Wuthering Heights

I wouldn't recommend this film unless you like endless shots of bleak moorland, mud, circling lapwings and the backs of peoples'heads. Funny how the poster show the back of young Heathcliffe's head. I don't mind slow moving films where not much happens, but I didn't feel this particular film had the artistic merit to carry it off. It could have done with much more rigorous editing to bring the running time down to about 90 minutes.

Having Heathcliffe played by black actors was an interesting idea and worked well. I also liked it that a large part of the film concentrated on the early parts of the book -apparently in contrast to other film versions -especially as the younger actors performed quite well. It was as a shame that the acting deteriorated so much with the adult cast to the extent that I could detect no passion or chemistry between Heathcliffe and Cathy.

I thought the film was overall a dreary waste of time. It seems to have been liked more by the professional critics than by the real audience - show people grim raw reality far removed from their comfortable lives (I am referring to London based critics who only spend weekends in the country) and they are easily impressed. I got the same impression with reviews of Winter's Bone -a film I thought equally bad.

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.

Yes, it's very slow, but that's not the core of the problem: the heart of the problem is that there is no heart. I cannot relate to anyone in the film. I wanted to cheer on Heathcliff, but it soon becomes apparent why that's incredibly difficult to do. The characters are mostly just boorish and disgusting.

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.