Wuthering Heights. US Premiere. Day 2

More Wuthering Heights US reviews:

Positive:
The Atlantic:

Rather than revel in the baroque trappings of bustles and skirts and elaborate ballroom scenes, most of the yearning takes place outside in high grass or down in the mud. Arnold interprets a love story free of romance, or as she describes Wuthering Heights, “It’s gothic, feminist, socialist, sadomasochistic, Freudian, incestuous, violent, and visceral.” It’s a radical love story to tell in any era, and more modern still to tell with talented black actors, who bring more meaning to Cathy’s confession of “He’s more myself than I am” than many Heathcliffs before.

ReThink:

But Oscar-winner Andrea Arnold's gorgeous version of Brontë's story may be the most visceral adaptation of a literary work I've ever seen, stripping away dialogue to reveal raw emotions in a way that made me understand why Wuthering Heights has endured for so long. (...)
Watching the movie, it was easy to imagine it being adapted to a modern day inner city, the suburbs, the old west, or any culture or time when class, race, education, prejudice, and obsession could get in the way of young love. While a lot has changed since Wuthering Heights was published more than one hundred and fifty years ago, the lines between classes and races are still bright. And Arnold's visceral adaptation of Brontë's book brings those millennia-old divisions into the modern world, all without leaving the moors or the 19th century. (Jonathan Kim)

NPR:

The result is neither dainty nor remotely refined: It's an animalistic, mud-splattered howl of torment. (...)
Sexual in a purely bestial way — when Heathcliff is brutally flogged, Cathy languidly licks the wounds on his back — this Wuthering Heights presents a brilliantly pagan reading of a story without heroes, least of all Heathcliff: A glum, brooding presence with vivid hints of viciousness, he lurks outside doors and windows, peering in at everything he cannot have. By confronting the character's vengeful sadism, Arnold — the anti-Merchant Ivory — has made a film that's not just faithful to the text but deeply attuned to the savagery of its emotions. I can still smell the sweat. (Jeannette Catsoulis)

Crave:

Andrea Arnold directs Wuthering Heights with the kind of immediacy that only stillness can provide. The sensations evoked though her imagery are the sort we used to think only Terrence Malick was capable of, and demonstrate a clear understanding of human experience. We remember emotions, we remember little details, but the actual plots of our lives sometimes get swallowed in a miasma of subjectivity. The story is clear, but clearly being told by a human being willing to allow a strange sympathy to guide their hand. Though the tale of Wuthering Heights is tragic, to the point of monstrousness, it’s also a tale of simple beauty. Of life, in all its power and glory, destroying itself. It absorbs you fully, even traps you, and you’re better off for it. (William Bibbiani)

Christianity Today:

Interestingly, Arnold's eye seems almost more taken with these sorts of details (place, context, nature, visceral observance) than with things like plot exposition and character development. The film achieves that rare, tactile place where—through the stunning cinematography of Robbie Ryan (Fish Tank)—one can almost feel the wetness of the fog, fields and mud, or the softness of feathers and fur. The prevalence of sweeping vistas, all manner of weather (snow, sun, rain) and an impressive sampling of the animal kingdom (dogs, bugs, rabbits, birds, horses, etc.) all contribute to the unique tenor of this version of Wuthering Heights. It's a film where the romantic ambience and "love can be destructive" themes of the book are rendered visually, through images of a world that is at once magical, renewing, and transcendent and foreboding, desolate and uncaring. (Brett McCracken)

Ain't It Cool News (includes an interview with Andrea Arnold):

Arnold's Wuthering Heights may not be a warm or particularly pleasant work, but neither is Brontë's novel. Arnold's film is intensely focused on Heathcliff's damaged psyche, playing up the strangeness and occasional horror of the world into which he's strayed. Heathcliff is out of place at Wuthering Heights, and he suffers greatly under Hindley - which is due partially to his appearance. In a risky move, Arnold has has cast two black actors to play Bronte's "dark-skinned gypsy", and has inserted a racial slur or two to drive home Heathcliff's inescapable otherness. It's a bold choice, but it's anything but heavy-handed; it's just another harsh reality in Arnold's brutally inhospitable vision of Brontë's sorrowful world.  (Mr Beaks)

Critical Mob:

The lovers are now hemmed in by their obligations and the scars of their resentments; and we feel their frustration at being confined. We are firmly rooted in Heathcliff's mind as it reels from the grown Catherine's cruel games by unspooling memories of the two as adolescents wrestling in the mud and racing through the hills with such vivid abandon that its heartbreaking. These are wounds that never heal, and Arnold's Wuthering Heights makes sure they'll cut us deep as they did Heathcliff, never to be forgotten. (Kristy Puchko)

IonCinema:

While she’s stated herself that she dislikes the idea of adapting a novel to film, director Andrea Arnold has surprised and surpassed negative connotations with this often bastardizing notion to create one of the most beautiful, original and outstanding interpretations of Emily Brontë’s beloved novel of tempestuous love, Wuthering Heights. (Nicholas Bell)

Mostly Positive:

Time Magazine:

The atmospherics in Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights are such that you may walk out of the film expecting your hair to be damp and windblown and perhaps find a dead rabbit in your satchel. For its two-hour plus duration, it’s like going on Outward Bound: There are moody teenagers learning bird species on the moors. There is the sense of virtuousness that comes with deprivation, although in this case, it’s not going without walls and flush toilets but enduring a film without engaging dialogue and strong performances. And yet the movie, as flawed and wild as Heathcliff himself, gets under your skin. (Mary Pols)

Slate

I don’t want to oversell Wuthering Heights as a masterpiece: Audiences coming to the film in search of a passionate love story may be frustrated by Arnold’s privileging of mood and atmosphere over dramatic conflict or character development. At times the loving, suffering humans on-screen seem less like characters than mere elements of the Yorkshire landscape—no doubt a deliberate choice on Arnold’s part, given the film’s focus on the pitiless cruelty of nature (human and otherwise). And the casting of inexperienced young actors alongside more polished older ones results in some jarring tonal shifts—Shannon Beer has a wonderful freshness and immediacy as the hoydenish young Cathy, but it’s hard to believe she’d grow up into the poised and elegant Kaya Scodelario. Still, for me,Wuthering Heights’ almost impersonal immersion in the light and texture and sound of the moors was the source of its vividness and necessity. In order for the art of literary adaptation to remain vital, we have to be willing to let directors throw aside the book and film their dream of it. (Dana Stevens)

Capital New York (which includes also a Q&A with the director):

All interesting things to think about; if only the film proved as interesting to watch. Arnold’s devotion to Heathcliff’s perspective goes beyond novelty to generate heat and emotion through the first hour, but especially after the jump forward to Heathcliff and Catherine’s adult selves (the latter is played by Kaya Scodelario; one of the cast’s few professional actresses, she gives one of the least successful performances), the spell begins to disperse. (Michelle Orange)

America Magazine:

A viewer’s initial reaction to Arnold’s interpretation is likely to be: how literal and perverse! Not only does she traffic in a racial stereotype; her Freudian slant is passé! That everything is rendered so skillfully from a technical perspective does not erase these misgivings. Ryan’s gorgeous photography, with its burlap-and-gray palette, paints the Yorkshire locale as a beautifully harsh backdrop. Yet transfixing visuals with gliding birds, flitting moths and butterflies and floating feathers can only communicate so much; likewise, the many images of crawling insects, moss-encrusted twigs, swaying tree branches and rustling leaves. We understand that Heathcliff and Cathy briefly found sanctuary within the forbidding landscape.
Unless Arnold is asserting that Heathcliff’s fate is wholly determined by his race—not an especially compelling or radical thesis—the most interesting thing is how her take functions as a foil to the viewer’s own tendency to confine Heathcliff to a purely animal stratum of existence.
One particular image, a quick cut to a scampering beetle, brought this home to me. Reading the beetle as symbolic of Heathcliff’s plight is too easy, so obvious it must be a trap. Equating him with a bug waiting to be squashed, put out of its misery, opens the door to pure nihilism. Of course that may be where Arnold wants to lead us. She omits anything approximating catharsis or clarification, after all. But since a white Heathcliff could serve the same purpose, what Arnold actually achieves is an interpretive inversion, in which the viewer’s critical responses and aesthetic judgments are turned inside out.  (John P. McCarthy)

Flavorwire:

Wuthering Heights is prone to minor bouts of self-indulgence, and has a few inexplicable touches (I can’t begin to understand why there’s so much gratuitous animal cruelty in it, and I’m not usually one to get squeamish about such things). But Arnold has done something truly commendable, and presumably difficult, here: she’s made a faithful literary adaptation that is not updated, but modernized. The clothing and sets are period, the style anything but. In doing so, she’s taken a classic story and made it into something admirably fresh and new. (Jason Bailey)

The L Magazine:

The story's pain comes out through other visual touches beyond aspect ratio: there's a recurring shot of the warm, reddish colors of upper class seen from outside windows, and more than once the characters disappear into the rain, swallowed up by the vastness of the moors. At times, Arnold almost gets swallowed up herself: she photographs a Malick-level number of grass blades, and I wish her sense of humor came through more often; Fish Tank—about a standoffish girl with a lousy family living in abject poverty, mind—is the more fun movie of the two. But I also wish more period pieces and classic-lit adaptations could go this stripped down, this elemental. (Jesse Hassenger)

PopMatters

Arnold has not “modernized” the original text or packed it with appeals to the tween set, a la Alfonso Cuaron’s Great Expectations or Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet. Instead, she deploys her signature dramatic style, casting some unknown and scintillating actors, such that the film has a sandpaperish honesty that is true to Brontë’s messy source novel. (Chris Barsanti))

Paste:

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. (Maryann Koopman Kelly)

Cinemalogue:

The chemistry between Howson and Scodelario is sharp, while newcomers Glave and Beer register strongly in the lengthier of the two segments that establishes the central relationship.
Wuthering Heights is certainly not a stuffy period piece, but rather a film with the audacity to try something different and challenge moviegoers in the process. Even if it risks polarizing audiences, it cannot be easily dismissed. (Todd Jorgenson)

Mostly Negative:

TV Guide:

Overall, the film constitutes an interesting attempt to strip the Brontë novel of its iconic topsoil and cut back to the thematic roots of the story; one can admire the sublimity of Arnold’s aesthetic compositions and framing, as well as the generally solid acting from a nonprofessional cast, but that’s to no avail when the movie misses its emotional targets. Viewers interested in this story would be strongly advised to seek out the 1939 adaptation starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which remains unsurpassed on the levels of performance and execution. (Nathan Southern)

Negative:
Big Picture, Big Sound:

Arnold has also re-imagined Heathcliff (James Howson) as a runaway slave, an interesting spin on his being considered the outsider. I admit that I was initially intrigued by this, but Howson convinces me of nothing that he has been assigned to bring to the role. This does not mean that he is the sole weak link on screen, but he might just be the weakest link in a chain made of paper. Considering that "Wuthering Heights" is supposed to be a tale of all-consuming love, it is quite odd that this adaptation is passionless. This one is in the running for the bottom ten of the year. (David Kempler)

Other websites presenting the film and quoting from here and there are Gawker,  Athens Patch, BBC America and Time Out New York.

The film also opens in Australia next Thursday and The Sydney Morning Herald writes about the book:

There is an ocean of online mulling over ways one can interpret and understand Wuthering Heights, ranging from Marxist fundamentalist readings that see it as a rendering of shifting class conflicts during the Industrial Revolution, to Freudian analysis - Heathcliff is the id, Catherine the ego, Edgar the superego - right through the various literary comparisons to earlier Gothic novels and Byronic poetry. There are the modern blogging readers, some of whom are fastidiously troubled by a book in which the characters are - and they're right about this - not very nice.
Equally, there are the modern (male) critics distracted by the famous couple's failure to have sex. A relationship where Cathy can declare to Nelly that ''I am Heathcliff … he is more myself than I am'' is ''scarcely a relationship at all'', in the words of notable critic Terry Eagleton, ''since there is no question of otherness involved''. But the fact the book has no actual sex in it does not make it asexual.
What these critics fail to notice is that zillions of teenage girls - and many others of both genders, but teen girls in particular - who continue to read Wuthering Heights as a rite of passage dream of exactly this kind of spiritual union, with sex as a desirable but hazy, ethereal and distant culmination. For Simone de Beauvoir, Cathy's declaration was ''the cry of every woman in love''.
But it isn't hard to wring sentiment out of it. Wuthering Heights is a tragedy of human regression: the thread running through it is the psychologically acute portrait of a man driven to monstrosity by bitterness. Its comic leitmotif, however, has become the cinematic trope in which Cathy and Heathcliff (as played by Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, most likely, though cinema and TV have given us many starry pairings, notably Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche) run to each other through the harebells, calling the other's name.
The real Wuthering Heights resists adaptation. It is too raw for TV, too long and complicated for cinema - film adaptations tend to stop when Catherine dies, about halfway through the novel - and nobody is ever satisfied with the casting or script, even in a version such as Robert Fuest's 1970 film, which was, from memory, largely a cut-and-paste assemblage of Brontë's own dialogue. Everything and everyone is far too clean and rather too prosperous. (Read more) (Stephanie Bunbury)

ArtInfo interviews Andrea Arnold:

What was the first thing that struck you about “Wuthering Heights?”
I read the book when I was about 18 or 19, quite a long time ago, and my feeling about the book then was -- well, I think I got that thing that everyone gets from “Wuthering Heights.” They think they know it. The book is such a part of our consciousness, it’s always around, and it’s something everyone sort of knows about even if they hadn’t read it. I’d seen an adaptation, the Laurence Olivier one, when I was a kid, so I always knew of it. When I read the book, I thought it was going to be a love story, and then when I read it, it wasn’t really that, it was something more uncomfortable, a bit more troubled. I remember at the end feeling very unsettled, but intrigued as to why I felt that way. And it’s full of things that are quite fascinating, but you also can’t really get a handle on it. I’d always been intrigued by it. I’d thought about making it, but I’d been on a journey with my films, one after the other, there was no real game plan or anything. Then my agent e-mailed me and said, ‘Would you be interested in doing “Wuthering Heights?”’ My ears pricked up. It was almost from that moment that it feels like I didn’t look back. What was funny is that I joined something that already had a bit of history; it had been in development. An earlier version had Michael Fassbinder and Natalie Portman. I joked about getting both of them to do the voice overs in the film, just so we can say they’re in it.

Then you can put their names on the poster.
Right, put their names on it and make some more money [laughs]. I was the third director on the project, so it had a momentum. There was already a script, so I joined something that was already going. It was a bit of a weird thing to do – I wouldn’t recommend it, really. The momentum was good because it meant the film was going to happen, but I really had to start again and that was really tricky. I had to pull everything back and write the script again, quickly.

As a filmmaker, do you start with an image? Was there an image that jumped out at you from the book?
Yeah, I had one. I always have an image for my films that is the key image. Whenever I lose my way, if I can go back to the image I remember, for me, what it’s all supposed to be about. The image for “Wuthering Heights” was of a big moor at twilight, when the land goes into the sky, almost blurring into the sky. You see this big creature on the moor – it’s two images, in a way, because you see it in the distance and you think it’s a large animal, but then you come in closer and you see that it’s a man, he’s got all this fur on his back. When we actually went to do the scene – which in my mind was this huge wide-shot, a beautiful thing – it was bright sunshine, we had about ten minutes to do it, and we didn’t have enough rabbits. It was not anything like I imagined. But, you know, that’s filmmaking. (Craig Hubert)

More interviews on Thompson on Hollywood or Village Voice. More reviews can be read on Dave's Movie Site, Back Row Reviews.

The Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer today says:

TOMATOMETER

• All Critics
• Top Critics

81

Average Rating: 6.5/10
Reviews Counted: 58
Fresh: 47 | Rotten: 11

Director Andrea Arnold's gritty, naturalistic re-imagining of the Emily Bronte classic stays true to the book's spirit while utilizing an unconventional approach to explore the romantic yearning at the heart of the story.

AUDIENCE

53

liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 3,743

Metacritic gives a 79 out of 100 based on 12 critics.
And now for the rest of news:

BBC News informs that Penzance's Chapel Street (where Maria Branwell lived before she married) is nominated to the Great Street Award in the 2013 Urbanism Awards.

The Telegraph & Argus echoes the distress in the Haworth tourist industry about the works at Haworth Parish Church:

One of Bradford district’s tourist traps, Haworth Village, has been left “without a heart” while its parish church undergoes a £1.25 million restoration project.
Johnnie Briggs, who is part of the historic village’s thriving tourism industry, has warned that more needs to be done to attract visitors from the UK and abroad while Haworth Parish Church in Main Street, is closed.
The Grade II-listed church, which contains the crypt where the famous literary sisters Emily and Charlotte Brontë are buried, was closed in July for major repairs to replace its roof.
Mr Briggs, who runs the Brontë Walks tour company, told a meeting of the Brontë Country Tourism Partnership (BCTP): “The closure has had a big effect because it’s left the village without a heart.”
He said the church was an important focal point for tourists who flock to the village each year. Many come from the US, Japan and across the globe to visit the church, because of its links with the Bronte Sisters.
Mr Briggs said that Cliffe Castle museum in Keighley, which houses many Brontë artefacts, was also currently closed to visitors for renovation and suggested temporarily exhibiting the items in Haworth’s Old School Room building, to attract more people there.
Mr Briggs said: “We have to develop some joined up thinking to see how we can improve the quality of the visitor experience in Haworth.”
The Reverend Peter Mayo-Smith, the vicar of Haworth Parish Church, said he understood the concerns of traders but revealed the church should re-open to visitors within the next month.
He said there had been delays because it had been impossible for builders to carry out work on the roof because of torrential rain and storms over the summer.
Mr Mayo-Smith said: “The bad weather has not helped us at all – you can’t do roofing work while it’s throwing it down with rain – but we think by the latest estimate that we will be re-opening on November 2 or 3, when they are due to finish work. I am anticipating that the church will be open to the public on November 4.
“I do understand what the traders are saying but it is a short-term dip to preserve the life of the village.” (Marc Meneaud)

Financial Times reviews Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad Doctors in Victorian England, by Sarah Wise:

The most potent image of Victorian insanity in popular culture is that of the “clothed hyena” Bertha, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It is, writes Sarah Wise in Inconvenient People, “perhaps the most vicious depiction of an insane person to have been committed to paper”.
Yet in 1847, when the novel was published, Mr Rochester’s decision not to place Bertha in an institution was intended to be read as “a mark of his nobility, not perversity, or brutality”. Through vivid case histories, Wise’s fascinating book traces almost a century of legislation dealing with the insane.
Bertha’s plight gave rise to a celebrated work of feminist literary scholarship, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). But Wise seeks to refute the notion that the 19th-century lunacy laws were yet another manifestation of male dominance and female victimisation. Her research indicates that men were just as likely to be “victims of malicious asylum incarceration”; perhaps more so, given that these cases often revolved around money. (Suzi Feay)

National Post reviews The Purchase by Linda Spalding:

Meanwhile his return to his homestead with the boy, Onesimus, is as permanently disrupting and ultimately disastrous to his family as the return of Mr. Earnshaw with the orphan boy Heathcliff is to his family, in Wuthering Heights. The parallel becomes more marked when the reader recalls that the strange boy wins the affections of Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine and the antipathy of his son, Hindley, just as Onesimus wins the affections of Daniel’s daughter Mary and the antipathy of his son Benjamin. The latter, in a key incident in the novel, betrays Onesimus to the equivalent of a lynch mob, with lethal consequences. (Philip Marchand)

Western Morning News suggests an alternative spot for Wuthering Heights:

Villages don't come much higher, wilder or windier than lonely Hawkridge, perched 900ft up in the vastness of Exmoor's ancient forest. If Heathcliffe (sic) hadn't haunted Brontë Country's Wuthering Heights, then this would have made an ideal location for his brooding shenanigans.

The change on the UK clamping laws is discussed in Keighley News with a reference to the Haworth clamper, of couse:

Regulating car clamping is one piece of new legislation that many would welcome – particularly in Haworth.
This historic village is a global draw for tourists seeking to find out more about the Brontës and the windswept moors surrounding their parsonage home that inspired them. Captivated by the Bronte novels and inspired by the landscapes surrounding the village, some visitors often stay for longer than they intended – but it can come at a price. (Sally Clifford)

Emily Branson dreams in The Journal & Courier of visiting England:

To paraphrase author Helene Hanff, I’m looking for the England of English literature, so I have got to visit Brontë and Austen country and Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The Dallas Voice reviews a local production of The Mystery of Irma Vep:

Just as quickly, the style pivots, and we’re in a soap opera with spikes of organ music, knee-deep in a recitation of Poe’s The Raven and a scene from Wuthering Heights before being bombarded with tongue-in-cheek jokes about cross-dressing that mock the show itself. It’s all the height of silliness, and both the audience and the actors should leave breathless. (Arnold Wayne Jones)

New Statesman reviews a recent concert by Tori Amos at the Royal Albert Hall:

Amos was always stuck in her own extended adolescence and maybe that’s why these songs still work – her wintry psychodramas send you spiralling back to that claustrophobic but infinite space between childhood and adulthood, in much the same way a Brontë novel does. (Kate Mossman)

ROAR E-Zine (in Dutch) reviews Jane Eyre 2011:

Ondanks dat de film door dit alles soms aanvoelt als een slap aftreksel van het boek, is Jane Eyre zeker geen slechte film geworden, mede dankzij de prima cast, prachtige kostuums en goedgekozen filmlocaties. Een film van bijna twee uur is gewoon te kort om recht te doen aan alle facetten van een dergelijk uitgebreid boek. Al met al is het eindresultaat dus een prima film. (Annelies Van Oers) (Translation)

Die Welt (Germany) reviews John Irving's In One Person:

Tatsächlich erreicht die Literatur in diesem Roman quasi figürlichen Rang. Irving ist seit jeher in Querverweise vernarrt, hat es aber selten so wild getrieben wie in diesem Roman, der zunächst eigentlich nur zwei Schauplätze kennt: die Laienspielbühne und die Bibliothek.Dickens, Flaubert und die älteren Schwestern Brontë geben sich die Klinke in die Hand; Shakespeare, ein Spezialist für Hosenrollen und als elisabethanischer Stückeschreiber ohnehin ein Geschlechtswandler, kommt beinahe komplett zur Aufführung. Natürlich spielt Billy (das heißt: William) den Ariel, einen Luftgeist von wandelbarem Geschlecht."So spiele ich in einer Person viele Menschen, und keiner ist zufrieden", heißt es in Shakespeares "Richard II.". Daher der Titel. (Translation) (Wieland Freund)

Rolling Stone España interviews Bob Dylan and we are amused by this mention:

Lo que los demás piensen de mí es irrelevante. De la misma manera que yo, cuando voy a ver una película, pongamos Cumbres borrascosas, no me pregunto cómo es en realidad Lawrence (sic) Olivier. El entretenimiento es un tipo de deporte.  (Translation) 

Oached Pish discusses the role of an editor in the ebook world quoting from a 1849 review of Shirley; The Litte Professor reviews with no pity the Clandestine Books version of Jane Eyre;  Audrey Eclectic posts about a recent comission she received: a painting (on the left) inspired by Charlotte Brontë as a gift for a Maxine Linehan, the actress playing William Luce's Brontë in New York; Popularna klasyka (in Polish) reviews Agnes Grey; DramaMinds (in French) posts about Jane Eyre 2006; L'Autre Tigre reviews in French Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler; TSorensen 1001 Movie Blog posts about Wuthering Heights 1939.

Finally on the Brontë Parsonage Twitter and Facebook page we find an article about Simon Warner's Top Withins exhibition at the Parsonage by Jenna Holmes which is titled Behind the Scenes at the Museum and appears in the Worth Valley Magazine.