart has hardened and revenge, hatred and violence dominate his character. But James Howson who plays the adult Heathcliff is not up to the task, and nor it appears is the direction. Heathcliff is certainly violent, but this is mostly directed against animals seemingly as means of relieving his frustrations, rather than the depiction of a genuinely violent man. His appalling treatment of Isabelle is largely glossed over and the film ends before he starts abusing Hareton. Hatred, contempt and jealousy are expressed mainly by close-ups of facial expressions, and here Howson in the finery of his wealth only seems able to portray smugness.

The film lacks a point of view. The camera-work suggests the film is intended to show things from Heathcliff's perspective, but much seems to be deliberately obfuscated where Heathcliff would have known exactly what was going on. The audience is continually kept in the dark, emphasised by the rain, mist and long nights on the moors and, just in case we haven't got the idea, by repeated scenes shot out of focus. This is all very well, adding to atmosphere, but the book manages to bring the reader into the story; this film seeks to distance the audience, as voyeurs only. The people we see are the same people we read about and with much the same character. The children, it is true, were interesting to watch; but when Heathcliff went away, returning without comment played by a different actor (and Catherine too for that matter, but Kaya Scodelario played her role better; she had less to do), I found I no longer cared about any of them.

Heathcliff played as a black man works well. He is clearly of foreign extraction in the book – Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen – although equally clearly not 'a regular black' (also a quote). A black Heathcliff is far more convincing than an obviously white English one.

The language is also rather more 'colourful' than in the book. But this too seems to be justified. It sounds true enough to me and I did not detect any neologisms. It must be pretty impenetrable to non-native English speakers, but there is precious little of it. I know Heathcliff is taciturn, but the silences are unbearable. Even the book has Nelly Dean to carry the dialogue.

Finally there is the ending. The book more or less describes the story backwards, starting long after the film has ended and showing Heathcliff in his ultimate form. The film, quite rightly in my opinion, is in chronological order (barring some unnecessary and distracting flashbacks) and covers only Heathcliff's relationships with Catherine and Hindley. The ending is well chosen in terms of plot, but totally undermines whatever integrity the film had, for the entire film is shot without a background soundtrack. What we hear are the sounds of nature, songs being sung, out of tune and out of time but utterly in character. A poor band playing a mournful Christmas hymn (the Coventry Carol, is it?), branches tapping on a window, even though this last does not sound quite right, all add to the film's bleakness. But then, with only about a minute to go till the end, there intrudes a modern song played on modern instruments in a studio. I quite like Mumford and Sons, but what on earth is that song doing there? At least it could have started after the credits began to roll; the mood destroyed, this is one film I did not stay to read them.

My experience was so drastically opposed to what I'd heard about this film in the newspapers that I was going to write a shocked review here; but I see that it has already all been said. Wilfully obscure narrative (I went with someone who had never read the book and had to explain to him afterwards who was who and what had happened, and why), self-indulgent overuse of wildlife shots and arty camera angles (once is good; twice is good; ALL THE TIME is tedious), important plot developments whisked over in the joints between one scene and the next, poor performances from the adult actors, jerky camera-work, insufficient lighting, and a variety of deliberately repulsive scenes of slaughter, necrophilia, blood-sucking and copulation in the mud (and I'm not talking about that bizarre bog scene between Cathy and Heathcliff, clearly intended to be very significant since it was repeated at the end...)

A lot of the time I felt I was being battered over the head with the director's insistence that This Is a Very Important Metaphor but simply didn't understand what the shot of a beetle, or a horse's flank, or a patch of stone, or yet another rainstorm, was supposed to be saying. (The one thing I didn't notice, interestingly, was that the film is in Academy ratio rather than widescreen - probably because the vast majority of the pictures I watch are not in widescreen and in fact I generally dislike it, so I certainly wasn't conscious of that as a drawback.) To be fair, my other companion, who adores the novel, thought the film was the closest she'd ever seen to capturing the spirit of the book, although she too was somewhat disappointed in the 'adult' section.

I suppose you could say that it was a disquieting film of a disquieting book, in which none of the characters were sympathetic because none of the characters in the original are sympathetic: for my part I found myself roused to a furious dislike and resentment, so was at least not indifferent to it. I didn't walk out of what was a sparsely-attended screening -- I didn't even allow myself to disturb my neighbours by looking at my watch -- but I fantasised about being able to leave and was longing for the experience to end.

I think the film has power, which is why I haven't marked it lower than I have. I also think that in many ways it is a bad piece of film-making, more akin to a pretentious video installation than the telling of a complicated and violent story.

The wind really does 'wuther' like that in Yorkshire, though...

Perhaps one of the more true-to-book versions BUT still they're missing a huge chunk of the story where Heathcliff diabolically and systematically ruins the lives of the progeny of his enemies, including Cathy's own child (whom he kidnaps and blackmails into marrying his son), his own son whom he lets die, his brother's son, etc. He's a real sociopath. I'm not sure why they leave such a dynamic portion of the story out solely to embrace a "romance plot" that really isn't that romantic nor accurate to the book.. So, sure watch this movie but for the full story as intended JUST READ THE BOOK. It's free, in the public domain, many sources.

Saw this at the Venice film festival last week. It had quite a few walk outs near the beginning (probably the strong Yorkshire accents with lots of background noise made it unintelligible for non native English speakers) and they were the lucky ones as it certainly did not improve over the following 2 hours.

The director's main aim seemed to be to try and shock audiences who thought they were coming to an Emma Thompson type costume drama by making the film as morose as possible and throwing in lots of swearing, violence and a bit of necrophilia. Unfortunately the only shocking thing was that they had managed to make such a bad film out of a classic novel.

There were numerous petty things which annoyed me about this film, e.g. the use of pathetic fallacy with the weather is way over the top (the Earnshaws live under a constant biblical downpour whereas there rich neighbours in the next door valley have a climate from a fruit juice advert); the cameraman either had Parkinson's or had been previously employed in one of those American police series where reality is represented by a constantly jerky camera; the actors playing the adult Cathy and Heathcliff look nothing like their younger selves - Heathcliff even appears to have changed race!; would a 19th century strict Christian father be happy with someone sleeping with his teenage daughter in the house?; would a 19th century Heathcliff be able to swan around Edgar house willy nilly? I could go on.

Most importantly I think the director fails completely in making us feel any sympathy for her characters. Heathcliff has a hard time of it in his youth but has no redeeming features. It's not helped by the fact that the actor playing the adult Heathcliff is atrociously bad at his job.

I have no problem with making Wuthering Heights dark and brooding but make it a bit less daft.

This is a film about domestic violence, racism, cycles of abuse. It contains many scenes involving the infliction of pain. This is quite apart from the love story. So why did it leave my partner and I so unemotionally affected, apart from the rush of relief at leaving the cinema?

Wuthering Heights started well for me; I thought I was going to enjoy the experience of wild moorland, naturalism, authentic dirt, etc. Unfortunately, too little attention seemed to be paid to the quality of some of the cast's acting (some of which was, frankly, embarrassing) and after the nth roll on the wet moorland grass I began to lose patience with the lack of attention to the narrative detail.

Yes, the moors looked fantastic. Yes, we got that life was grim.

But the affectation of the hand-held camera is a metaphor for the film as a whole. It wobbles about and makes you feel a bit nauseous. And then it does it over and over again and again until you want to beg for mercy.