Wuthering Heights

[GCAcademic]

Anyone planning to see this? From the trailer I was expecting it to be marmite and not in any way a straight adaptation of the novel, but the reviews I've seen so far are universally uncomplimentary. I'd already booked to see it, so will go in with an open mind!

And is this what happens in the film, @ELCismyspiritnana ?

Yes, I don't know why people think it's a romantic novel. It's very Gothic and Heathcliff is such a horrible character.
They usually play down his ethnicity as well.

It doesn't help when they release a film on Valentines day! He is awful From what I remember, so is Cathy. It has really stuck with me, so I may read it again.

I agree, really. It's a novel about revenge, not love. I think Heathcliff is tormented, so torments others. He's a violent bully to his wife, and cruel and vengeful to others

Exactly - they were all maladaptive daydreamers as well. Emily in particular found it difficult to be snapped out of her fantasy stories, and it even interfered with Anne's work as a governess.

The review from Linda Marric on HeyUGuys is good, makes me want to see it even more now. Linda is a very good critic and doesn’t seem to be influenced by the studios.

What's obvious is that it's not a straightforward adaptation of the book. I suppose it depends whether or not you like Emerald Fennell's take on it.

I haven't seen it as it's not been released yet. Apologies for the confusion, I was responding to the discussion of the book.

I don't mind especially adaptations that take liberties (I mean, Andrea Arnold's one had Heathcliff having sex with Cathy's dead body, and I still thought it was one of the better film versions, the first half, anyway.) There's a Japanese version from the 80s which sounds brilliant, but I've never seen it.

I think it just annoys me when adaptations lean into a lazy cliché. Which this looks as if it does, from the trailer, even given the pomo quotation marks surrounding the title.

Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite novels and there have been at least 30 screen adaptions of it (cinema and TV). Having seen many of them I can honestly say they've all ranged from poor to decidedly bad. Perhaps its supernatural imagery and the overarching mood of the moors makes it near impossible to translate to the screen. Either way, I've given up and won't be watching this one!

I agree, @ginasevern , I've yet to see a good adaptation.

I do think it’s probably impossible to adapt. It’s a favourite of mine, too, but when I think about adapting it for the screen, all I can see are the problems. That the characters are more archetypes than in any way realistic, even by Gothic novel standards, and are always hanging the puppies or digging up graves or haunting one another or starving themselves to death or locking one another up, that the nature of the Heathcliff-Cathy relationship seems to shift all the time (she says she can’t marry him out of the blue when they’re both still essentially depicted as children and it’s the first the reader knows that there was ever any question of it, and when H returns after she’s married Linton, she seems thrilled, and perfectly happy to have him visit, but not as though she’s at all sexually attracted to him, or regrets her marriage), that everything is filtered either though dimwit Lockwood or the unreliable Nelly or both etc etc.

I'm keen to see it as I really like Emerald Fennell's previous films. I am not expecting it to be a straight adaptation of WHs, so I'll be interested to see what she's done with it.

Nor have I and I don't intend to, but I also haven't read the book (and don't intend to).

I'm not sure whether there's a Books forum or not, but maybe people who have will know whether the post amounts to spoilers or not, just so the thread title can be amended if it needs it [smile,].

I won’t pay for the cinema but will watch on TV. I think the visuals will be nice but the promo has all seemed a bit desperate.

I’ve not read the book (but I will do now) and I won’t see the film, but do you think it would be better as a series? More time to explore things?

It's kind of in 3 parts anyway, so it would definitely be better as a serial.

I didn’t rate the TV series that came out (probably more than) a few years ago either. I think it was on ITV.

The main problem with most adaptations is they try to turn it into more of a regular live story, and more often than not, leave out the second generation story, so there’s very little resemblance to the actual novel.

There's colour blind casting which I'm afraid puts me off. Fine in something like Bridgerton but not such a classic. I could have perhaps accepted Heathcliff as mixed race (he's not in film) but not Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and Nelly Dean (Hong Chau).

I’ll probably see it but going in with the assumption it’s a fun girls night out film so I’m not expecting to have my socks knocked off. Leave the kids with their dad, have a little wine before and then a tango ice blast and some popcorn while we watch.

It’s a fair question, but no, probably not! A series would definitely give more time to include the second generation, but most film adaptations delete the second generation less from a pure lack of time than because it messes up the audience expectation that this is a Heathcliff-Cathy love story, so who are all these new characters?

And I think it’s less that ‘explanations’ are needed than that the novel doesn’t explain much anyway (who is Heathcliff? What language is he speaking when he arrives? Is he Mr Earnshaw’s illegitimate son? Where does he go for those years when he vanishes? Is the Cathy-Heathcliff relationship a semi-sibling one, a trauma bond, sexual attraction? Etc etc ). And we’re in a dark, Gothic world where women address their elderly servants as ‘You scandalous old hypocrite!’ and threaten them with the dark arts, child ghosts beg to be let in, and characters say things like ‘Do you hear me, you damnable jade?” and dig up graves and open coffins. And it’s incredibly violent. We’re casually told that Heathcliff, happening to accidentally catch his enemy’s falling baby, would have dashed its brains out on the flagstones if it was dark enough to get away with it.

Plus that we only ever see the main characters from the outside, through the eyes of Nelly and Lockwood, so we’re never inside their heads at all. It’s kind of like watching a Yorkshire version of the Greek gods feuding and getting revenge on one another.

The 1970 version with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder Marshall is far superior.

That takes some beating imo.

The lead on this one looks too young. I think I'll wait to stream. Although I do like to see the British countryside on the big screen so may go for that? I think some was filmed in swaledale?

*male lead

I thought so. I just googled and it was filmed at low row. I was chatting to the landlady of the Red lion at Langthwaite when they were filming. She said Margot had been in a field nearby ( possibly belonging to Rowena the landlady)