I went to see Andrea Arnold’s
adaptation of Wuthering Heights at our local independent cinema recently; I thought
it was amazing. However, I seemed to be
in a minority and I just couldn’t understand why; it took a while for me to
digest why I liked it – and why it seems that the other people around me didn’t,
but I think I finally figured it out (well, a little bit!)
When I
first read Wuthering Heights, many years ago, I read the story of Heathcliff
and Cathy; the novel was all about love and being kept apart and how love would
conquer all, even death. The idea of Heathcliff
and Cathy being together in death as they could not be in life was so romantic
and appealed to my teenage self. Over
the years I have found a different story every time I have re-read the novel
and have lost the idea of Wuthering Heights being the greatest love story ever
told; instead, I have come to see a novel about struggle – against prejudice,
gender, the environment, just about everything.
The novel, as I see it, is about the harshness of life – not just a love
story (although, the feelings of Heathcliff and Cathy for each other bind the
story together).
So,
when I watched the film, I was not surprised that it foregrounded the landscape
and the conflict of the characters; I was impressed, and just a little relieved
that someone else ‘read’ the book similarly to the way I do! I was impressed by
the lack of – well, noise in the film; the characters do not need to speak,
they act out their feelings and we
(as the viewers) can see the power that Cathy holds over Heathcliff, right from
the start, in the way she treats him.
This power ranges from her ripping his hair out of his head (without a murmur
from him), to her pinning him to the ground with her foot on his head. There is no need for a musical score, the
sounds of nature – the wind, the rain and the sounds of nature are an apt
soundtrack, which I found made me look and listen more, not being distracted by
music.
Arnold also did well in not creating
likeable characters. To be frank, I do
not think there are not many likeable characters in Wuthering Heights; Cathy is
selfish, Heathcliff is...well Heathcliff, tortured and Byronic. Even Nellie
Dean has her bad points and she is one of the nicer characters! Arnold shows this very well, the characters
are not shown as if they belong in a love story – they are harsh and as
unforgiving as the landscape they live in, a landscape which they belong in.
Maybe I liked the film because it
was the adaptation I wanted it to be, that matched my reading of the novel, and
maybe that is the problem with the film too.
There is no resolution, the second generation do not enter the film at
all, so there is no happy ever after, just the bleakness of the Yorkshire Moors
and the thought of death separating Heathcliff and Cathy – and not the love
story that has come to be associated with Wuthering Heights.
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