Wuther­ing Heights

Fish Tank direc­tor Andrea Arnold isn’t the most obvi­ous choice for a new adap­ta­tion of ​‘Wuther­ing Heights’, Emi­ly Brontë’s rous­ing­ly roman­tic nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nov­el. But by break­ing away from the ster­ilised likes of Lau­rence Olivier’s 1939 ren­di­tion, Arnold returns Heights to its grub­by, twist­ed roots.

Con­fi­dent­ly mak­ing Brontë’s sto­ry her own, Arnold’s film is at once a mod­erni­sa­tion (her char­ac­ters hurl F‑bombs and C‑grenades that would have made the author her­self blush), a respect­ful adap­ta­tion and a gut­sy re-imagining.

If Bron­të evoked the bar­ren York­shire moors as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of cen­tral char­ac­ter Heathcliff’s innate­ly wild nature, Arnold takes the metaphor one step fur­ther by cast­ing the tra­di­tion­al­ly white role anew. Here, Heath­cliff (Solomon Glave) is a young black boy who’s dragged in from the moors (“It was the Chris­t­ian thing to do”) and befriends twin spir­it Cather­ine (Shan­non Beer). But with Catherine’s broth­er Hind­ley (Lee Shaw) crip­pled by jeal­ous rage, Heathcliff’s in for a tough time.

Music-less and vir­tu­al­ly dia­logue free, Arnold’s film relies on hel­ter-skel­ter images and mean­ing­ful glances for its impe­tus. Filmed in a loose, hand-held fash­ion, Heights is best in its supe­ri­or first half when it unites the coarse beau­ty of the York­shire moors with an impres­sive cast of young first-timers, all of whom deliv­er raw, unsen­ti­men­tal turns that pul­sate with feeling.

Despite her excep­tion­al play­ers, there’s no ques­tion who Arnold thinks the real star is. The direc­tor is in love with her tur­bu­lent York­shire land­scapes, and embraces the ele­ments almost to a fault. While the rain-lashed imagery kin­dles a fit­ting­ly fer­al mood, her repet­i­tive use of cer­tain images derails any sense of pace. At times, Heights near­ly resem­bles a David Atten­bor­ough documentary.

Some­thing to be respect­ed more than enjoyed, Heights is too long by a good 30 min­utes (its sec­ond half strug­gles to hit Brontë’s emo­tion­al beats), and would have packed more punch with a lit­tle care­ful pruning.