Wuthering Heights - 2011
Directed By : Andrea Arnold
Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights is a refreshing look at a period piece. Unlike the romanticism we usually get from period films, her's is a bare, raw, wild and unrefined. Perhaps even accurate than what we generally get. It is careless to please anyone, content with itself and with its own flaws, but perhaps the very flaws are its advantages too. Perhaps they are not flaws at all, maybe Arnold have a vision which the viewer or reader for that matter dont have. And she know something about the story we dont.
Period films are generally about wide green beautiful fields, delicate costumes, stern diction, a particular way of speaking, and many formalities and extravaganzas. Wuthering Heights totally drops these conventions and shows something bold and raw it its form. It is animalistic, natural, savage, yet so beautiful in its raw form. It is definitely audacious. It may not please everyone, and having released a decade ago, it indeed has got very polarising reactions, both extremes, people love it and people hate it. It doesn't have lukewarm or mild reactions, its impossible for a film as bold as this one to do otherwise. But people with queer, sour tastes or non purists for that matter seem to enjoy this, and find a thrill in this. Purists, on the other hand, defending undoubtedly a great atmospheric book, might even reject Andrea's adaptation altogether, because of the bold, unusual choices she made here.
Heathcliff is no exotic dark skinned gypsy here as he was in the book, but he is simply black. I was too, reluctant to submit to that significant change. But that worked very well and added an extra layer. Afterall, Heathcliff was an outsider, and this choice added another dimension to his character. Andrea Arnold totally shortened the story to its bare essentials and dropped everything else. The second generation is not shown at all. No unnecessary characters. Even poor Nelly, our narrator in the book, don't have enough space in Arnold's Wuthering Heights. The original feel and mood of the book is there. The savagery, the wildness, rawness of emotions, and the blackness of hearts. The aggression. Every character is flawed here, their love too isn't, affectionate. This is no perfect world.
Heathcliff is an outsider, without anyone in the world except for himself. Mr Earnshaw, kind but disciplined and tough, takes him home to live with them. He thinks its a Christian thing to do. Catherine, the daughter of Earnshaw, welcomes Heathcliff by spitting on his face on their first meeting, though that contempt doesn't last long. Her brother Hindley though is more rough and can't even stand the sight of him, later beats him continously. Catherine in the meantime becomes close to this outsider. They form a bond, being in their early teenage years, their love is raw, sweet, strange. Wild even. The most beautiful moments of the film are when they are together. The first time they go out together on moors, Heathcliff and Catherine are on a horse, Heathcliff behind her, and her flowing hairs on his face behind, the smell of her hair can be smelled. It is so gorgeously shot, with hand held camera, and boxy format, the camera runs with them on the moors, fields. When there animalistic love is taking place, we are exposed to this in its most natural form, without restraint, without distraction of unnecessary music, the very sound of rustling of air provides the much needed effect. It feels as we are outsiders and intruders in their little secret world. We feel guilty of having seeing their unrestrained affection for each other. While Cathy licks the bloody, fresh wounds on Heathcliff's back with her warm tongue, we are not sure whether we are supposed watch it. There are many such moments which are so raw and intimate and some so perverse, and some unbearably cruel.
While these moments, at first seem a lot to take in at once, they are not forced upon us, they show certain reality, they have certain purpose. Perhaps thats how the society was in Bronte's time. And this films perhaps do not interpret the text, rather depicts the actual reality in its real sense. And maybe this is what made Bronte write, or that's exactly she might have felt. The desolate society of these moors might have lived with close contact with such fauna, they actually did killed rabbits, they actually did domesticated dogs, not for their amusement but to protect their homes and their ways with them might seem now, savage, cruel. This film is graphic, gooses are hung dead and their feathers plucked, dogs hung by their necks, puppies tortured, rabbits killed, even a gruesome scene involving a sheep being slaughtered with a knife. While the production says, no animals were harmed, it doesn't really makes any difference, it is already quite disturbing.
Most films made from great texts make a mistake of trying to incorporate as much as possible from the text, while compromising other important factors, such as why the book was written in the first place. Arnold's version compels us to think that why such book was written. It isn't faithful adaptation, in traditional sense, yet it is much more faithful than one could imagine. Some books cannot be adapted, because they are not meant to, if you cannot mimic their setting, and the story in its truest form, and the feelings of their characters then it is bound to be unsuccessful. And Andrea Arnold is bold enough to that, even if it is not received well by the audience or has to drop conventional filmmaking techniques to meet the need of audience. It seems the film is not made for anyone in particular, but for itself. Perhaps thats a good thing, otherwise we would have missed a great, fresh, stern and authentic piece of a film.
Rating : ★★★★
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