Wuthering Heights in Venice. Reactions (I)

The overall reaction of the critics is quite positive (picture: Andrea Arnold, REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi):
(Work in progress)

Positive:
Time Out London:

This might be the British filmmaker’s first literary adaptation, but all her trademarks are there, from the woozy camerawork capturing motes of dust in the sunshine and almost-square, Academy screen ratio to the use of natural light and the up-close-and-then-some relationship with one character. (...)
Like most screen versions, Arnold’s film drops its curtain when Heathcliff’s almost-lover Cathy (Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario), also his adopted sister, leaves the story, so ignoring its second half. But unlike most, this spin on the well-worn classic pays as much attention to the weather and assorted animals, plants and insects as it does to the emotional heft of the tragedy of unrealised love as its core. Nature offers numerous cameos from hawks, dogs, rabbits, sheep, starlings and beetles. Thistles and oaks, too, get repeated walk-ons. For Arnold, the details of landscape and wildlife are substitutes for easy dialogue and exposition. (...)
Arnold prefers that her characters say not much at all. Arnold clearly associates the literary with talk and the poetic with silence. It’s an approach that causes hiccups when we end up feeling more distant from some key characters than we should. (...)
But the best of the film – the first hour at least – is excellent. Arnold’s strongest work goes into exploring Heathcliff and Cathy’s early, tentative romance with smart tenderness and a visceral sense of where pain meets pleasure and how youngsters turn to playful violence when they don’t understand or can’t control love.  (...)
This ‘Wuthering Heights’ looks astounding and there are clever decisions in almost every scene. Its lack of final tragedy, though, is a problem, and by the end you feel just as shut off from the world around him as Heathcliff does – a stranger in his own story. You could say that feeling itself is a smart one to impart – but it’s not entirely satisfying. (David Calhoun)

Splendor Cinema:

Andrea Arnold’s version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS couldn’t be more dissimilar: a big, towering masterpiece that should be the template for all English period pieces: unconventional, bold, innovative, brave – and above all, moving. The film reminded me a lot of Malick’s THE NEW WORLD in the way that the love story is intertwined with the natural landscape, and the lack of score is filled by the sounds of the moors – the howling winds, the pouring rain, the dogs and the crickets. This is exactly the kick up the ass a classic like this needs – a necessary, fresh approach. One of my favorite films of the year. (Jon Brighton)

indieWire's The Playlist:

While Brontë purists might take issue with some of Arnold’s creative decisions, they also manage to make it a radical, but entirely successful, version, one that might be her most uncompromising film yet. It might be a period piece, but that doesn’t mean Arnold is pulling her punches. (...)
The thing is, the changes to the established order aren’t really changes at all, but instead are steps towards Brontë‘s original intention. The youthful casting (and splitting of the roles) helps to bring to life a world where, thanks to disease, exposure and unsafe childbirth, few live past forty, and the actors are closer to the ages intended by the author than any previous version. The other shake-up is a bigger leap, but it works beautifully. Heathcliff is described as dark and gypsy-like in the novel, but whereas recent inhabitants of the part have included Ralph Fiennes and Tom Hardy, Arnold has cast black actors in the role.
In the 2011 version, the character begins unable to speak any English, and is marked by whip-marks and brandings on his back, clearly a former slave of some kind, and it goes an enormous way to emphasizing his outsider role in the Yorkshire community, adding extra charge to his cruel treatment (witness Edgar saying that he’s dressed “like a little circus monkey”) without ever betraying the source material. It all adds up to the most sympathetic Heathcliff that we can recall on screen, something crucial in terms of the sometimes abominable acts he commits before the credits roll. (...)
As much as it’s Heathcliff’s story (and here, it really is, as he stays front and center throughout), Arnold makes the Yorkshire landscape just as much a central character. It’s a far cry from the dingy streets and council flats of her previous films, but the director is almost Terrence Malick-like in her dedication to nature and landscape here. Like “Fish Tank,” she’s shot it in Academy Ratio, and it works even better here, giving her the height to capture the rolling hills and misty moors in which the story takes place.
No detail escapes Robbie Ryan‘s camera (career-best work from someone who is already one of our favorite active cinematographers), from sunlight catching dust kicked up by violence to a tear-like droplet of blood off a hanging pheasant (those who can’t stand to watch violence towards animals may be forced to look elsewhere in several places). And night is really night here, with nocturnal scenes only faintly visible, untainted by light pollution of any kind. But unlike Malick’s most recent film, there’s grace in nature, but there’s also brutality; the moors are a place as savage as some of the characters.
Not that it’s a stately change of pace for Arnold. Her style is immediately recognizable, a nimble hand-held camera capturing the emotional and physical violence as well as their surroundings. The editing (from regular cutter Nicolas Chaudeurge) is impeccable as well, the second half of the film haunted by images of Heathcliff and Cathy in happier times, while there’s a marvelous economy of storytelling in the passage of time—Heathcliff marches out onto the moor a boy, and returns from the mist as a man.
Arnold confirms what we suspected from Katie Jarvis’ performance in “Fish Tank”; that she’s a phenomenal director of untried talent. Arguably the film’s best two performances come from Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer, as the younger Heathcliff and Cathy, effortlessly selling a relationship that has to walk a difficult line between sibling affection and soul-destroying love. Kaya Scodelario, perhaps the best known face in the cast after starring in four seasons of British TV hit “Skins” (as well as cropping up in “Moon,” among others), is a heart-wrenching revelation as Older Cathy, while Nichola Burley (”Donkey Punch”), as the older Isabella Morley, breaks hearts as well, as the naive girl caught in Heathcliff’s vengeance.
Nelly, the housekeeper, is naturally a reduced presence, seeing as Arnold eschews the framing device of the novel, but it’s still a lovely turn from another debutante, Simone Jackson. Some have been cooler on James Howson as the elder Heathcliff, but we think it’s only because it’s such a different version of the character than the Byronic anti-hero of popular imagination: we thought it was a strong debut turn, even if he is outshone by his younger counterpart.
It’s not quite a tearjerker, Arnold playing up the anger of the novel, but we sort of feel that’s the way that it should be. But it’s incredibly powerful, extremely sexy (there’s one scene that takes place between Cathy and Heathcliff after the latter has been caned that’s more erotic than anything we’ve seen in a while), and a truly remarkable reinvention of a text that beforehand, we weren’t sure we ever needed to see on screen again. (Oliver Lyttelton)

Mostly positive:

What Culture!:

The atmosphere of the film is gloomy, as those rainy days in England, making it a perfect setting for this impossible love story. In this family drama everyone is very human, they are all just trying to survive doing what they believe is right, and in the end there is really no character that we could call a hero and no real antagonist, as they all have flaws, they all make mistakes and they all do their best to protect the things they love.
Catherine is the center of all attention both from her protective brother and from Heathcliff, when a third man comes claiming her heart. Kaya Scodelario plays a charming Catherine who does her best to abide by the rules but who also wants to follow her heart, and is beautiful to watch the way she treats Heathcliff, the way she looks at him.
Overall the latest Wuthering Heights is very well made, even though for some people it may be be a little boring as the story spans through many years and there are many moments of absolutely no music or dialogue and some long scenes where not a lot happens. But I guess that is the novel and if you have read Wuthering Heights and you liked it, then you will enjoy this version. If you are not a fan of impossible love stories and films with lots of silence, then you may want to stay away from this. (Andrea Pasquettin)

Negative:
San Francisco Gate:

Today I saw Andrea Arnold's new adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" and lasted an hour. A charmless bleak experience. (...)
I am a lot less sure of the prospects for "Wuthering Heights," in that I have difficulty imagining who the audience might be for it -- or even who someone else might imagine the audience might be for it. (Mick LaSalle)

Tweets:

Guy Lodge: (Arnold, B+) Thrillingly terse deconstruction, Robbie Ryan's lensing is witchcraft. I only question its depth of feeling.
JigsawLounge: 7/10. It's just the book's 1st half. But Bronte & Bush would admire the sensual starkness.
If only this risky, unadorned approach was the norm for period pics & literary adaptations, not the exception
splendorcinema: Andrea Arnold's WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a towering masterpiece only tarnished by the use of a song in the final minutes. Amazing.
olilyttelton-The Playlist: Wuthering Heights (A) Stunning. A visceral, revelatory reinvention, and my favourite of the festival so far
It should also be said that Andrea Arnold has made a better Terrence Malick film than Terrence Malick did this year.
domkam: Wuthering Heights, wohl einer der preis-favoriten: eine strenge, taktile adaption, die heathcliff zum schwarzen macht.
beatcippe: Wuthering Heights è una roba seccamente emo. Interessante e stridente fino a un certo punto.
Poi, d'improvviso, cascano le balle. 
PWellinski: Finally something challeging for us formalist critics - Andrea Arnolds Wuthering Hights Adaptation is a masterfully composed film

Reuters gives details of the press conference:

Arnold stumbled by chance on two unknowns, Solomon Glave and James Howson, and cast them as the younger and older Heathcliff for her two-hour long rendering of the book.
Howson, who follows in the steps of Laurence Olivier, Timothy Dalton and Ralph Fiennes, saw an advertisement for the audition in a shop window in Leeds. "I thought you've got the face of an actor, phone the number, you've got nothing to lose," he told reporters after a press screening on Tuesday. (...)

"To take that book and put it into a film is an impossible task and not one that anyone can do well I don't think," Arnold said.
"I tried to honour her essence, because I think it is actually quite a dark and profound book," she said, adding that she regretted having to cut off the second half of the novel.
"I also get very involved with detail as well so I just know that there is no way that I can contain all that book in a film, it would be seven hours long or something and we'd all be tearing our hair out."
She said the novel had deeply affected her when she first read it in her 20s, but she had never thought she would do a period film until producers approached her with the project.
The autumn shooting with wild weather and flooding in the remote moors of North Yorkshire was a "difficult journey in every way, it was like there was a curse."
"But I quite enjoyed the fact that there was no electricity and it was quiet, and we could play the sound in an interesting way and the nature was really important, and people's interactions, you know they're living in small groups of people and not in a city. All these things attracted me."
The older Cathy is played by Kaya Scodelario, who has acted in the Channel 4 TV series "Skins" and said she was reluctant to join the cast until she met Arnold.
"I never wanted to do period, I was terrified of period because I am not trained, I haven't been to drama school, my mum is Brazilian. I never felt I'd fit in for a period drama at all," Scodelario said.
"She completely relaxed me instantly, she said I don't like period either, it's not going to be like that, it's not going to be completely stiff and strange, it's going to be different. And that really excited me." (Reporting By Silvia Aloisi, editing by Paul Casciato)

Categories: Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights