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Wuthering Heights

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United Kingdom · 2011
2h 9m
Director Andrea Arnold
Starring Kaya Scodelario, James Northcote, Amy Wren, Nichola Burley
Genre Drama, Romance

A poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family where he develops an intense relationship with his young foster sister, Cathy. Based on the classic novel by Emily Bronte.

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What are critics saying?

70

Village Voice by

Heathcliff does not get the revenge he wants because he wants to escape the specific traumas of his adolescent past, shown in the film's first half. And because Arnold traps her viewers with Heathcliff's murky version of events. There's no room for enriching subtext in this version of Wuthering Heights because all the information we need is inscribed on the film's glassy surface.

70

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The grunts and howls seem every bit as mannered as the florid diction of Olivier and Oberon, perhaps even more so. Their artifice, like Brontë's own, was overt, whereas Ms. Arnold strives to disguise hers in the trappings of authenticity. And as a result, the impact - the grandeur, the art - of Wuthering Heights is diminished.

80

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Arnold's vibrant, Malickian adaptation has another bold stroke worth mentioning: Heathcliff, a Gypsy in the original text, is now an Afro-Caribbean former slave, initially a bruised teen (Glave) and then an unusual, self-made man (Howson).

91

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

It's an intense, uncompromising take that restores some of the shock that made Wuthering Heights so notable when it first appeared.

80

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Perhaps above everything else, Arnold returns us to the most potent fact about the Cathy and Heathcliff love affair: it is a love affair between equals, not between a woman with coquettish "erotic capital" and a man with property and status.

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