Continuous Revenge Seeker Disorder (CRSD)

Victoire Sanborn from Jane Austen's World is the new reviewer of the forthcoming Wuthering Heights miniseries for the PBS - Remotely Connected website. BrontëBlog's review will be published there next week.

Since I first encountered Heathcliff in the classic 1939 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, I have had a love/hate relationship with him. Emily Brontë's anguished character cannot be called a hero by any stretch of the imagination, yet I mistook him for one at first. Like Isabella Linton, I was sure Heathcliff was a good man needing to be rescued.
While my foolish 15-year-old romantic girlish heart knew he could be redeemed through the force of true love, Miss Brontë informs us in no uncertain terms that any such thought will lead to disaster. The kindest thing one can say about Heathcliff is that his tortured soul leads him to violent exertion.
The 1939 film stops short of the full story, concentrating on Heathcliff's obsession with Catherine Earnshaw, and neglecting fully one half of the novel in which he extracts his awful revenge on the Lintons and Earnshaws. Masterpiece Classic's 2008 adaptation of the novel, adapted by Peter Browker and directed by Coky Giedroye, makes no such mistake. Heathcliff's cunning as he plans his revenge is revealed one terrible scene at a time. Viewers who have not yet read the novel will be both attracted and repelled as Heathcliff deliberately ruins lives and creates mayhem in the psyches of those who are left standing.
The opening sequence of Wuthering Heights occurs on a bleak night. Slung low to the ground, the camera swoops over a meandering path like a preternatural creature and enters the house. It hurls up the stairs to the strains of dark, throbbing music, stops abruptly in Catherine Earnshaw's room and pans to Heathcliff, who is lying in her bed moaning, "End it! End it!" The viewer knows instantly that this film - through script, direction, mood, and setting - will provide no romantic retelling of Emily Bronte's tale. Whew.
Tom Hardy, who plays Heathcliff, is a compelling man to look at but not classically handsome. With his full lips he can look soft and tender (and even handsome) playing a young Heathcliff, but as the character ages, Mr. Hardy transforms himself into a physically menacing man, creating a memorable character oozing with passion, venom, and hatred. Hardy's loose limbed and prowling walk; large shoulders and thick thighs; scraggly hair; slightly crooked teeth; disheveled clothes; and uncouth air bespeak Heathcliff's inner torment. Even when Heathcliff transforms himself into a suave and presentable suitor in order to court Isabella Linton, he exudes danger. Cathy Earnshaw, tied to him heart and soul, understands his actions instantly, but Heathcliff's victims, projecting their own vision onto the man, are like lambs to a slaughter.
Mr. Hardy delivers his lines with a casual menace (and not without relish), referring to his sick and sniffling son, Linton, as an "it"; telling his new wife, Isabella, that "I cannot love you - your eyes detestably resemble your brother's, so I cannot bear to look at them without wishing you ill"; and murmuring as he views Cathy in her casket, "May she wake in torment." One can imagine how shocked 19th century readers were to discover that this novel was penned by a provincial minister's spinster daughter not yet turned thirty. One hundred and sixty years later Miss Bronte's tale of obsession and merciless retaliation still shocks us to the core.
I kept asking myself as I watched this film adaptation: What is it about Heathcliff's passionate love for Cathy that we find so compelling and that has us reading the novel and viewing its movie adaptations repeatedly? ? Is it because we feel pity for both the victims and their victimizer? In the book we learn Heathcliff's story through Nelly Dean, the narrator, and the reader never directly enters his mind. Yet even through Nelly's filter, Heathcliff leaps off the pages demanding our attention. The film provides no such barrier, telling the tale straight out. We feel deeply for his loss when Mr. Earnshaw dies, and can empathize with his rage and bewilderment when Hindley returns to Wuthering Heights and banishes him to the stables.
Our sympathy is still with him as Cathy arouses his jealousy of Edgar Linton, and when she cannot make up her mind between the two men.
When Cathy informs Nelly that Edgar has proposed to her, Heathcliff overhears her saying it would degrade her to marry him. He leaves Wuthering Heights abruptly, thereby missing the rest of Cathy's conversation: "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" Like Cathy and still in his corner, we want to desperately call him back and set things right.
Heathcliff's return years later as a rich man precipitates a series of events that destroys the Lintons and Hindley Earnshaw, and leads Cathy to her demise. His passionate outcry over Cathy's gravesite -"I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul!" - is not a declaration of romantic love but a primeval cry. He survives Cathy for another eighteen years. Implacable, unchangeable, and tormented by her elusive spectre, Heathcliff seeks revenge on the second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws.
By now we have stopped making excuses for Heathcliff's actions, for no rational person can condone his inexorable plans, yet without his unswerving passion for Cathy, there would be no unforgettable tale. "Haunt me then, be with me always. Take any form," he had beseeched Cathy at her gravesite, but is is Heathcliff we will remember. Long after this production of Wuthering Heights has aired, he will haunt us still.

On the reviewer's website we found another, much funnier review of this production:

Inquiring Readers: This tongue in cheek review of Wuthering Heights, showing on PBS January 18th & 25th, has been written in the spirit of fun (and illumination!). In it Dr. Phyl, Oprey’s favorite tele-psychobabbler, analyzes Heathcliff and Cathy. (...)

Dear Dr. Phyl,

Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have had a long and stormy relationship. After Cathy’s death, Heathcliff dealt badly with her loss, seeking revenge. One might say he handled himself in a most ungentlemanlike manner. Miss Emily Brontë, an interested bystander, wrote a book about this unique tale, which I am sending on to you. After you have read Wuthering Heights, would you mind answering a few questions? Wouldn’t you agree that loving someone too much is a bad thing? And aren’t women more prone to going crazy over a lost love than men? In other words, how realistic is this story?

Thanking you in advance, Ms. Place

Dear Ms. Place,

To answer your second point first, let me state categorically that in this day and age men have as much right to go crazy as women. Males might exhibit this character trait differently, but crazy is as crazy does.

In my long career as a tele-psychobabbler, I must say that I encounter an assortment of juvenile behaviors among my featured guests, but few possess even 1/10th of Heathcliff’s charged and emotionally unhealthy obsessions. He is as nuts as they come and I write these words with awe and respect. Seldom has a man with so many problems been able to keep up a normal façade for very long, and Heathcliff managed to fool enough people and hold them in his thrall until he could destroy them. (Read more)

On Jane Austen Today the emphasis is put on Charlotte Riley's performance:

Lauded as one of Britain’s most exciting young actresses, Ms. Riley’s portrayal of the wild and impetuous Cathy Earnshaw is both spirited and complex. Her very large and expressive eyes and strong resolute jaw reveal a character tormented over her one true love and her choice of comfort and earthly riches. (Laurel Ann)

The Boston Globe also publishes a not overly positive review:

'Sometimes, your true passion is hate rather than love," Cathy says to Heathcliff in PBS's "Wuthering Heights."
That line qualifies as serious understatement in this new adaptation of the Emily Bronte classic, which airs as a two-part "Masterpiece Theatre" beginning tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2. In this miniseries, Heathcliff is something of a revenge-crazed monster, embodying all the baser elements of mankind. He is a beastly, sneering fellow, played by Tom Hardy with absolutely none of Laurence Olivier's tortured romantic aura.
And that relentlessly primitive approach to Heathcliff, culminating next Sunday in a truly unfortunate plot diversion from the novel, undermines this "Wuthering Heights." From beginning to end, you can hardly understand Cathy's all-consuming connection to Heathcliff, who was brought home by Cathy's father as an orphaned street boy. The miniseries doesn't inject their relationship with the novel's raw, indescribable harmony, the supernatural merging of souls. It contains no ghosts, no disembodied voices. Instead, Cathy and Heathcliff are more like a pair of profoundly insecure lovers.
The PBS "Wuthering Heights" is framed by the less mythic story of young Cathy Linton and Linton Heathcliff, the children of the central story's primary characters. These kids are puppets for the embittered, aging Heathcliff, who is acting out his grief at having lost his Cathy many years earlier. The miniseries also gets into Heathcliff's early abuse at the hands of Cathy's brother, Hindley (Burn Gorman), and, later, Heathcliff's repayment to Hindley for that mistreatment.
But the narrative centerpiece is, of course, the past-tense triangle of Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar Linton (Andrew Lincoln), and Heathcliff's torment at having lost his great love to the more civilized, wealthy gentleman. Because Hardy's Heathcliff is so demonic and stubborn, Cathy - played by Charlotte Riley - looks almost saintly by comparison. And that's really too bad, since she should be partly responsible for the mess that ensues. How much more engaging for the "Wuthering Heights" audience it is when both lovers are to blame for their failure.
As Cathy, Riley is fine but, as she sets off for romps through the moors with Heathcliff, maybe a little too much of a modern bohemian.
I can't say this "Wuthering Heights" is a mess; it contains enough physical beauty and dramatic affect to sweep you along to the bitter end. You could do worse. But if you are craving an operatic story of love that couldn't survive earthly form, you'd be better off getting out your reading glasses. (Matthew Gilbert)

The San Francisco Gate's reviewer has not enjoyed the production either:

Some classic works of literature are sufficiently complex to justify new adaptations every few decades or so. Others are not, but they still get redone anyway.
Even if you're a fan of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights," and I admit up front that I'm not, you're likely to find the new "Masterpiece" treatment airing over the next two Sundays overheated and underdone at the same time.
Bronte's 1846 tragedy is a complicated story of a doomed romance between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling her father brings home from Liverpool to raise with his own two children. Because the lovers' story is related as a flashback, we know that Cathy has died and that Heathcliff has overcome his humble beginnings and is driven by revenge against Cathy's brother, Hindley, her husband and everyone else he believes has wronged him.
No one could make any of this completely credible, but at least it could have had a passable shot with more directorial restraint on the part of Coky Giedroyc. Instead, Giedroyc goes over-the-top gothic at every opportunity. The film seems to have the kind of production values that informed Roger Corman's cheesy great film versions of classic Poe works such as "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Those films are still a lot of fun, but that's because their cheesiness was intended.
"Wuthering Heights" benefits from some compelling and surprisingly credible performances by several cast members. Tom Hardy, who will play Bill Sikes in the forthcoming "Oliver Twist" on "Masterpiece," makes a very intriguing and believable Heathcliff, despite all the character's personality U-turns. He looks almost handsome as the young Heathcliff, yet somewhat grotesque as the older man consumed by hate, and that's almost entirely because of his performance, as opposed to, say, makeup and messy hair. Charlotte Riley makes for a beautiful and spirited Cathy, Burn Gorman is properly reptilian as Hindley Earnshaw and Andrew Lincoln - at first noble and patient, and then frustrated by jealousy as Cathy's husband - is almost equal to the challenge of making us believe this unlikely character as raggedly sketched in Peter Bowker's script. (David Wiegand)

The Los Angeles Times has an insipid review:

Given its thoroughgoing tempestuousness, it's no surprise that Emily Brontë's novel of everlasting love denied -- and yet, in its way, fulfilled -- is catnip to producers and actors alike. Along with the heavy breathing, it has the appointments of a fairy tale (dark child reduced to servitude by evil foster brother) and of a ghost story (lonely, isolated house, dug-up grave, possible actual ghosts). And yet it is a difficult story to make well, because its hero, Heathcliff, is also such a villain -- at the very least a pain in the neck -- as he prosecutes a permanent war of revenge against everyone who kept him down or apart from his foster sister, Cathy. (And she can be a bit of a pill herself.)
For his part, Heathcliff is doomed only to be miserable, and he makes a lot of other people unhappy before his own death finally reunites him, if you like to look at it that way, with Catherine. The 1939 William Wyler film, which didn't hurt Laurence Olivier's career any, ends at Cathy's death (only halfway through the novel), omitting all of Heathcliff's subsequent perversity as -- having become mysteriously rich and locally powerful -- he takes out his own misfortunes on the younger members of two intertwined families. Tom Hardy, who was the extraordinarily creepy handyman in "Meadowlands," takes the lead here.
He is a suitably dangerous sort, but ("Gypsy" origins notwithstanding) he also plays Heathcliff as a solid Yorkshireman; he's at his best, oddly, at his most manipulative and hard-hearted.
For the most part, it remains difficult to feel his pain enough to want to take his side. Worse, in spite of a good deal of bodily contact, the sparks never really fly between him and Cathy (Charlotte Riley), though they are both obviously hot. We take their passion as read, rather than felt.
As to that title -- Brontë herself wasted no time in explaining it as "a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather." This production doesn't wuther quite enough. (Robert Lloyd)

Lansing State Journal's concerns are more related to their biased view of the novel than to this new version:

People keep filming new versions of this Emily Bronte story, despite its flaw - the men are so obsessed and unrelenting that everything seems pre-ordained. The stars (Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley) and photography are superb, but this is still a rough ride for viewers. (Mike Hughes)

The Kansas City Star seems more prone to this new work:

It's a compact, two-night retelling that takes a liberty here and there, but compensates for that with some of the interesting visual ideas it throws out -- in particular, the images of Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) and Catherine (Charlotte Riley) in the film's opening and closing scenes.

If they are thinking of the closing scene we have in mind (the very last shot), we cannot be more in disagreement.

Finally, BlogCritics announces the upcoming broadcast with a supposedly funny (?) comment:

Masterpiece Classic – "Wuthering Heights." Wuthering it's cold, Wuthering it's hot, we'll have Wuthering, Wuthering or not. In this case the cool cat that's not Garfield is portrayed by Tom Hardy, and newcomer Charlotte Riley is Cathy. Part one of two airs tonight, and part two of two will air at another day and time (I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it'll be next week at the same time). (Josh Lasser)

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights