Wuthering Heights (film, 2011)

North Yorkshire , the end of the XVIII century. One evening, Mr. Earnshaw brings a black boy, named Heathcliffe, to his Thunderstorm Pass farmhouse. This fugitive from the plantations of the West Indies, he found wandering on the streets of port Liverpool . Although Earnshaw wants to make Heathcliff a member of his family, the racial prejudices of those around him and the wild temper of the self-willed youth stand in the way of his plan. All free time unsociable spends on heather wastelands in the company of his daughter Earnsho, Catherine. However, their rapprochement is not included in the plans of the young sadist Hindley, who must inherit Thunderstorm Pass after the imminent death of his father ...

A series of humiliations and disappointments turns Heathcliff into a new Caliban , overwhelmed by the desire to take revenge on the cruel world of whites ^[1] .

• Paul Hilton - Mr Earnshaw
• James Howson - Heathcliff
  • Solomon Glaive - Young Heathcliff
• Kaya Scodelario - Catherine Earnsho
  • Shannon Beer - Young Catherine Earnshaw
• James Northcote - Edgar Linton
• Simone Jackson - Ellen Dean
• Nicola Burley - Isabella Linton
• Oliver Milburn - Mr. Linton
• Amy Ren - Francis Earnsho
• Steve Ivets - Joseph

Initially, the film was supposed to be shot by John Maybury , however, it was replaced first by Peter Webber , and then (in December 2009) by Andrea Arnold. In her previous film Aquarium , the main role was occupied by Michael Fassbender , who was also considered as a candidate for the role of Heathcliff. Shortly before filming began, he was replaced by Ed Westwick . Another potential candidate was Henry Kavell .

Initially, the role of Catherine Earnsho intended Natalie Portman or Jessica Alba . Also this role was interested in Lindsay Lohan . After Portman left the project, Abbie Cornish and Gemma Arterton claimed the main female role.

For the role of Heathcliff, director Andrea Arnold wanted to take an actor with a gypsy appearance, but the gypsy community of England could not find an actor who would meet her requirements. After that, Arnold opened the audition for actors aged 16 to 21 from Yorkshire, a mixed race, or immigrants from India , Pakistan , Bangladesh and the Middle East . In the end, the role went to the black debutant James Howson from Yorkshire. In the film, his voice is duplicated by another actor ^[2] .

The second part of the novel (with a conciliatory final) was not reflected in the film Arnold ^[3] . The focus is placed on the childhood events of Heathcliff and Catherine, which in other film versions are quite dotted. The director calls them an emotional grain, from which all subsequent plot development springs ^[4] .

In the book, the events are presented by two narrators - the tenant of Lockwood and the housekeeper Nelly Dean. In the film, the first does not appear at all, and the participation of Nelly is minimized. All events are shown through the eyes of Heathcliff himself - the eternal outcast who glares enviously at the dimly lit windows of the cottages on the wasteland ^{[1] [5]} . The choice of a black actor for this role allows us to highlight the topic of racial intolerance at the beginning of the 21st century, which was suppressed in earlier versions of the novel ^[6] .

The film is designed in the same manner as “proletarian” social realism using a mobile hand-held camera, which brought fame to director Andrea Arnold ^[1] . Dialogues and all kinds of “literaryism” are minimized, but profanity has been introduced with a noticeable Yorkshire accent ^[5] . The camera now and then stops at moths and birds, ^[7] as if emphasizing the fundamental unity of people and animals in a homeless, inclement nature ^{[8] [9]} .

The authenticity, the authenticity of the view is given by the sharpness of the optics, the coarseness of the plan, the scrupulous - literally, to the smallest pebble - the clarity and clarity of the picture, the corrosive “scratching” of the details, which gives a physical sensation of an irresistible reality against the background of clear cold air.

- Lydia Shitenburg, “ Séance ” ^[10]

To enhance the credibility, Andrea Arnold, as usual, abandoned the traditional off-screen music in such cases, except for the song by Mumford & Sons , which sounds at the end of the film. “The howling of the wind, the singing of birds, the barking of dogs, the rain, the sound of shutters, the whispering of foliage, the crackling of insects and the creaking of trees merge in the great symphony of nature,” writes Philip French from the British edition of Observer ^[1] . Another critic ironically: “If you happen to be caught by a hurricane without plugs in your ears, you have already heard the soundtrack for this film” ^[9] .

The world premiere of the film took place on September 6, 2011 in the competition of the Venice Festival , North American - at the festival in Toronto . The new version of “Thunderstorm Pass” was enthusiastically received by critics and won the Venetian prize “ Osella ” for the best camera work. In the British film rolled out November 11, 2011. The premiere in Russia took place on March 8, 2012. Rental prospects in the United States remain unclear.

A complete list of awards and nominations is available on the IMDB website ^[11]

Film press took the film favorably. Sight & Sound magazine wrote that its creators brilliantly breathed new life into the greasy pages of the classic novel ^[5] . On the pages of TIME magazine, Mary Corliss approved how characters, usually interpreted in a heroic manner, were rethought as captives of Destiny and pawns in the hands of ruthless Nature ^[12] . The howling of the wind and the damp weather are no less important characters in this story than people lost in the background of endless landscapes ^[5] .

According to Andrei Plakhov , the actors in this film are just pawns that fulfill the director’s and cameraman’s intentions and created the “ Brownian Movement of Elements” on the screen, managing to translate prose into the category of poetry using purely cinematic techniques, not words or music ^[3] . “It turned out a visual poem with a powerful editing suspense and thunderstorm electricity penetrating it,” the Russian film critic summarizes ^[3] .

The Guardian columnist Peter Bradshaw said that he had never expected to experience the shock of something fundamentally new from the screen version of a well-known novel. He saw in the film Arnold “an attempt to recreate something that could precede the writing of the book, its real basis, the unprocessed sequence of unwritten events, which were later ennobled and perfected into one of the pearls of literature” ^[8] . The Russian magazine Séans rendered the following verdict: “This is a cruel and violent world seen by a savage, not knowing the separation between good and evil, the world before the fall” ^[10] .

Many reviewers, however, complain that the reunion of lovers performed somewhat ponderous and the second part of the film with a shocking necrofile tinge is incomparable in emotional strength from the first ^{[1] [5] [14]} . Peter Bradshaw considers that the main characters in his youth and in his youth are portrayed by different actors to the shortcomings of the film, which gives the impression of some kind of artificiality that does not fit well with the hyperrealism of the film as a whole ^[8] .

• Wuthering Heights (Eng.) On the Internet Movie Database