User Reviews

Like other reviewers I have read Emily Bronte's novel, but I am not sure we were reading the same book. My strongest impression from first reading was wonder that the book could be so engaging without a single character with whom to identify.

The characters in Wuthering Heights are unlikeable; Heathcliff and Hindley are downright nasty. Hatred, contempt and jealousy are the overriding emotions of the story. Certainly there is love – strong passionate love too – but it lives in dark corners and is ultimately destructive.

This film captures much of the emotion of the book. The first half, with Heathcliff, Catherine and Hindley as children is played very well indeed.

Heathcliff's character is determined in these early years at Wuthering Heights, and so it is in the film. When Heathcliff returns as an adult, inexplicably played by another actor, his heart has hardened and revenge, hatred and violence dominate his character. But James Howson who plays the adult Heathcliff is not up to the task, and nor it appears is the direction. Heathcliff is certainly violent, but this is mostly directed against animals seemingly as means of relieving his frustrations, rather than the depiction of a genuinely violent man. His appalling treatment of Isabelle is largely glossed over and the film ends before he starts abusing Hareton. Hatred, contempt and jealousy are expressed mainly by close-ups of facial expressions, and here Howson in the finery of his wealth only seems able to portray smugness.

The film lacks a point of view. The camera-work suggests the film is intended to show things from Heathcliff's perspective, but much seems to be deliberately obfuscated where Heathcliff would have known exactly what was going on. The audience is continually kept in the dark, emphasised by the rain, mist and long nights on the moors and, just in case we haven't got the idea, by repeated scenes shot out of focus. This is all very well, adding to atmosphere, but the book manages to bring the reader into the story; this film seeks to distance the audience, as voyeurs only. The people we see are the same people we read about and with much the same character. The children, it is true, were interesting to watch; but when Heathcliff went away, returning without comment played by a different actor (and Catherine too for that matter, but Kaya Scodelario played her role better; she had less to do), I found I no longer cared about any of them.

Heathcliff played as a black man works well. He is clearly of foreign extraction in the book – Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen – although equally clearly not 'a regular black' (also a quote). A black Heathcliff is far more convincing than an obviously white English one.

The language is also rather more 'colourful' than in the book. But this too seems to be justified. It sounds true enough to me and I did not detect any neologisms. It must be pretty impenetrable to non-native English speakers, but there is precious little of it. I know Heathcliff is taciturn, but the silences are unbearable. Even the book has Nelly Dean to carry the dialogue.

Finally there is the ending. The book more or less describes the story backwards, starting long after the film has ended and showing Heathcliff in his ultimate form. The film, quite rightly in my opinion, is in chronological order (barring some unnecessary and distracting flashbacks) and covers only Heathcliff's relationships with Catherine and Hindley. The ending is well chosen in terms of plot, but totally undermines whatever integrity the film had, for the entire film is shot without a background soundtrack. What we hear are the sounds of nature, songs being sung, out of tune and out of time but utterly in character. A poor band playing a mournful Christmas hymn (the Coventry Carol, is it?), branches tapping on a window, even though this last does not sound quite right, all add to the film's bleakness. But then, with only about a minute to go till the end, there intrudes a modern song played on modern instruments in a studio. I quite like Mumford and Sons, but what on earth is that song doing there? At least it could have started after the credits began to roll; the mood destroyed, this is one film I did not stay to read them.

My experience was so drastically opposed to what I'd heard about this film in the newspapers that I was going to write a shocked review here; but I see that it has already all been said. Wilfully obscure narrative (I went with someone who had never read the book and had to explain to him afterwards who was who and what had happened, and why), self-indulgent overuse of wildlife shots and arty camera angles (once is good; twice is good; ALL THE TIME is tedious), important plot developments whisked over in the joints between one scene and the next, poor performances from the adult actors, jerky camera-work, insufficient lighting, and a variety of deliberately repulsive scenes of slaughter, necrophilia, blood-sucking and copulation in the mud (and I'm not talking about that bizarre bog scene between Cathy and Heathcliff, clearly intended to be very significant since it was repeated at the end...)

A lot of the time I felt I was being battered over the head with the director's insistence that This Is a Very Important Metaphor but simply didn't understand what the shot of a beetle, or a horse's flank, or a patch of stone, or yet another rainstorm, was supposed to be saying. (The one thing I didn't notice, interestingly, was that the film is in Academy ratio rather than widescreen - probably because the vast majority of the pictures I watch are not in widescreen and in fact I generally dislike it, so I certainly wasn't conscious of that as a drawback.) To be fair, my other companion, who adores the novel, thought the film was the closest she'd ever seen to capturing the spirit of the book, although she too was somewhat disappointed in the 'adult' section.

I suppose you could say that it was a disquieting film of a disquieting book, in which none of the characters were sympathetic because none of the characters in the original are sympathetic: for my part I found myself roused to a furious dislike and resentment, so was at least not indifferent to it. I didn't walk out of what was a sparsely-attended screening -- I didn't even allow myself to disturb my neighbours by looking at my watch -- but I fantasised about being able to leave and was longing for the experience to end.

I think the film has power, which is why I haven't marked it lower than I have. I also think that in many ways it is a bad piece of film-making, more akin to a pretentious video installation than the telling of a complicated and violent story.

The wind really does 'wuther' like that in Yorkshire, though...

Although I will be aiming to judge Wuthering Heights on its own terms, I can't help sharing other reviewers' disappointment of this film. The book is bleak but wonderful, and I honestly find the characters and story much more compelling there than there.

Wuthering Heights(2011) isn't terrible as such. The scenery is stunning, likewise the costumes are quite good, the sound is very authentic and I liked the fact that the soundtrack is kept at minimal apart from at the end. The child counterparts of Cathy and Heathcliff are also truly excellent, especially Solomon Glave as a subdued and ferocious Heathcliff. Shannon Beer as young Cathy is just as striking. James Northcote is pretty effective as well, and Wuthering Heights does deserve credit for conveying a believable enough atmosphere especially at the start.

However, I didn't like the photography mostly. There are some nice shots here and there, but the hand-held camera work distracts from the bleakness of the story and seems too avant garde for a period piece for me. It may have worked in Red Road and Fish Tank, but it didn't here. The adult leads are not as good as the children, James Howson doesn't have enough of the characteristics that Glave brought and consequently he's bland. The fact that Glave and Howson don't look much alike takes away from the authenticity, and to me there is a lack of chemistry between Howson and Kaya Scodelario(who fares better, but Beer interested me more).

The script is very stilted. Just for the record, I wasn't expecting a letter-for-letter adaptation, and in all honesty there are not very many of those out there, but I don't think I was expecting dialogue that didn't flow very well from one line to the next or lines that came across as anachronistic. The story also disappoints. Granted the story of Wuthering Heights is a bleak and very difficult one to translate to screen, but in the translation here there is no passion, a lack of integrity in the ending, the way the story is told is too fractured in that the first half is better than the second by some considerable distance and the animal cruelty scenes were unnecessary and hard to watch.

Pacing is also an issue, the second half feels sluggish and I don't think the lack of chemistry helped nor with the lack of any likable or interesting characters, the support cast are much like caricatures as the film strips them of being any more memorable to make an effort to focus on the leads while ignoring the statuses and attitudes of the time, or ones to genuinely empathise with, they are too dull and underdeveloped to make me do that. Lastly, Mumford and Sons is a great song, but out of place here.

Overall, not a terrible film but a disappointing one. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Only months after I read the 1847 Emily Brontë novel and saw the 1993 film adaptation, along comes yet another version of this enigmatic work. Director Andrea Arnold has taken a bold approach to her interpretation that, like all movie representations of books, has its strengths and weaknesses.

The boldest feature of the film is its casting of Heathcliff as black (Solomon Glave as the youngster and James Howson as the self-made man). Brontë describes Heathcliff as notably dark and Arnold - who co-wrote the script - has taken the character a significant step further in a manner which underlines Heathcliff's difference from the country folk. The accents are well done with young Cathy (Shannon Beer) perhaps better than older Catherine (Kaya Scodelario). The photography is wonderful with stunning views of the Yorkshire Dales (such a contrast to the more frequent very tight shots) and the sound is brilliant with a real sense of the wild natural setting.

Set against these undoubted virtues, it has to be said that the dialogue is so sparse (and sometimes muted) that, unless one has read the novel, it's often unclear what's going on and, even if you've read the novel, you sometimes yearn for the film to get a move on and, while some of the exchanges are taken straight from the novel, others are so crude that one cannot imagine Brontë ever penning such vulgarities. The leisurely pace means that, like all except the 1992 version, this one can only deal with the first half of Brontë's uncomfortable, indeed bleak, tale, so that one does not see the full, sustained vindictiveness of the anti-hero.

OK I'll start off with what I definitely found disturbing about this film and did not like. As others have mentioned there is some worrying animal cruelty in this film - no I don't mean the trapped hare or the killing of rabbits - I can easily stomach this. What did worry me is the hanging of the small dogs from fence posts by their collars which clearly left the dogs in a distressed state - I can't believe this was generated by special effects so can only assume that some dogs were left dangling in this way for the purpose of producing this film - not acceptable in my book.

That aside I actually enjoyed this film and would have given it 8 out 10 had it not been for the unnecessary cruelty. I have yet to see 'Red Road' so this was my first experience of an Andrea Arnold film. What struck me is how little dialogue there was - instead we are treated to the Yorkshire moors in all their bleakness. I think this has been done to great effect - the wind noise as the camera is bouncing along the moorland is surprisingly effective at immersing the viewer in the wild Yorkshire landscape.

The first half of the film - where Heathcliff and Cathy are still children, has some very powerful moments. Unfortunately I found the grown up versions less convincing, although it is my opinion that Arnold deliberately chose actors that did look somewhat different to their younger versions; there are many flashbacks in the second half of the film and these are made more prominent by featuring the different actors.

Other reviewers have pointed out how dark this film is and that there are no likable characters. Well surprise surprise it's an incredibly bleak book and it's a relief that this has been retained here. What is unfortunate is that the whole of the second part of the book featuring Cathy's daughter Catherine has been completely omitted, but at the slow pace of this film it would have required at least another 2 hours to cover this. Also I might suggest that Isabella was actually quite likable!

Would I recommend anyone to see this? Not to an animal lover for sure - it's unfortunate that these scenes are included and I'm slightly surprised that this is permitted in filming. But for the wonderful experience of being immersed in the wildness of the moors, definitely.

Yes, it's very slow, but that's not the core of the problem: the heart of the problem is that there is no heart. I cannot relate to anyone in the film. I wanted to cheer on Heathcliff, but it soon becomes apparent why that's incredibly difficult to do. The characters are mostly just boorish and disgusting.

With Wuthering Heights being my favourite book of all time I was a little sketchy as to how this British independent would be, having seen previous film versions of the book and been reasonably disappointed. Andrea Arnold is of course a great director and Mumford & Sons are my favourite band so I couldn't wait to see this... I wasn't disappointed, what you need to understand is that the story doesn't focus a great deal on Heathcliff's life or back story. What it does it it focuses on the bleak conditions and harsh and realistic conditions in which the story will have actually taken place. The way it worked was very clever and you could almost feel the cold country air as you were watching it. I was happy with the film as it was a different take on a classic novel, 6 out of ten for me.

Again, adapting a period classic to a modern-day, millenial audience to the point going as far to add contemporary themes, language and music is just a big fat cardinal sin, to put it kindly. It just shows to me that you do not appreciate the original, classic, period novel and its themes, and therefore should not be allowed to adapt such a masterpiece if you are gonna just go and ruin it and undermine it like that, especially contemporizing it like that. It is one thing to get the story wrong but contemporizing it is another. The amount of swearing was just unneccessary and absolutely ridiculous, as not only of course was there no cursing from the book, but swearing with the F words and N words etc. was very unrealistic to portray in the 18th century. It is simply not something that would have been in such a fashion back then, if even existent for that matter. It was rather just a chance for them to desperately come across as all dramatic and intense in their own "contemporary" kind of way. I should also add the contemporary music that was played throughout, completely ruining and eliminating the whole classic, historical, traditional theme.

One thing I recall watching and feeling very irritated about was the lack of dialogue and shaky camera. The lack of dialogue made it just really hard to concentrate and follow, just makes you really impatient and was therefore lacking in action and structure, like what was the need really? Was it again another attempt to come across as all unique and clever? The shaky camera also made it really hard to concentrate and follow, like it was just some sort of ammateur production by school kids for a school project or something, or some weird kind of documentary rather than an actual film. It therefore failed to keep you gripped or anything with the kind of pace this ultimately created.

I remember what really angered me the most was showing Cathy and Heathcliff AS KIDS acting all sexual together, stripping off even! Not only is it all wrong for them to show sex/sexual scenes in any adaptation of Wuthering Heights, but when they were only about 12 as well! I think they thought, like a lot of modern-day productions do, the more disturbingly erotic the better, despite the fact erotica was never a part of Wuthering Heights.

The acting was very poor, at best. Young Cathy just annoyed me with just how awful her acting actually was, coming across as really annoying and unlikeable. The script as a result was of course sorely lacking at best and abysmal at worst. However I would mostly like to signify, when discussing my negative reaction towards the contemporization of the whole thing, how they not only made Heathcliff black, but suddenly, "cleverly" introduced the issue and theme of racism directed towards him as a result. This is of course a concept which NEVER existed in the original Emily Bronte novel at all, being most irrelevant and incongrous. Heathcliff was described as being "dark" which was never meant as black of course though, just dark/brown in skin tone; tanned/olive skinned. It was of course a completely unrealistic theme to introduce here given that black people living in Yorkshire in the kind of position Heathcliff was would have been mostly if not completely non-existant in the 18th Century, nor was there such an issue of racism taking place in that particular context. This was most palpably another significant example of contemporization by trying to be politically correct, something that is a real ruination indeed of what is supposed to be a period classic, knowing that political correctedness is all our modern-day, snowflake generation is about nowadays.

One more thing: Hindley a skinhead? Such a hairstyle was most simply NOT in fashion back then, in the 18th century, to the point it for sure did not exist! Yet another example of ridiculous contemporization from this film, completely ignoring actual historical fashions and elements of that particular time period.

To sum it up, dire and atrocious would be my best way to describe it in two words. It makes me all the more mad when I see that it received generally positive reviews, mostly from critics I think though, even referring to it as a "beautiful beast of a movie." I wonder if those critics are actually fans of the original Wuthering Heights, or just like this in general for the film it was, or weren't fans of the original Wuthering Heights and much preferred this version with its more contemporary approach to it, being in the snowflake, politically correct generation they are?

To fully appreciate this film, I think you must first understand the nuances of working class, Northern life. For those of you who have never visited Haworth and the surrounding area, where the Brontes lived for much of their adult lives, this film is a real eye opener to the true nature of living within such a landscape. This is a hard film to watch in parts, but so was life in the era in which Emily's story is set.

At the time the book was written living conditions in Haworth were harsh, with a life expectancy of only 25 years and a death rate of 41% in babies aged 6 months and under. Indeed, of the four Bronte siblings who made it to adulthood (the others dying in childhood) only Charlotte lived into her thirties, Anne, Emily and Branwell dying at 29,30 and 31.

When Emily's book 'Wuthering Heights' was released, it was met with a great furore of criticism for its hard hitting, brutal and cruel content. Many deemed its characters 'shocking and violent'. It was described as 'dark, disjointed, compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.'

I think Andrea Arnold should be commended for remaining true to Emily's vision and the spirit in which her story was created.

Emily would have been pleased by the results.

A Febiofest screening of the disturbingly personal remake from UK torch-bear filmmaker Andrea Arnold's rendition of Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS, whose previous breakthrough films RED ROAD (2006, an 8/10) and FISH TANK (2009, a 9/10) are breaking the tides of dolly dally UK stereotypes of period prosperity and establishing herself as one of the most distinguished auteur in an international scale.

A juxtaposition of this remake with another classic-reboot film JANE EYRE 2011 (directed by Cary Fukunaga) seems to be inevitable, both from UK, and fabricated by two very talented directors, by comparison, JANE EYRE sustains an irresistible international appealing by its rising stars casting (Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska) and finesses the dramatics in a more conventional but tangible way, WUTHERING HEIGHTS is an oddball composition, firstly introducing a black Heathcliff which one cannot figure out the intention behind as racism berating is never being mentioned, secondly bustlingly jostling with some unsettling visual resonances repels many audience (which actually had happened during my experience with a dozen of people left the room halfway) and a dialogue-implicit, artsy optic thrust.

The sublime cinematography from DP Robbie Ryan is harsher and murkier than Adriano Goldman's Gothic vibes in JANE EYRE, but hand-held angle also launches a headstrong uneasiness. Meanwhile sporadic point-of-view shots focusing on different animals (from insects to mammals) are over-exploited.

The mostly-unknown cast stimulates some freshness but also is a patchy hotchpotch, two younger leaders are less contrived than two adult ones, and one sure thing is it is not a performers' podium as Arnold's previous films.

This haunted remake is an interesting case of a bravura from a visual artist rather than a cinema auteur, under the belt of Arnold, it should have been more charming and brilliant than it is.

This is nothing more than Andrea Arnold's feeble attempt at mimicking Terrence Malick, and she does it oh so badly. Surreal long shots of moths and feathers are fine if they're done well, but if they're just peppered in, in lieu of actual explanation or development, it cheapens the entire experience of watching this admittedly already terrible piece of artwork.

This film was not remotely true to the novel, and to even entitle it "Wuthering Heights" is such a bastardization that one wonders if the director even read the book. (Notably, the film ends at the midpoint of the book... and takes upwards of two, agonizing, poorly-directed hours to get there).

Also. Gypsies aren't black. Worst casting imaginable.

Bronte is rolling in her grave.

Intelligent, controversial, challenging and edgy new version that is the correlative opposite of the famous 1939 classic version of Bronte's novel. Instead of Hollywood gloss and Shakespearian poetry, we get a dark, largely wordless, angry version of the story. One that uses images in the place of words to create it's rough-hewn poetry.

This is a very sensual film, not in the sexual sense (although it has its smoldering moments) but in the way some films can make you feel a place as well as see it. The smell of the stables, the cold of the rain and wind, these seem to come palpably through the screen in Arnold's vision.

Her boldest move is casting Heathcliff with a black actor (arguably much closer to Bronte's intent than the very white actors who have always seemed to play the role - in the book he's described as dark, possibly a gypsy, clearly a racial outsider). It brings new depths and meanings to Heathcliff's role as an outcast, new poignancy to his anger and hurt.

It took me a while to lock into the film, perhaps because it so upended my conventional expectations. And I could see some just never feeling in sync with its odd, disturbed rhythms. But before long I was riveted. No longer was I watching "a classic', but a living, breathing story of love, passion, class, race, and loss. Also, by casting young actors – as with Romeo and Juliet – the romantic intensity feels more understandable -- and probably more true to Bronte's time, when people married as teens, and rarely lived past 40.

Ms. Arnold is one of the most exciting (if under known) young directors around, and she continues to fulfill her promise with this brave new version of a timeless tale.

If you are a fan of Bronte's novel, or read it recently, then you will be disappointed with the film as it deviates much from the novel and is not about the place of Wuthering Heights at all, but solely about Heathcliff. It is this character's experiences as a foundling in the Earnshaw family and his return later as a man of means that forms the narrative. It is, therefore, a film of two halves.

The first half features young actors in the roles of Heathcliff and Cathy and is shot in a naturalistic way with the sounds of nature (weather, insects and animals) forming the 'soundtrack'. The dialogue is minimal with much given over to sensual and savage nature and the relationship between the two protagonists developing through shared interaction with the natural environment. For example, when they ride bare back and the juddering camera, representing Heathcliff's eyes, moves between the horse's mane and Cathy's hair. The use of the Moors and nature is the most faithful representation and homage to Emily Bronte's novel.

The second half features the adult actors: Arnold's discovery James Howson as Heathcliff and Kaya Scodelaria as Cathy. Neither are bad by any means but they are no match for young actors Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer, respectively. Scodelaria is nothing like Beer and this represents a problematic break in the film's authenticity. The second half is also the most radical departure from the novel and it is a pity that Arnold did not adapt the novel basing it in the youth of Heathcliff and Cathy and no more because in the first half this worked well.

The film is typically Arnold whose previous films (Fish Tank and Red Road) take the working classes and explore their lives. This is the tale she wants to present in the film, but the novel is not so focused on the working classes and Arnold portrays the Earnshaws as borderline poor working class, which they are not. Arnold excels in showing the gritty reality of lives and certainly achieves this in the opening half of the film.

Watch this with an open mind and allow yourself to be awed by the wind, the driving rain and relentlessness of nature explored by two young people who forge a strong bond as a result. Do not expect a film that is faithful to, or a close adaptation of, the book.

Dull, boring, unnecessary animal cruelty, and amateurish production. One to avoid. Stick to the original.

This is a film about domestic violence, racism, cycles of abuse. It contains many scenes involving the infliction of pain. This is quite apart from the love story. So why did it leave my partner and I so unemotionally affected, apart from the rush of relief at leaving the cinema?

Wuthering Heights started well for me; I thought I was going to enjoy the experience of wild moorland, naturalism, authentic dirt, etc. Unfortunately, too little attention seemed to be paid to the quality of some of the cast's acting (some of which was, frankly, embarrassing) and after the nth roll on the wet moorland grass I began to lose patience with the lack of attention to the narrative detail.

Yes, the moors looked fantastic. Yes, we got that life was grim.

But the affectation of the hand-held camera is a metaphor for the film as a whole. It wobbles about and makes you feel a bit nauseous. And then it does it over and over again and again until you want to beg for mercy.

I really liked this version. I love the book, and I like many of the interpretations people have made throughout the years, but this Heathcliff made the most sense to me. He wasn't just a brooding, selfish man, he had a real reason for his anger and hatred for his treating Kathy so coldly. Yes, he had his reason of course in the earlier ones, but it never felt fully plausible. This I could see. Having witnessed racism, judgment for no reason other than the color of one's skin, it made more sense that the people who treated him so horribly did. The other versions just didn't seem real, Heathcliff was just an angry, handsome white man (yes he was a Romany, but non of the actors who played him, that I saw, were) who people happened to be mean to. Here, though it isn't right, it was more true to form people treating him in such a way. I could believe it, and I could sympathize more with him.

This adaptation is a valiant effort to depict the 'dark' side of WH. The dark side that anybody who has read it knows about. For this reason, the film was void of purpose. Shrouded in real animal slaughter (true), over sexualisation of the innocence of C&H's youths, and necrophilia, this film quickly became nothing more than that shocking viral video your friend enjoyed too much ages ago.

If the book had never been written, this could be acceptable. Sadly, the book is a tad bit of a classic. If you have not read WH, please do not watch this film. While trying to display a deeper WH, an already difficult task, the film has become a shallow and ultimately senseless waste of a couple of hours. The plot is bastardised, the characters make no sense, and the 'artistic' approach to film always winds me up anyway.

Watch the black and white Hollywood version. They new how to follow a plot.

Andrea Arnold's take on a well-known tale falls flat for a number of reasons. Her hand-held camera, non-linear montage, and bouts of frenzied physicality arguably complement her two tales of modern ennui and angst, Red Road and Fish Tank. However, they seem incongruous matched against a classic from the literary canon. The audience coming along expecting to see a period piece are getting a surprise, and unfortunately it is not a pleasant one. They were the ones walking out at the screening I went to. The writing was on the wall when their heart sank as the curtains whirred into place and settled on a 4:3 aspect ratio. That was a bizarre decision - these moors, this landscape, demand widescreen.

The decision to spend most of the film with the early years of Heathcliff and Cathy also seems ill-conceived, as the two youngsters frolic in the mud for an eternity without the story moving forward very much. They are earthy people of and from the land, the film screams, like the interminable procession of animals we see depicted. We get that in the first ten minutes - the rest of the time we are just going over established territory.

The return of the now successful Heathcliff in the latter half of the film means the grown up cast having the same effect as substitutes in a football game - imbibing the audience/spectators with a glimmer of hope. Alas, it is not to be, as the actor playing Heathcliff is wooden beyond belief, pipping the actor playing Edgar for the prize. The actresses around them can act, but it is a poor return on the ticket price. The film overtly attempts to appeal on visual grounds and as a result dialogue appears to have been an after-thought, as most lines are flat and predictable. The racial epithets are not shocking; they seem more a cynical ploy to garner publicity.

TV frame, incongruous mise-en-scene, poor casting and dodgy racial politics - any one of these could sink a film, but all four together is a very tough sell. The biggest sin, however, is to take Wuthering Heights and imbue it with absolutely no passion at all. The moors look suitably wild, and there is a strong sense of mud, but beyond that there are few positives to take from this film.

Since her feature film debut with Red Road in 2006, Andrea Arnold has been building quite a reputation for herself as a visionary filmmaker. She has shown an aptitude for harsh landscapes and even harsher characters, for using dialogue only when it's absolutely necessary, and for making films that are so up close and personal they're often uncomfortable to watch - Wuthering Heights is her magnum opus, making the best of all her directorial quirks to create an unusual take on tired material and resulting in a fascinating, disarming viewing experience.

As usual, Arnold's adaptation leaves out the second half of the novel and focuses intensely on Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship - she, though, places huge emphasis on their lives as children; a smart move, as by the time they're grown up you can see hints of their childhood feelings, passions and experiences still influencing them. Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer are captivating performers, very primal and instinctive which suits the tone and setting of the movie, and they are mostly silent which allows most of the development and interaction to come through physicality. A rare smile from Glave is more impactful than any line in the movie; the way Beer lightly touches him says more than words ever could.

Where Wuthering Heights truly stands out is in its infrastructure. It's incredibly bleak and barren, the sound of wind battering the microphones often drowning out the actors, and the regular landscape shots suggest a loneliness and a desolation that do wonders for the atmosphere. Arnold doesn't shy away from the dark, violent parts of the source material, and since the movie moves so slowly with very little happening, the violence seems more disturbing by comparison.

This, in my opinion, is the way the story is meant to be told. On release, readers were shocked by Emily Bronte's daring, and the book wasn't very popular because it's such an uncomfortable read - yet most movie adaptations romanticize it to some extent. Wuthering Heights is not a sweeping romance. It's not one of the great love stories. It's a tale of hereditary cruelty, frightening passion, selfish, twisted characters, distressing physical and emotional abuse, and Arnold understands that. Her filmmaking techniques might be unconventional, but in a sense, this is as by-the-books as any Wuthering Heights movie ever has been.

The second half of the film features an intensely physical performance from newcomer James Howson and an icy, erratic one from Kaya Scodelario, and is talkier than the first half - it's a nice contrast. It implies that as the characters grow, they learn to hurt each other with more than just their bodies. If I have one complaint it's that we don't see much of the adults, but that's not to suggest that their segment is in any way lacking the piercing power or derelict beauty of the first. A gorgeous shot of Scodelario with the sun in her hair might be the most memorable of the entire movie. Arnold ends the film with Mumford and Sons' The Enemy, the first full-length piece of music used, which effectively marks the ending as an event, closing the story with firm finality, and combined with a montage of flashbacks it lets the audience reflect on the journey these characters have taken with each other, and how much it's changed them by the end.

Wuthering Heights isn't for everyone - my first screening had a lot of fidgeting and walkouts - but there's no denying that it's an impressively ambitious, challenging movie and that I think is something to be respected. Whether or not daring like this actually works depends on the talents of the director, and Andrea Arnold has proved here that she has what it takes to go against the grain and successfully produce a unique, beautiful work of art.

Can't they hold a camera steady? Horrible storytelling.

This Brontë novel has been filmed several times. But never with this amount of dirt, pain and passion in such an amount of merciless Yorkshire.

The realism also includes passion in disguise. It comes in mud, like the landscape. The more obstacles, the more fire. That's nothing new in adoptions of "Wuthering Heights", but it has never been so clear, despite the disguise.

One thing more. There's almost no music in this version. Seeing this, you can certainly have another kind of discussion about disguises. The ones which comes from irrelevant sound, hindering you from seeing. And listening.

This is an interesting adaptation of such a dramatic, Gothic and aggressive piece of literature. Meaning that instead of going down the conventional over dramatic acting, soundtrack and lots of scenes including a storm of some kind...it takes a step back and goes at a certain pace. Andrea Arnold shares her interpretation of the novel by involving the setting as a character. Her film-making style is amazing, so focused and calm. Andrea made you appreciate the setting and allowed you to be part of the film by putting you in the place of the surroundings. Whether it be a close-up of a beetle, or a low angle shot in between two blades of grass, there is a certain calming nature which comes with the film-making style. Also the smallest things like the sounds of the buzzing from the moths and bees, to the soothing yet wild natured sound of the wind, it all felt so natural and calming. It felt authentic and naturalistic. However, there is the issue of the infrequent use of the "F" word which I'm sure in the context of the film that word may not have been used, and there is one tiny dodgy scene. Those issues aside, it is an interesting watch. They left quite a huge chuck out, but if they had included it within the film maybe it would have felt cluttered and it may have interrupted the storyline of Heathcliff and Catherine. Speaking of which, the actors were brilliant. Both the younger and older versions of the two main characters. Not a film for a Saturday night, but a film which requires focus and for you to be in a serious mood. Not a bad watch.

So I already warned you about my review could bee containing spoiler of some type. Therefore be aware!

I know every artist should enjoy the artistic freedom, but am sorry I couldn't enjoy this movie ... First of all the movie is too long. Those two hours of nothing happening made me sleepy. It is more of a documentary type of a film than some real film genre. The characters are nothing like the original Wuthering heights characters and it is such a shame that Hitcliff was turned into love sick boy turned into a necrophiliac. The story is just some dark version of Romeo and Juliet. I haven't seen a picture that could resemble Wuthering Heights.

Honestly speaking I am not able to recommend this movie to anyone. Maybe I may be accused of not understanding artistic freedom and such, but the movie did not fulfill my expectations.