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Tuesday, October 02, 2012

American news outlets and specialised websites are starting to publish reviews of Wuthering Heights 2011, which opens on Friday. From Paste Magazine:
Wuthering Heights in its newest form is undeniably a work of art. The photography and overall mood of the piece are unforgettably beautiful in their bleakness.
But while none would claim Emily Brontë’s single Gothic novel to be in any way cheerful, this particular retelling of the story of doomed lovers is overwhelmingly dreary. Wuthering Heights is a classic tale worth its melancholy state, but this film at times is hard to keep watching. From the endless rain, wind and mud of the moors to the strange, selfish characters themselves, the film weighs on the soul. [...]
English teachers everywhere are probably clasping hands and thanking the heavens that a fresh version of the story has appeared in the public eye for discussion. But for some, however, this take may be a step too far. Wuthering Heights was a dark enough story in which to lose oneself; this latest telling is darker still. (Maryann Koopman Kelly)
IndieWire's recommendation comes with a blunder:
From Charlotte Brontë (!!) and Zac Efron to a sex surrogate and a truly terrifying VHS tape, check out Indiewire's picks for October's 10 best options [...]
Why Are They "Must Sees"? A literary classic from the mid-1800s is getting a brand new cinematic take (a month before another -- Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina" -- does the same) with Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights."  Charlotte Brontë's (!!) 1847 novel gets a new look via Arnold and a cast of mostly unknowns (it most recently adapted prior as a miniseries starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley in 2009). A departure from the contemporary social realism of Arnold's acclaimed "Fish Tank," this gorgeous film (it deservedly won best cinematography at last year's Venice Film Festival) marks an ambitious new step in the director's career. (Peter Knegt)
Slant Magazine gives it 3 out of 4 stars:
The product is unmercifully filthy; even the dumbly "transitional" cloud shots appear putrefied and frozen over. Chopping through the story like a teenager bored with the novel's circumlocution, Arnold pares down everything in the name of corporeal directness, most of all plot: In the movie's dark and wind-whipped opening, the beastly gypsy orphan is adopted into the Earnshaw farm by its patriarch; two scenes later, the newly christened Heathcliff (Solomon Glave) has already befriended Earnshaw's chubby, wayward daughter, Catherine (Shannon Beer). The 4:3 aspect ratio is further suggestive of abridgement, though it also recalls the tall, narrow landscapes of German romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich; his marshmallow-y fog banks and pointy-haired wanderers are an obvious visual reference. (Joseph Jon Lanthier)
Flavorwire includes it in its 'Guide to Indie Flicks to See in October':
Andrea Arnold’s wholly unpretentious and surprisingly modest adaptation of Brontë’s classic is shot in an intimate, closed-in, handheld style that (combined with the direction and the playing) creates a stripped-down quality that lays bare the intense (and often troublesome) emotions at the story’s center. It’s a faithful literary adaptation that is not updated, but modernized, and the results are wonderfully unpredictable and emotionally combustible. (Jason Bailey)
From IFC Fix:
Without any major stars, this “Wuthering Heights” won’t catapult Arnold into the realm of commercial blockbuster filmmakers, although with any luck it’ll be one of the year’s top 250 grossers. But although one wouldn’t want to dismiss the importance of box office to help make a director’s life easier when it comes to financing his or her next project, works like Arnold’s should remind us that grosses matter much less than artistry. Like many of Arnold’s female contemporaries, vision and talent are commodities she has in abundance. If audiences aren’t interested in noticing, it’s their loss, not hers. (Tim Grierson)
Edward Champion has interviewed Andrea Arnold for The Bat Segundo Show and posts an abstract and an excerpt on his website. Click here for the full podcast.
Subjects Discussed: Characters defined by how they observe things, working with moths, Yorkshire insect wranglers, how to get animals to behave on camera, improvisational and Method-acting sheep, Buñuel’s Land Without Bread, audiences who believe that Arnold killed real sheep, film disclaimers about no animals harmed during the course of production, talking with farmers to get historical details right, how imagination informs more effectively than the facts, avoiding plastic walls for old sets, working with production designer Helen Scott, being upset when something isn’t real, the virtues of filming in a remote place, staying in a local village, getting used to a temporary life without phones, elevation as a geographical identifier as Arnold’s films, putting a camera in a place where a human can exist, Arnold’s dislike of the dolly and the Steadicam, why there weren’t as many wide shots in Wuthering Heights, Lindsay Anderson’s if…, cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s very sturdy hands, working without jibs and gimbals, the visual authenticity of natural human movement, Robbie Ryan running down four or five flights backwards with a camera, giving a very lovely grip named Sam something to do, reading Emily Brontë when very young, the decision to add the line “Fuck you, all you cunts” in Wuthering Heights, respect for Emily Brontë, working with non-actors, being too faithful to a literary classic, finding new takes on Heathcliff, why most literary adaptations play it safe, and literary reverence. 
Latinos Post lists the film among other forthcoming releases and The Dartmouth is not happy about the chosen angle:
This week, an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” (2012) will also be released in the United States, and echoing recent scholarship, it casts black actor James Howson as Heathcliff. The new film version, however, like versions before it, focuses on the love story, ignoring the latter half and central conflict of the book. In preference of romanticism, the darker story of an old Heathcliff — manipulating the fate of Cathy’s child for reasons of power and inheritance — is ignored in the new adaptation.
Let's stay on the moors, as the Keighley News features the new exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage: Ways to the Stone House.
A Brontë Parsonage spokesman said the exhibition was part of the Haworth museum’s contemporary arts programme.
She said: “Simon’s videos appear either in miniature, nestled within the accoutrements of the daily life of the Brontë family, or projected onto the walls of the family home.
“The exhibition imaginatively highlights how the lives of the three Brontë sisters were entwined with the landscape, its influence on their aspirations and inspirations, and a landscape which played such a role within their work.”
The exhibition has grown out of Simon’s time as artist-in-residence for the Watershed Landscape project, which promotes the South Pennines moorland. (David Knights)
The Telegraph and Argus looks at what will happen there during this year's closed period:
The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth is to be redecorated so that it looks more like the famous sisters' home than ever before.
Decorators will draw on the research of specialists into what the building's interiors looked like in the mid-19th century.
The “decorative archaeology” was carried out last winter while the museum underwent its annual two-month closure.
After the museum closes at the end of autumn, the restoration work will begin, ready for its reopening in February.
The museum, which is run by the Brontë Society, said it wanted to offer visitors a "more authentic Brontë experience". The refurbishment will be followed in March by an exhibition titled Heaven Is a Home: the Story of the Brontës' Parsonage.
And we are not leaving the north just yet either, as the Guardian's Northerner Blog features Yorkshire's most prolific writer, one J.S.Fletcher.
While many other Yorkshire writers have enjoyed continuing popularity - think of Charlotte Brontë and her sisters or JB Priestley - Fletcher has rather faded from public consciousness. Indeed, on being asked to write this piece, this outpost of the Northerner believed that she had never previously heard of him, until she chanced on a battered copy of his Nooks and Corners of Yorkshire while dusting the bookshelves, itself a rare event... (Jill Robinson)
The Millions praises Margot Livesey:
How does Margot Livesey make The Flight of Gemma Hardy a fresh story despite its clear echoes of and debt to Jane Eyre? (Joseph M. Schuster)
India Today reviews Jane Eyre Laid Bare.
And if you think that the idea of repressed desire is what makes the original special, Sinclair feels Brontë's book, written in another time, could be "so much better if we could just tweak it". So Sinclair's Jane Eyre boldly eyes Rochester and is glad of him being an experienced man. "Another woman may have found talk of his past conquests upsetting, or might have succumbed to jealousy, but, I was enraptured," writes the author.
The Times of India reviews Jerry Pinto's debut novel Em and the Big Hoom and discusses madness in literature.
Remember the shell-shocked World War I veteran Septimus Smith in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway or Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre? While the former's broken cries are deemed 'abnormal' and 'crazy', the latter is locked up in a room vis-a-vis her 'bestial' disposition. (Ipshita Mitra)
Le Temps unearths an article from October 2, 1932 from the Gazette Lausanne where 'la femme laide dans la littérature anglaise' (the ugly woman in English literature) is discussed. Here's the original and here's what Le Temps says about it:
Les Anglaises ont brisé le tabou. La Prudence de Mary Webb dans Precious Bane arbore un bec-de-lièvre – qu’elle saura faire oublier par la générosité de son âme – et la Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë est banalement laide mais d’une fierté incandescente. (Marie-Claude Martin) (Translation)
The Independent reviews The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Hull Truck Theatre, Leeds and reports that
Director Nick Lane has a number of successful adaptations already under his belt including Moby Dick, Frankenstein and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He is set to turn his intentions next to Jane Eyre for Truck’s 2013 spring tour. (Jonathan Brown)
The Herald (Scotland) reviews briefly Peter McMaster's all-male Wuthering Heights.
Peter McMaster's all-male Wuthering Heights  revisits a novel we think we know (if only courtesy of Kate Bush). In company with Murray Wason, Chris Hall, Nick Anderson and Thom Scullion – whose own memories and experiences feed into the material – McMaster uses Brontë's characters as a portal into myths and truths about "being a man". Some moments muse on the father/son legacy that can shape attitudes. Others – as when Wason and McMaster don dresses – offer glimpses of the tenderness and sensibilities we tend to tag as maternal or feminine, and yet, like the full-throated singing or the mischievous sparks of comedy, the expression of emotions emerges out of the bouts of play-acting with a touching sincerity, an integrity of purpose and of witness.
And though the ensemble dance to the iconic Kate Bush track is funny and fruity and exemplifies the energies of lads' camraderie, the heart of the piece lies in the thoughtful questioning of attitudes to men. In among all the issue-led work that's made nowadays, this is neglected territory: McMaster's Wuthering Heights is a significant, and intensely honest, opening up of that no-man's-land. (Mary Brennan)
The Henley Standard talks to Peter Allen, assistant principal of The Henley College who has retired after 38 years.
“Students now are no different from the students 38 years ago. Then we read Chaucer, most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the novels of DH Lawrence and the poetry of Keats and Milton.
“Now we do Brontë, still Shakespeare and the poetry of John Donne. Only Chaucer and Milton are missing.” 
The Huffington Post also looks back on Ikea's 25 years in the UK, with special attention to its advertising through the years:
And the 'Stop Being So English' in 2000 lampooned the lifestyle of uptight middle-England residents, taking the mick our of everything from Charlotte Brontë to lovers of ketchup. (Charlie Thomas)
The ad can be watched here.

The Spokesman Review's word of the day is 'excoriate' and Anne Brontë is quoted as using it in Agnes Grey. Life of Lovely reviews Juliet Barker's revised edition of The BrontësDes galipettes entre les lignes writes in French about Daphne Du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell BrontëMelanie's Musings interviews Ironskin author Tina Connolly. Twenty Three Books posts about Jane EyreA-England's Jane Eyre nail polish is reviewed by icyabstract makeup, Pandora's Nails and Nail_ru (in Russian).

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the nice mention here, Brontë Blog!

    Anna
    twentythreebooks.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, I love all of this information!

    Thank you for the link.

    ReplyDelete