Wuthering Screen

Joshua Rothman wonders in the New Yorker's Page-Turner whether Wuthering Heights can work onscreen.

If someone approaches you and suggests that you make a film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” don’t do it! Dozens of adaptations have been made since 1920, when the first film version was released, and, time and time again, “Wuthering Heights” has proven to be a trap for the artists who want to reinvent it. People love “Wuthering Heights” not just for its romance but also for its strangeness, its intensity, and its violence. (It begins, more or less, with a middle-aged man slicing open a little girl’s wrist on a broken pane of glass.) Unfortunately, those are precisely the qualities that adaptations tend to cut out. The events of “Wuthering Heights,” which we can picture so vividly in our imaginations, can come to seem cartoonish onscreen; the plot won’t fit into a hundred and twenty minutes. The novel is eccentric and unsettling, furious and infuriating, murky and luminous; it has a small cast but, as in a tragedy, you feel that the fate of the world is at stake. Subtract the weirdness—as most adaptations, including the new film, directed by Andrea Arnold, inevitably must—and all that’s left behind is a love story. “Wuthering Heights,” unfortunately, is as much a love story as “Hamlet” is a revenge thriller.

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William Bibbiani from Crave Online admits to being in love with Wuthering Heights 2011 before interviewing Andrea Arnold.

The thing that grabbed me most about this movie was the portrayal of young Heathcliff and Catherine. It’s really sensualized, in a way that I think will surprise some people. Tell me about the importance of establishing that sexual energy early in their lives.Yeah, I’d quite liked to [have done] more, but it’s hard to achieve when you’ve got young kids. It’s interesting, because I think that wasn’t really happening between them. They were very, as a lot of 13-year-olds, they were very shy of each other, and wanted to not be anywhere near each other, things like that. [Laughs] I remember helping a friend’s birthday party for the eleven, twelve year olds, and it’s slightly interesting watching all the boys on one side of the room and all the girls on the other side of the room, all sort of looking at each other and sort of hitting each other, and sort of fascinated with each other but not going anywhere near each other. It was the same with Solomon [Glave] and Shannon [Beer], they’re embarrassed about physical contact and that sort of thing. But it’s all going on inside them, isn’t it? That’s the interesting thing. I wrote a lot of those things into the script and tried to capture it in my own way. That was always something I wanted to show. Also I think, thirteen or so, it’s the beginning of your sexual awakening, isn’t it? Or even earlier. That is all going on inside you I think, at that age.
I think so too. And I think that giving them so much intensity… The scene where she licks his back…Yeah, I love that. [Laughs]
It’s really beautiful and mildly creepy at the same time. Was that in the book, or was that all you? No, that’s not in the book. That’s me. [Laughs]
Where did that come from?I don’t know, but I knew when I thought of it, it was right. Definitely. I think that’s almost my favorite bit, actually. I think that might be my favorite bit. I feel like that’s really me, that bit. Whatever that says about me, I don’t know, but I feel like that’s true.

USA Today interviews her too:

Justine: From what I understand, there's a very interesting story behind casting black actor James Howson as Heathcliff.
Andrea: James was in an unemployment center, and he saw that we were looking for people who hadn't acted before. I wanted it to be quite raw, and he saw the poster and he just came along (to the casting). I think it was quite an experience for him, of course, because he'd never done anything like that before.
It was not an easy experience for him because filming is quite tiring. I think people that haven't done it before are surprised by what hard work it is. I think he loved it, but it wasn't an easy experience.
Justine: What did you see in him that made you think he embodied Heathcliff?
Andrea: I think it was his vulnerability and anger, actually. James has not had an easy time since we finished the film and it does make me wonder. Obviously when you cast someone who hasn't acted before it can be a massive opportunity for them. He knew that and he really wanted to do it more than anything. For me it's quite an interesting process because when you first work with somebody -- you don't know quite how vulnerable they are. (Justine Ashley Costanza)

The Dallas Observer reviews the film:

But if even Arnold inadvertently acknowledges the tortuous limitations of her approach (as fun to watch as being strangled like a dog!), why replicate it so studiously? Heathcliff does not get the revenge he wants because he wants to escape the specific traumas of his adolescent past, shown in the film's first half. And because Arnold traps her viewers with Heathcliff's murky version of events. There's no room for enriching subtext in this version of Wuthering Heights because all the information we need is inscribed on the film's glassy surface. (Simon Abrams)

The Herald Sun (Australia) gives the film 3 stars:

Wuthering Heights(MA15+), Here comes a Wuther one not like the other ones, UK, 129 min
An exhaustive (and exhausting!) re-imagining of the classic Emily Brontë novel.
Let me tell you right now : this is not the most talkative of motion pictures.
There are plenty of stares, whispers, glances and growls. And the wind blows a never-ending gale across the misty moors of Yorkshire. But chatter? No dice.
If the film's stark, stand-offish stance does not put you off, the doomed romance of Catherine and Heathcliff pulses with a pure emotional anguish that is impossible to ignore. (Leigh Paatsch)

The OC Weekly discusses Heathcliff's skin colour:

To be fair, we could read the mid-1800s English use of "dark" and "gypsy" as code for virtually anybody without discernibly proper British breeding. But it has been a vague and mysterious quality that Arnold has now made concrete and undeniable, doubling down on Brontë's ideas and steering the whole ship away from tragi-cosmic romance and toward whole-hog social tragedy, suffering the ghosts of slavery. This is intimated further by Arnold with a glimpse of the shirtless Heathcliff, his back scored with whip marks. In the 1770s, when the story is set, a black child was rare, even in Liverpool, the African chattel of the busy Brit-run slave trade going almost exclusively to British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.
Which would make a black Heathcliff in Yorkshire an absolute stranger in a strange land, about whom specific bigoted norms would not even have been fully formed. Even so, his very presence in the manor houses of Brontë's imagination represents a primal taboo, a violent invasion of the First World by the Third. (Arnold's late-18th-century England feels quite Third as it is.) On top of that, talking about taboos, this is an interracial love story, in a time and place where, for most Brits, merely the chasm between the classes, not races, was more than enough to ruin lives and destroy families and disenfranchise entire swaths of the population. (Michael Atkinson)

Wuthering Heights 2011 is also reviewed by Very Aware, MovieBoozer and SassiSam.

The Fay Observer looks at the many classics that have been adapted to the screen of late.

Classic literature never dies. It just goes to the movies.
The coming weeks and months will see a spate of films based on books that were required reading for many a high school and college student.
An independent version of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" arrived in select theaters over the weekend. Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" hits theaters Nov. 16, and Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" comes out Dec. 14. [...]
It's obvious studios expect big things from most of these movies. While "Wuthering Heights" features a little-known cast and opened in limited release, "Anna Karenina" stars A-listers Keira Knightley and Jude Law. Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway star in "Les Misérables," an adaptation of the wildly popular Broadway musical. "The Hobbit," directed by Peter Jackson, created a stir with fans at Comic-Con this summer.
And many of these films are considered Oscar bait.
Why do filmmakers continue to mine classic literature? Maybe because a truly classic tale never gets old.
"I think at their core, they're great stories," said Nora Armstrong, a movie buff and the information services manager at the Cumberland County Headquarters Library. "And people don't get tired of great stories."
Armstrong said books such as "Wuthering Heights" and "Anna Karenina" have survived because they feature memorable characters dealing with situations that modern readers can relate to. "The Hobbit," for instance, is about friendship and loyalty and follows its title character on an epic journey. [...]
Emily Wright, a Methodist University English professor, said there's another reason why classic stories such as "Wuthering Heights" show up at the movies again and again: Romance.
"The ones that tend to be done over and over again tend to be the romantic ones," Wright said.
Wright said the classic books also lend themselves to costuming and pageantry, two important elements in a visual medium. (Rodger Mullen)

On the other hand, La Nación (Argentina) thinks it's the women's world that has been largely featured on screen lately:

"Me gustaría tener la suerte que tienes tú, la fortuna de ser mujer", le dice Marcello Mastroianni a Sophia Loren, en un film que usó el final de esa frase para plasmar el título, La fortuna de ser mujer (1956), de Alessandro Blasetti. Desde aquel pionero del tributo a lo femenino, el cine tiene la fortuna de acertar con algún personaje femenino, o con varios, que se asumen en centro de una trama atractiva. Y ya antes de que se inventara el cinematógrafo, las heroínas arquetípicas colmaban la narrativa: Jane Eyre, Emma Bovary, Ana Karenina, Tess d'Urberville, Nacha Regules, Emma Zunz. Todas ellas plasmadas en la pantalla con el concurso de otra mujer (una actriz) que eternizaba una imagen. (Néstor Tirri) (Translation)

Journalist James Naughtie is interviewed by The Spectator:

3). Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?I remember getting weepy over Wuthering Heights, an age ago. P.G.Wodehouse makes me cry laughing.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Shock Room reviews the book A Pretty Mouth by Molly Tanzer:

This darkly romantic story is worthy of a Brontë, except for the naughty bits written by our heroine for her demanding editor. The naughty bits are hugely entertaining, by the way. The language, setting, and characterization are flawless; all contribute to a keen portrait of an intellectual woman undone by patriarchal power. The madwoman in the attic has nothing on our fair Chelone. (S.P. Miskowski)

Die Welt reviews John Irving's In One Person:

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. (Wieland Freund) (Translation)

Bizz & Miel posts in French about Wuthering Heights. He olvidado recordar de memoria (in Spanish) writes about Jane Eyre 2011. Bookyurt reviews Tina Connolly's Ironskin. Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy will talk tonight at the Concord Libary; this is a list of her upcoming apperances:

Concord, MA - October 11, 2012Concord LibraryNashville, TN - October 12, 2012Southern Book FestivalBrattleboro, VT - October 14, 2012Brattleboro Book FestivalBeverly Hills, CA - October 20-21, 2012Literary EscapeAustin, TX - October 26-27, 2012Austin Book FestivalBoston, MA - October 30, 2012Boston Public Library, South End BranchStorrs, CT - November 1-2, 2012University of ConnecticutMaritime Canada - November 7-9, 2012Worcester, MA - November 15, 2012Worcester Art MuseumMiami, FL - November 16-17, 2012Miami Book Festival