Chichester Cinema at New Park
Wuthering Heights
Andrea Arnold's radical and beautifully filmed adaptation of this classic tale of obsessive love.
Director Andrea Arnold (‘Red Road’, ‘Fish Tank’) is one of contemporary British cinema's boldest directors, so who better to put her own distinctive stamp on a tale of obsessive love and class division. In Emily Brontë's novel, a Yorkshire farmer on a visit to Liverpool finds a homeless boy on the streets and takes him home to live as part of his family at their isolated moorland farm.
The boy develops an all-consuming relationship with the farmer's daughter, and provokes jealousy and resentment from her brother. Arnold has brought a timeless universality to the story, and has succeeded in making Heathcliff (black) and Cathy, two of literature's best known characters, feel entirely fresh and new.
While respectful of the original text, this is a decidedly radical interpretation, not least in its casting of young unknowns in the lead roles. Equally original is the film's breathtaking visual style; for while there is no shortage of filmed versions of Yorkshire's wild and windy moors, it's unlikely you will ever have seen them so bleakly and beautifully captured as here.
UK · 2011 · Andrea Arnold · 130min
