Many news outlets inform of the best cinematography award won by Wuthering Heights 2011 in Venice:
AFP:
Robbie Ryan was awarded the prize for best photography for "Wuthering Heights" by Britain's Andrea Arnold, a dark adaptation of the tragic love story between Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's well-loved novel.
With no musical score, the film is a visual feast for the senses as it portrays the characters' turmoil through the lashing wind and rain, darkness and harshness of elements up on the Yorkshire moors in northern England.
ScreenDaily:
Giving the award, jury member David Byrne noted the irony in giving a prize for a film for no music. “The landscape was another character in the film at least as good as the actors.”
Ryan thanked Arnold saying, “I hope she goes on to make many, many more great films.” Film4, which backed Shame and Wuthering Heights, was also celebrating. Tessa Ross, Controller of Film and Drama at C4, said: “It is absolutely wonderful to see Michael and Robbie’s talent recognised in this way - both have pushed their craft to the limits of excellence to produce work of truly outstanding quality.” (Sheri Jennings)
The Telegraph:
Another British film, Wuthering Heights, a provocative adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel set in the Yorkshire moors, directed by Andrea Arnold was also recognised at Saturday's award ceremony in Venice, with Robbie Ryan winning the prize for best cinematography. The film stars Kaya Scodelario as Cathy, who previously starred in the Channel 4 series Skins, while Heathcliff is played by newcomer James Howson. Much of the action shot on hand-held cameras. (Roya Nikkah)
The Venice screening is still mentioned in the
Louisville Courier-Journal.
BBC News remembers something that is forgotten too easily:
But [Shame] it's another hit for the now defunct UK Film Council, which part-funded the movie, giving Steve McQueen carte blanche to do exactly as he wished.
It also gave money to another British film that scooped an award at Venice, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights.
Arnold's long-term director of photography, Robbie Ryan, won best cinematography for the film, where the Yorkshire landscape was described as "another character".
Wuthering Heights also received a long standing ovation at its premiere.
It offers a less traditional version of the classic book, with little dialogue. Arnold cast teenagers who had never acted before in the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff. (Emma Jones)
The Guardian saw the film in Venice:
This Wuthering Heights is a wild child of a film, a runaway, a cheeky git, a prickly hedgehog. It is an angry film that sticks two fingers up at convention (Robbie Ryan's magnificent photography is framed in a 4:3 ratio, just when you'd expect such scenery to demand the widest scope possible). Many viewers will be shocked at classic literature reduced to the level of inarticulate playground squabble, yet I also felt that Arnold understood these young people, their tumult and their frustrations more than anyone ever has. (Jason Solomons)
And
The Independent:
Arnold's Wuthering Heights is exceptionally bold – anti-heritage cinema with a vengeance. Its Heathcliff (James Howson) is black, a foundling brought to an inhospitable moorland community, where his presence catalyses a storm of violent resentment. Shot with an eye for elemental intensity, this militantly de-prettified period drama may not be true to the novel's language, but certainly honours its spirit of extreme psychopathology. (Jonathan Romney)
Also on
The Independent:
Brontë purists are likely to be a little shocked by British director Andrea Arnold's new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Early reports from Venice suggest that many elements of Arnold's gritty screenplay will be unfamiliar to readers of the novel. For example, Heathcliff (played by James Howson) at one point utters the soon-to-be-immortal line "F*** you all, you c***s!". Suggestions that this was, in fact, extracted from one of Emily Brontë's early drafts are as yet unsubstantiated. (High Street Ken) )
Or
The Sunday Herald:
Having made her name with the contemporary tales Red Road and Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold has taken on Wuthering Heights and transformed Emily Brontë’s gothic romance into a piece that feels like she’s written it herself; and that’s the sign of a determined auteur. Her treatment will be problematic for those who expect the over-ripe emotions of the original, while satisfying those who will admire its realist and sympathetic focus on the feral Heathcliffe’s miserable life. (Demetrios Matheou)
And
The Sunday Times:
Wuthering Heights was rewarded for its superb cinematography. (...) Arnold’s Wuthering Heights stars a black Heathcliff, and photography that has been compared to Terrence Mallick’s. (Kate Muir)
Somo TIFF's tweets:
cbcradioq: Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" a raw, sound-rich and fresh spin on the Bronte classic. An emerging talent's mark of maturity.
davidlfear: 1st hour of Wuthering Heights is perfection.
HitFix reviews the film after its Toronto screening. Not a very good impression:
Having now seen the film, I'm not surprised that the Venice Film Festival gave a special award to the cinematography by Robbie Ryan, who also shot her two previous films. His work here is spectacular, and there is a tactile quality to the film that goes beyond anything 3D could offer. The problem is that aside from the cinematography and that sensual quality it lends to the film, there's nothing else about "Wuthering Heights" that I can recommend. You might as well re-title the picture "Andrea Arnold's Photography Exhibit On Themes From 'Wuthering Heights'," because this is a still life. It's a non-motion picture. It is dramatically inert, and almost baffling in the way it misses the mark. (...)
As gorgeous as this film is, frame by frame, it never comes to life, and the result is a museum piece at best. (Drew McWeeny)
A.V. Club:
Flashing back to Heathcliff’s arrival at the farmhouse—where his mixed-race and brusque manner draws sharply contrasting reactions—Arnold builds his relationship with Catherine on an accumulation of non-verbal gestures, and the unsparing landscape itself tells much of the story. Though Wuthering Heights can get too precious in its Malickian visual style—ditto Arnold’s Fish Tank—and the severity of it obliterates nuance for the sake of unvarnished power. Yet the harshness allows those fleeting moments of tenderness to pop like a desert bloom. (Noel Murray and Scott Tobias)
Sound on Sight:
Of all the adaptations I’ve seen of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece, this has come the closest to capturing the destructive passion and stark emotional cruelty of that novel, and perhaps the only to truly add to the experience in the course of adaptation. It is cinematic poetry. It is a visceral torment. It is not to be missed. (Dave Robson)
filmblogging:
For many this’ll be extremely slow (the person I saw it with hated it, and the old lady to my left was in agony), but for those who can engage themselves in something more than just narrative, then you’ll love it.
Not discussing directly Andrea Arnold's film but the casting of a black actor as Heathcliff,
The Times talks about the dangers of idealising literary creations:
I only read Wuthering Heights relatively recently. I loved it, obviously, though it’s a startlingly dark book for so many 12-year-old girls of my generation to have fallen in love with: it makes the Twilight series look like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I also took it as a given, very early on, that Heathcliff was either black or, more probably, mixed race. Having finished the book, I was keen to discuss it with girlfriends who had read it at a formative age and spoke about it with passionate devotion. I was astonished to find only one of them agreed with me about Heathcliff’s ethnicity, because I had thought that my conclusion was blindingly obvious. I wasn’t trying to make a provocative point, but just stating a fact: “And, of course, it’s interesting that he’s black.” (...)
What is interesting is the vociferousness with which people react to the idea that their romantic hero may not be exactly how they imagine him to be. I don’t think I’m speaking only for myself when I say that women’s fantasy figures — their romantic ideals — are often from the pages of fiction, at least if the women are remotely bookish. Men’s tend to be from real life. (India Knight)
Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights
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