Vivid and Bracing

Next Friday on Film4:

Wuthering Heights Fri 16/2 Film4 @ 01:20
A young boy is taken in by the Earnshaw family and as the years pass he develops a strange and intense relationship with his foster sister. This Andrea Arnold directed take on Emily Brontë's famous novel is unlike any you've seen before. It doesn't whitewash the darker aspects of the novel like previous adaptations did and adds its own modern touch too. An excellent watch with superb performances from Kaya Scodelario and James Howson. (Ronan O'Meara in The Digital Fix)

Andrea Arnold, a director versed in the methods of social realism, focuses on atmosphere and texture in this Emily Brontë adaptation, bringing us in close to Catherine and Heathcliff (Kaya Scodelario and James Howson) and their windswept world. Despite this proximity, we are not given much of a view of the pair’s inner lives, but the film is at least vivid and bracing. (Edward Porter in The SundayTimes)

The film can also be watched on ARD (Germany) (February 12, 02:40 AM).

The Observer interviews Ruth Wilson who remembers her TV debut as Jane Eyre:

“I was really lucky. I got the part in [the BBC’s adaptation of] Jane Eyre nine months after I left Lamda, and Jane opened a lot of doors for me. I didn’t realise how big it was going to be until halfway through filming. I had to do some press, and there were a lot of people there. ‘Oh shit,’ I thought. But I gave it everything, that job. I’d never been able to cry on set before then, and it was for that part that I trained myself to do it. I used a Sigur Rós song, one that made me feel really sad. It’s an idea I still use.” (Rachel Cooke)

National Review's The Great Books podcast has talked about Jane Eyre:

John J. Miller is joined by Lorraine Murphy [of Hillsdale College] to discuss Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Literary love affairs in The Enterprise-Press:

Your authors kept me up at night, eagerly anticipating each page. And in turn, you found an eternally devoted companion. One who loyally shouts your praises to the world, and who willingly attached a cord connecting her heart to your binding. Even when you occasionally proved to be as deceptive as Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. (Andrea Fingerson)

Belfast Telegraph interviews the psychologist Aryanne Oade on the topic of bullying:

However, some fortunate people are able to make their way to Yorkshire. “If they’re coming from far away, we’d generally work together over two days,” she says. “They stay in Haworth, a beautiful village nearby, where the Brontë sisters lived. I combine business psychology and acting. My associates are all professional actors. We recreate the most difficult situations my clients have encountered, in the safety of the coaching room, at my property. This allows them to learn how to handle even the very worst cases of bullying.” (Joy Orpen)

The Tribune (India) analyses the work of the photographer Gauri Gill:

The works are the artist’s attempt to bring to the fore their everyday struggle, their resilience and their indomitable spirit, which is most vocal in these mute images. Despite the odds against which the community tries to rise, the photographs find protagonists often going about life in a joyous, even happy-go-lucky manner. As British novelist Charlotte Brontë wrote in the magnificent Jane Eyre: “And it is you, spirit — with will and energy, and virtue and purity — that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.” Walking out of Gauri’s exhibition, one cannot help but wonder as to what were the subjects behind those masks actually thinking? Their simple frames, crowned by these masks give away nothing... (Monica Arora)

Diario Sur (Spain) imagines literature and art... without romance:

En la novela decimonónica de corte romántico, y en su degeneración posterior -el género rosa-, las barreras que el amor derribaba eran las de la clase social y las de las diferencias económicas (la 'Jane Eyre' de Charlotte Brontë). (Iñaki Ezquerra) (Translation)

El Diario Montañés (Spain) interviews the writer Gustavo Martín Garzo:

-¿De qué trata su novela [La Ofrenda]? (Lola Gallardo)
-Es una novela realista, una historia que se sitúa en los años setenta en San Sebastián. La protagonista vive un amor perturbador con el que quiere terminar y lee un anuncio en el periódico en el que una anciana busca a una enfermera que le atienda. Se lía la manta a la cabeza y se va a Madagascar. Allí se encuentra un caserón típico de las novelas góticas tipo Jane Eyre o Rebeca. Es una mansión que esconde un secreto y poco a poco lo va desvelando. (Translation)

El País (Uruguay) interviews the theatre director, Margarita Musto:

Las lecturas de la infancia amueblaron su imaginación. Cierra los ojos y recuerda las aventuras de Tom Sawyer o de Huckleberry Finn, sus viajes por el mítico Missi-ssippi. Unos años después sería Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. (Renzo Rossello) (Translation)

B.A. Wilson Writes, Wyzwanie Zwane Życiem (in Polish) and The Surreal Notes post about Wuthering Heights.