There have been a number of feature film adaptations of Emily Brontë's novel, including Spanish, Indian and Japanese versions, but the only two I have seen are this one and the 1939 version with Orson Welles. This film was officially marketed as "Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights"; incorporating the name of the author into the film title in this way was a common practice in the nineties. At the time I assumed that this was done to imply that the film would be more faithful to the author's intentions than previous adaptations had been, but in fact it was normally done for copyright reasons. Some such films- "Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book", for instance- are far from faithful to the original book. In some ways, however,"Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights"is a faithful adaptation; it retains, for example, elements which were omitted from the 1939 film.
I won't set out the plot at any length, partly because of its complexity and partly because the novel is a famous one. It starts when Mr Earnshaw, a wealthy Yorkshire merchant, finds Heathcliff, a young foundling, on the streets of Liverpool and brings him up as an adopted son at the family home, Withering Heights. Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine ("Cathy"), but he is hated by Earnshaw's biological son Hindley, and when the old man dies Hindley treats Heathcliff as a servant. Cathy and Heathcliff are in love, but there can be no question of their marrying, and Cathy eventually marries Edgar Linton, the son of a neighbouring landowning family. The film then traces the story of Heathcliff and the Earnshaw families over two generations.
Bronte's novel does not just have a complex plot, it also tells it in a complex manner. Those readers who think that non-linear narrative and multiple, possibly unreliable, narrators were inventions of twentieth-century modernists ought to try "Wuthering Heights", which has a particularly labyrinthine structure. Director Peter Kosminsky wisely does not follow suit and tells the story in a more linear fashion, but he includes the story of the second generation- the children of Heathcliff, Cathy and Hindley- which was omitted from the 1939 film and some other adaptations. (Such adaptations, along with that infamous Kate Bush song, have done much to popularise the idea that Bronte's novel is simply the love-story of Cathy and Heathcliff, when it is considerably more complex than that).
When first released in 1992 the film was neither a critical nor a popular success, and since then it has largely fallen into obscurity. Yet I like it, principally because of a fine performance by that fine actor (pun intended) Ralph Fiennes in his feature film debut as Heathcliff. This was also Kosminsky's feature debut; to date he has only made one more feature film, "White Oleander", having mostly worked in television.
In any adaptation which preserves the whole of Bronte's plot, Heathcliff becomes by far the most important character, because he is the only one who remains alive throughout. (Cathy dies about halfway through). He is in some ways the embodiment of the Byronic romantic hero who was so popular in early 19th century literature. The bond which unites him with Cathy is that both are fierce, passionate free spirits with a deep love of the moors which surround Wuthering Heights. They represent the wild and untamed in human nature- the romantic- whereas the Lintons represent the rational and the conventional, the classical. It is notable that Wuthering Heights is a remote Gothic structure, whereas the Lintons' home is an elegant stately home in more conventionally picturesque scenery in a valley.
Yet Heathcliff is a more complex figure than a mere romantic hero; he is also, especially in the second half of the story, dark, brooding, obsessive and vindictive, capable of treating others (especially his wife Isabella and Hindley's son Hareton) as badly as he was once treated. For all her love of the wild and unrestrained, Emily Brontë was a devout Christian who saw clearly that there was something demonic and dangerous about the Byronic hero- perhaps more clearly than her sister Charlotte, whose own creation Mr Rochester is essentially a Byronic hero tamed. Fiennes brings out well all these aspects of Heathcliff's character, and it is said that he so impressed Steven Spielberg that he offered Fiennes the role of Amon Goeth in "Schindler's List", the following year.
I was less taken with the idea of casting the same actress, Juliette Binoche, as both Cathy and her daughter (confusingly also called Catherine). Nevertheless, Binoche copes well with the task (often a difficult one for French actors) of sounding convincingly British and makes the older Cathy convincingly wild and passionate. Kosminsky's photography of the wild moors- so all-pervasive a presence in the book that they can be said to be a character in their own right- is particularly striking. Anyone looking for a film adaptation of Bronte's classic could do a lot worse than this one. 8/10.
I won't set out the plot at any length, partly because of its complexity and partly because the novel is a famous one. It starts when Mr Earnshaw, a wealthy Yorkshire merchant, finds Heathcliff, a young foundling, on the streets of Liverpool and brings him up as an adopted son at the family home, Withering Heights. Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine ("Cathy"), but he is hated by Earnshaw's biological son Hindley, and when the old man dies Hindley treats Heathcliff as a servant. Cathy and Heathcliff are in love, but there can be no question of their marrying, and Cathy eventually marries Edgar Linton, the son of a neighbouring landowning family. The film then traces the story of Heathcliff and the Earnshaw families over two generations.
Bronte's novel does not just have a complex plot, it also tells it in a complex manner. Those readers who think that non-linear narrative and multiple, possibly unreliable, narrators were inventions of twentieth-century modernists ought to try "Wuthering Heights", which has a particularly labyrinthine structure. Director Peter Kosminsky wisely does not follow suit and tells the story in a more linear fashion, but he includes the story of the second generation- the children of Heathcliff, Cathy and Hindley- which was omitted from the 1939 film and some other adaptations. (Such adaptations, along with that infamous Kate Bush song, have done much to popularise the idea that Bronte's novel is simply the love-story of Cathy and Heathcliff, when it is considerably more complex than that).
When first released in 1992 the film was neither a critical nor a popular success, and since then it has largely fallen into obscurity. Yet I like it, principally because of a fine performance by that fine actor (pun intended) Ralph Fiennes in his feature film debut as Heathcliff. This was also Kosminsky's feature debut; to date he has only made one more feature film, "White Oleander", having mostly worked in television.
In any adaptation which preserves the whole of Bronte's plot, Heathcliff becomes by far the most important character, because he is the only one who remains alive throughout. (Cathy dies about halfway through). He is in some ways the embodiment of the Byronic romantic hero who was so popular in early 19th century literature. The bond which unites him with Cathy is that both are fierce, passionate free spirits with a deep love of the moors which surround Wuthering Heights. They represent the wild and untamed in human nature- the romantic- whereas the Lintons represent the rational and the conventional, the classical. It is notable that Wuthering Heights is a remote Gothic structure, whereas the Lintons' home is an elegant stately home in more conventionally picturesque scenery in a valley.
Yet Heathcliff is a more complex figure than a mere romantic hero; he is also, especially in the second half of the story, dark, brooding, obsessive and vindictive, capable of treating others (especially his wife Isabella and Hindley's son Hareton) as badly as he was once treated. For all her love of the wild and unrestrained, Emily Brontë was a devout Christian who saw clearly that there was something demonic and dangerous about the Byronic hero- perhaps more clearly than her sister Charlotte, whose own creation Mr Rochester is essentially a Byronic hero tamed. Fiennes brings out well all these aspects of Heathcliff's character, and it is said that he so impressed Steven Spielberg that he offered Fiennes the role of Amon Goeth in "Schindler's List", the following year.
I was less taken with the idea of casting the same actress, Juliette Binoche, as both Cathy and her daughter (confusingly also called Catherine). Nevertheless, Binoche copes well with the task (often a difficult one for French actors) of sounding convincingly British and makes the older Cathy convincingly wild and passionate. Kosminsky's photography of the wild moors- so all-pervasive a presence in the book that they can be said to be a character in their own right- is particularly striking. Anyone looking for a film adaptation of Bronte's classic could do a lot worse than this one. 8/10.