Kayleigh Donaldson
Earlier this year, Saltburn director Emerald Fennell announced she would be the latest filmmaker to adapt Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights for the big screen. There are dozens of versions of this beloved gothic novel out there, including a Bunuel movie, an opera, a Kate Bush song, and a Cliff Richard musical, but as with all public domain works, there will always be more on the horizon. Brontë’s book inspires generations of readers because of its emotionally consuming portrayal of a torrid romance against the backdrop of a cruel class divide. Most adaptations focus on the melodrama, delving into the expected tropes of gothic literature. That means lots of screaming, lots of tempestuous passion, and plenty of running across the moors with one’s shirt undone. Andrea Arnold took a different direction with her version.
Oscar winner and Cannes mainstay Arnold (whose new film Bird is out this week) is known for her stories of gritty social realism, typically focused on the British and American working classes who live in society’s margins and using a blend of professional and non-professional actors. Arnold’s characters are outsiders, often devastated by loneliness and isolation, but not so easily categorizable as heroes or villains. They are borne of circumstance and viewed with an empathetic and unjudging eye. That sensibility made her ideal for Wuthering Heights, even though, prior to making it, she proclaimed that she’d never make a period drama or adapt someone else’s work.
In her version, Arnold only adapts the first half of the novel, choosing to largely focus on Cathy and Heathcliff’s childhoods. It’s also devoid of many of the expected elements of a British period drama. There are no frills or stuffy clipped accents here, no groaning overtures or polished production design. There’s not even a score (although we do get a Mumford and Sons song at the end, which is one of the film’s few errors). Instead, the Yorkshire moors are earthy and decidedly unpretty, presented so matter-of-factly (through Robbie Ryan’s cinematography) that it almost seems anti-gothic. It strips away any needless padding to focus entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff, the young lovers whose attraction is both primal and petulant.
There’s an undeniable sensuality to Arnold’s work too, which feels right at home in a Bronte adaptation (see pretty much every scene of Fish Tank involving Michael Fassbender.) When Heathcliff is beaten, Cathy literally licks his wounds from his back. He sniffs her hair when they ride together on one horse. It’s the performance of two young people who are desperately trying to find the words to match their burgeoning desires. When the pair reunite as adults (played by James Howson and Kaya Scodelario), they are no more articulate but the passions between them are evident. Yet it is still a love story between two young people who are forced to the fringes of society: her dependent on the charity of any man who will marry her, and he a Black man who was saved from the streets by the dubious charity of a white man.
Stripping away the trappings of the novel – all the literary conventions, the heightened romanticism, the moments of supernatural intrusion – leaves behind a simple story about love and the vicious cycle of the class system. The brutish Hindley, Cathy’s brother and heir to the homestead, never lets Heathcliff forget his status as the Other in the household, spewing the N-word at him with glee. When their father dies, Hindley is all too eager to eject his adopted brother from the household. This is typical Arnold, strapping her film into young Heathcliff’s perspective and showing the true degradation of a system that has tried to destroy him at every turn. And it all unfolds on the backdrop of nature’s merciless and uncaring force. This does make this version of Wuthering Heights less of a tearjerker and more of a simmering pot, driven by anger as much as love.
During a talk with Ira Sachs at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Arnold said that she didn’t like the film and she now finds it “hard to look at.” It’s a shame she feels this way because, frankly, more British period dramas should follow in its footsteps. The genre that still widely defines UK cinema remains stuck in the easy ruts of cravats, decorum, and safe adaptations of well-worn material. There’s an unfairly sharp divide between historical and modern, between classic and realism, and all it’s done is make for boring works that aggravate the harsh class dynamics of British culture. Arnold’s Wuthering Heights felt like a two-fingers-up response to that, a reimagining that showed the great books still had some urgency within their pages and didn’t have to be reliant on trite expectations. Here’s hoping that Arnold returns to adaptation and period dramas in the future. We could use more of her unflinching vision.
“Wuthering Heights” is available on Peacock, Kanopy, Hoopla, and several ad-supported streamers.
