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United Kingdom · 2011
2h 9m
Director Andrea Arnold
Starring Kaya Scodelario, James Northcote, Amy Wren, Nichola Burley
Genre Drama, Romance
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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.
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.
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.
Slant Magazine by Joseph Jon Lanthier
In whittling down Emily Brontë's romance to its most earthly aspects, Andrea Arnold stylizes herself into an unavoidable corner.
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).
It's an intense, uncompromising take that restores some of the shock that made Wuthering Heights so notable when it first appeared.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Willful, meandering, and intriguing, this Wuthering Heights is similarly headstrong.
The Playlist by Oliver Lyttelton
Wuthering Heights is a model of how to bring a classic novel kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.
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.
Boxoffice Magazine by Sara Maria Vizcarrondo
Arnold's newest testament to passion and squalor strikes a tone somewhere between Cary Fukinaga's emo "Jane Eyre" and Sophia Coppola's revisionist-hip "Marie Antoinette."
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