Reactions to Wuthering Heights 2009 (V)

Still a couple of reactions to this latest screen adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel.

MOSTLY POSITIVE:

Clare Elfman for Buzzine:

What? Another remake of one of my sacred favorite oldies? No way! I had been burned by the disappointing redo of that great bitchy free-for-all fast-talk classic, The Women, and majorly burned by what they did with the exceptional, unforgettable series Brideshead Revisited and the extraordinary characterizations by Jeremy Irons and Clare Bloom, so that when I saw the new version, I thought: Viewers who have never seen the original will buy this one and miss the nuanced performance of the manipulative mother and the undertheme of Catholicism in pre-war England.

I watched the first few moments of Wuthering Heights, stewing over the betrayal of remaking this classic, darkly gothic-y romance…and then I got hooked.

In the tradition of the nineteenth century novel, the hero suffers and suffers, but everything turns out okay in the end — miraculously okay, and there is never never any actual sex. Too coarse. Not polite.

This new version of Wuthering Heights, presented by Masterpiece Theater Classics last weekend, is something different — realistic, sexual, brutal — and quite caught me by surprise. I’d say that this version does not replace a classic Heathcliffe who comes to Cathy’s room when she’s dying of pneumonia (barely coughing and speaking clearly with a congested lung), who lifts her in his arms to carry her to the window to see her beloved Yorkshire moor, and with a final farewell she simply and quietly dies and then hangs around as a ghost until he dies so that the lovers are reunited in the hereafter.

Not this time around. The story is quiet different. Heathcliffe is a sullen, brutal creature with the wild hair thing. Cathy is not genteel Merle Oberon, but a 2009 contemporary-look Cathy — a strong-willed woman, and she frankly and sexually loves this guy and is willing to betray her wedding vows to join in mutual passion.

Of course, as in the original, her bastard of a brother has resented Heathcliffe since her father had found this little gypsy castaway and brought him home. But this new version, rotten brother with little pretext, has the lowly adopted gypsy boy flogged — an actual shirt-off, hit-with-the-lash floggy scene.

When Cathy is seduced by the wealth and manners of polite Linton and decides to marry him, she has some fantasy of keeping Heathcliffe as a “friend.” Hey, we know passion like theirs, and we’d like to warn them that it won’t work. When Heathcliffe realizes that his Cathy intends to marry someone else, he rides off — torn jacket, wild hair, no money. Cathy would have told him she’d changed her mind, but too late — he’s gone. And why didn’t he write and tell her where he was and permit her to profess her undying love?

So eventually, she marries the rich guy. And when does Heathcliffe return? And when does she see him again? Just after she leaves the church on the arm of her rich, spineless husband.

There is Heathcliffe, himself rich and transformed, and she still loves him. She now realizes that she’s made a terrible mistake. She still has a wild heart. Now he’s had perhaps three years in the “new world” and he’s made an enormous amount of money (it’s never explained how he has managed, in a few years, to get this rich and to get his accent polished and a fine new hair-style). She’s immediately regretful. She rushes out to the wild Yorkshire moor to meet him, and she actually makes love to him! In a nineteenth century novel? Physical love? Well, he says to her something like, “You’ve gone back to that pasty Linton after we’ve ‘lain’ together?” Sounds like sex to me.

Now she’s a mess. She loves this guy and, in his anger, he’s determined to destroy her and her whole family — first to ruin the bounder of a brother. When Olivier did this, he did it with style and as a gentlemen would destroy an adversary. Our new Heathcliffe is really rough-edged and so passionate in everything he does, he comes close to smashing the guy’s head open on the hearth. And once he sees his Cathy with the weak Linton, he goes for the jugular: out of spite, he marries her sister-in-law.

There is an actual sex scene in which this angry Heathcliffe is making love to his new wife, who looks up at him, waiting for a little affection, and he stares down at her (in mid-you-know) and says, “Don’t look at me.” He’s “having his way” with his wife but thinking of his lover.

Poor Cathy is not Merle Oberon, being the lady always. In the classic original, she makes a lovely home for Linton until Heathcliffe returns. In this one, a pregnant Cathy, big enough to deliver, runs out into the freezing storm in her nightgown, where Heathcliffe finds her at their favorite trysting spot, almost dead, and carries her back to her husband.

When Olivier says his famous line — begging Fate that Cathy may not die in peace but walk the Earth as a shadow until he gives up this life and joins her…it’s an Olivier literary curse.

This new Heathcliffe really damns her.

The new version extends to three children: Cathy’s daughter, Heathcliffe’s weak and sickly son by the unloved sister-in-law, and the bastard brother’s son. All these kids grow up, and Heathcliffe manipulates them into pain and suffering, until finally he kills himself to end the agony of this great loss.

The new version does have its “happy ending”…sort of…but the story, in its telling, is forceful, brutal, sexual, powerful. Heathcliffe is played by Tom Hardy, known for his role in Star Trek (without the hair). Charlotte Riley (Cathy) was unfamiliar to me, but she plays a wildly unrepentent woman who doesn’t mind betraying her husband for the rough-edged lover. What surprised me was Andrew Lincoln who plays the weak Linton. Remember him as the best friend of the groom who had a passion for the bride in Love Actually?

I won’t say that this is a “remake” in the ordinary sense, but another version of the book which actually shocked readers when it was first published. Written by a parson’s daughter who knew nothing of life and died at thirty, this was one passionate dream of a novel which, although they threatened to ban it on publication, has never, since that time, been out of print.

Of course, I saw the original when I was young, and I thrilled to the handsome Olivier walking up the rocky path, cold wind whistling about him to find his gentle and beautiful ghost of a Cathy waiting for him, ready to join him in the hereafter.

I’m older and wiser…and today’s wild Heathcliffe and unrepentant Cathy are absolutely destined to end up not in heaven but in hell.

Masterpiece Theater’s Wuthering Heights will surely replay and it’s worth catching…but if you haven’t seen the original, give that a look. See the difference time makes. Olivier’s Cathy dies of a lung affliction with no more than a little cough. The new version has a suffering Cathy choking, unable to breathe. Please do not miss the scene just after his soul-loved Cathy dies when he howls — an animal sound that surely comes out of a hellish underworld.

EDIT:
Savvy Verse & Wit:

Unlike the book, Heathcliff has a softer side, which only turns darker when Catherine's brother, Hindley, takes over the estate after the death of Mr. Earnshaw. Hindley was vicious to Heathcliff as a child when his father brought the gypsy home. Rumors circulate that Heathcliff is Mr. Earnshaw's illegitimate son, and Hindley wants to restore his family's reputation. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff grows exponentially from when they were children, and through a sped up storyline and camera effects, their adult-like relationship and wild demeanors are revealed--romping on the moors, becoming intimate, and continuing to engage in childish pursuits of spying on the neighboring Lintons.
What's missing from this movie adaption is the searing hatred Heathcliff exudes on his fellow man and particularly on Hindley. Eventually this hatred and darkness also descends on Catherine after she marries Edgar Linton. More than just Heathcliff's edges are softened in this adaption. He's kinder to Isabella, Catherine, and the subsequent children. Heathcliff's ending is much more sedate than the downward spiral in the novel. Catherine also is a much softer, more lovable character in this adaption. She could be just as harsh as Healthcliff at times. The ending also is more hopeful.
Staying true to the novel may not have been the aim of this movie adaption. I'll rate it 3 out of 5 bags of popcorn because the actors were well selected, the storyline was gripping, and the scenes were gorgeous.

Adaptations and Academics:

Though that modern version is my personal favorite thus far, I’d still like to see a faithful adaptation of the original story. Plain and simple, I’d love to see a straight-from-the-page adaptation that retains the frame structure of the novel as well as all its problematic and sometimes off-putting characters and behaviors. Surely if Austen’s Pride and Prejudice can be done in a grand six-hour BBC production, the same could be done for Wuthering Heights. We need Lockwood to see different shades of Heathcliff; we need to see Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual cruelty in all its glory to truly understand the psyche of the text. Instead of more truncated, feature-film-length versions like this most recent one, we really do need the whole shebang for this novel to work on film. (Read more)

MOSTLY NEGATIVE:

Girl Detective:

I found the recent Wuthering Heights Masterpiece adaptation on PBS mostly disappointing. It felt romanticized rather than rough, Wuthering Heights looked much too clean, and whoever cast Charlotte Riley as Catherine should be smacked upside the head. Bad enough that she’s slightly cross-eyed, which her umpteen closeups did nothing to hide. But her brows were expertly groomed and her teeth straight, white and polished. She looked more like a modern model for a teen magazine than a wild-child Gothic heroine.

Heathcliff, on the other hand, was done very well by Tom Hardy. His crooked teeth, wild hair, large frame, jolie-laide countenance and well-done acting all helped convey the palpable menace, sexiness and craziness that is this complex character.

I’ll re-read the book soon, as I couldn’t tell quite how many liberties they took with the dialogue.

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights