Review: ITV’s Wuthering Heights (2009)
Every time a new film or television adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is announced, it seems that at least one writer espouses the opinion that maybe, just maybe, Wuthering Heights is one of those novels that will never be able to be adapted successfully at all. The narrative frame is too complicated — the characters are too morally deficient — the passions are too wild and the revenge is too off-putting. It just won’t translate to the screen, big or small.
Even if I’m not convinced that the novel is un-adaptable, I have to admit that most film adaptations of the novel have fallen pretty short of the mark. And while I had high hopes for the new ITV adaptation — aired here in America on Masterpiece Classic on PBS — I was, sadly, pretty disappointed again.
The one thing this adaptation had going for it was atmosphere. I felt like it managed to convey the tension and discontent that leaps off the pages of the novel. Everyone was appropriately frustrated, and all of the “happy” moments were appropriately balanced right on the edge of the knife, ready to tip over into anguish and despair at any given second. That was good — that felt like the novel I experienced as a reader.
The acting as a whole was also well done. I felt Charlotte Riley missed the mark when it came to capturing Cathy’s petulant and grasping madness, but Tom Hardy was unusual and sometimes haunting as Heathcliff. Hardy’s acting was best for me in the scenes immediately after his sudden reappearance; he really captured the boastful, almost funny facade that Heathcliff puts on to cover the resentment and anger at Cathy, Edgar, and Hindley that still simmers and bubbles underneath. I thought Andrew Lincoln was one of the brightest spots in the adaptation. He managed to turn Edgar, who is so often simpering, passive, effeminate, and bland, into a more human character. Rather than merely a foil for Heathcliff, Lincoln’s Edgar was a frustrated man in his own right, trying to do his best within the societal constraints that he so clearly subscribes to. Overall, though, these are weak versions of the characters presented by the novel — there’s no dog-hanging, no baby-dangling, no wrists against broken windows, and no head-versus-couch trauma to be found here.
But there were so many small things that had been tweaked and changed that I was really distracted from the main relationships at times. The screenwriter, Peter Bowker, chose to re-set the action of the novel from 1801 to 1848 for reasons I could not quite discern. Really — how many novels begin with such a concrete assertion of place and time? Was it for the sake of costuming? Was it because he wanted to locate the novel’s action approximately at the time of its publication? If he was realigning the time frame of the novel to fit with either of those reasons or some other, I didn’t feel like it was a justified choice within the adaptation. Sometimes a time shift can work (Sandy Welch reconfiguring North and South so that the characters could attend the 1851 Great Exhibition is a good example, in my mind), but when it’s done for seemingly arbitrary reasons, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Along with the time shift, Bowker also reconfigured the ages of the characters. Heathcliff, Cathy, Edgar, and Isabella are all approximately seven years older during most of the adaptation than they were in the novel. Cathy is 25 when she gives birth to Cathy II and dies (we see a shot of her tombstone, giving her year of death as 1830 — 48 years later than she dies in the novel). She and Heathcliff are adults when Mr. Earnshaw dies, instead of twelve and thirteen, and they are adults when Hareton is born, when in the novel they would have been about thirteen and fourteen.
This “aging” of the characters creates multiple problems. The most glaring of these is the issue of the three-year delay of Edgar and Cathy’s wedding, the same three years that pass while Heathcliff disappears to parts unknown. In the novel, they wait to marry because of Cathy’s age, her health, and the mourning period for Mr. Linton; in the film, the wait is nonsensical, because Cathy is of age and did not have the hysterical reaction to Heathcliff’s departure that she does in the novel, and Mr. Linton’s death is never even addressed. There’s no reasonable way to explain why Edgar and Cathy wait so long to marry in the film — except that they have to be made to wait in the script to give Heathcliff his time to transform and return to wreak havoc.
No, it seems the reason that Bowker and the filmmakers of this version chose to age the characters was so that they could comfortably translate Heathcliff and Cathy’s passion for each other as young adolescents into clearly sexual terms. Brontë’s Heathcliff and Cathy are younger when they tromp around together on the moors, and though sexual activity between them isn’t counted out by the text (really, it’s surely not called Penistone Crag for nothing), there is no clear indication that they express their apparently overwhelming emotional connection into physical actions.
Hardy and Riley’s Heathcliff and Cathy most certainly do tryst out on the moors, with a scene of the pair rolling around passionately on the rocks of the crag. Emotional jealousy then becomes physical jealousy as well — Heathcliff reacts incredulously when he learns that Cathy is considering Edgar’s proposal because she “lay with him” only weeks before. After Cathy marries, her sexual relationship with Edgar also becomes a more significant issue in this adaptation — she denies him on their wedding night because she is pining for Heathcliff, and when the two do sleep together, it is also presented on screen. Heathcliff and Cathy’s post-wedding relationship breaks not because of her role as Edgar’s legal wife but because he is jealous that she has gone to bed with her husband and refuses to touch her now-defiled body.
The sexuality of the novel, translated as it is by this adaptation, is problematic, but doesn’t necessarily violate the general sense of the text. One part of the adaptation that does reshape the very heart of the novel in uncomfortable ways is Heathcliff’s death, presented in the television version as a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound. Having Heathcliff kill himself in such an active way presents major problems for one of the central themes in the novel — the issue of whether or not there is any hope for salvation for Heathcliff and Cathy. So much of their childhood is depicted in the novel as a struggling against the concept of life after death as a polarized heaven-or-hell dichotomy, something that is dismissed by Cathy as a girl but later comes back in full-force after her death.
Though Heathcliff surely always doubts that his soul could ever be “saved” as much as the reader does, the entire second half of the novel seems to be centered around two projects for him: first, gaining control of both the Heights and the Grange, and second, finding a way to return to Cathy. The afterlife-locale of Cathy’s soul is questionable at best, too — she may, after all, be haunting the moors near the Heights rather than strumming a harp on a cloud in heaven — and Heathcliff certainly jeopardizes his shot at the pearly gates every time the rage and need for revenge over take him.
Regardless, though, a literal suicide on Heathcliff’s part, rather than the slow cessation of life that he goes through in the book, takes away the important thematic question about the final resting place of the soul — in nineteenth-century terms, suicide meant an automatic refusal of salvation. Moreover, it takes away the neatly-wrought parallel of Heathcliff’s death and Cathy’s — I’ve always read Heathcliff’s hunger strike and death as a patterned behavior, learned from Cathy. A suicide takes that away — and it takes away the image of Cathy buried between her husband and her lover, as someone who dies by their own hand would not have been buried in a churchyard in 1801 or in 1848.
But even after all of this, I still think this is a novel that can be adapted. None of the attempts have been anywhere close to perfect so far, if any adaptation even can be, but my favorite attempt is the BBC’s Sparkhouse, a 2002 modern version of the story starring Sarah Smart as a female Heathcliff character, Joseph McFadden as a male Cathy figure, and Richard Armitage as a modern Hareton. The struggle to be assimilated in society is well-played in this version, and the cruelty and almost deranged behavior that so many adaptations seem to feel would alienate the audience is out in full force.
Though that modern version is my personal favorite thus far, I’d still like to see a faithful adaptation of the original story. Plain and simple, I’d love to see a straight-from-the-page adaptation that retains the frame structure of the novel as well as all its problematic and sometimes off-putting characters and behaviors. Surely if Austen’s Pride and Prejudice can be done in a grand six-hour BBC production, the same could be done for Wuthering Heights. We need Lockwood to see different shades of Heathcliff; we need to see Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual cruelty in all its glory to truly understand the psyche of the text. Instead of more truncated, feature-film-length versions like this most recent one, we really do need the whole shebang for this novel to work on film.
[...] Tom Hardy en Cathy door Charlotte Riley. Meer info vind je op IMDB. Een recensie van de serie kun je hier lezen. De tweede aflevering wordt uitgezonden op zaterdag 30 [...]
Brontës.nl » Wuthering Heights op Belgische tv
May 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM
I could not agree more. There is a new adaptation in production at present, Ms. Hetrees and Peter Walker, Screen writer and director of Girl With the Pearl Earing, casting teenageers.
I have my fingers crossed.
The PBS Masterpiece Classic was unacceptable! Horrid!
re the setting – The lovers never embrace Penistone Crag most of the setting is confined to the claustrophobic distance between two houses – very little action actually takes place out of doors. It’s he space of a repressed dream, indoors – nature as metaphor.
I can cite several scholarly essays explaining why Emily could not or would not confront nature directly.
– but , much of the repressed sexual power is generated by the reader as voyeur, (think early Polanski or Bunel) peering through layers of narrators, at three protagonists trapped in very confined physical (and psychological) spaces…. (lots of comings and goings thru windows, doors, cupboards, key and locks). AND ….. Cathy NEVER ran around the moors in a nightgown – sorry Ms. Oberon.
In fact, she and Heathcliff NEVER HAD SEX, never even kissed (well maybe right before she dies) , never engaged in adult sexuality – which exactly is the point!!! – This PBS version totally destroyed the incest taboo that slips unspoken throughout the novel – was he her half brother? Heathcliff’s origins therefore must remain obscure. I believe the erotic energy of the novel is generated by repression and denial.
Truth be told , Cathy is never in love with the adult Heathcliff, but with the memory of a childhood she once shared with him as a wild and free girl.
She loves that young girl – always singing and defying – the energy and independent strength she believes she possessed when Heathcliff was her childhood companion.
However, if you examine Catherine’s youthful memories carefully ( through Nelly Dean’s narrative) , you’ll discover that her girlhood may not have been as idealized as her present adult memories of the time. Don’t forget she was raised in a home that produced two abusive men and repressed budding sexual feeling for her brother.
However, if you examine Catherine’s youthful memories carefully ( through Nelly Dean’s narrative) , you’ll discover that her girlhood may not have been as idealized as her present adult memories of the time.
Why doesn’t Catherine recognize any conflict of loyalty between her husband and her returned childhood “friend”.? She states that she “‘doesn’t understand jealousy” For all intents and purposes she’s still a “virgin” child bride and dies one. It is impossible to engage in adult sexual, marital responsibilities. The prolonged adolescence is keeping the fragile false memories alive. She has no option but to pluck feathers, go mad, and die.
I believe she chose not to be buried in the church, against Edgar’s initial wishes, though he agreed. Afterlife? I believe Emily and her protagonists were not bound by conventional Christian judgement of suicide.
Thank you for your response to the latest WH film disaster. Let’s hope the new film will be better.
barbara
Barbara
August 21, 2009 at 12:46 AM
in terms of the novel, I think its rather literal of you to suppose that Cathy and heathcliff had an utterly chaste relationship. Such a passion would be sure to spill over into something physical.though it would hardly have been proper for emily, as the daughter of a vicar to give us the juicy details.
and i dont know what incest taboo you are on about barbara within the novel…it is quite clear that Heathcliff is NOT cathy’s brother, His mysterious Gypsy origins serve to put him firmly outside of civilised society and his wildness more in commune with nature, with a hint of the supernatural, juxtaposing him with edgar who represents society and its vast array of rules and expectations.
Loads of things annoyed me about this adaptation, important dialogue left out, waiting till the wedding to come back etc, cathy’s charachterisation was watered down, a more sympathetic version was shown where more of the spoilt and selfish brat was needed. hated that Heathcliff killed himself….Not true to the charachter at all.
I think you are wrong, Cathy did love heathcliff. what tears her apart in the end is the thought that she may have chose wrongly. cathy’s heathcliff- her inner wild and carefree nature and edgar’s cathy- who must do as society expects to maintain a respectable social position, and her being selfish, the material comfort and trappings that go with it. and she cannot reconcile the two.
if it get people talking and reading the book all the better!!!! I for one, don’t comprehend how anyone who has read the book, can actually enjoy the 1930′s olivier version, and yet people rave about it.
Lisa
September 3, 2009 at 8:06 AM
Major misconception: the bond between Cath +Haethcliff is not forged through a love affair but is an ‘intense attatchment’ forged through shared childhood trauma ( deaths in family, Hindley’s descent into alcholism etc). There is no physical relationship and i disagree that Bronte would have refrained from mentioning it if there was as she refers to sex between other characters at various points eg Hind+Frances ‘doing anything but reading their bibles- i’ll answer for it’
Rachel
September 5, 2009 at 11:56 AM
You know that Penistone Crag is a real place, right?
Nic
August 30, 2009 at 11:10 AM
I believe there was a “Penistone Hill” that many scholars believe gave Emily the name for the meeting place, but I’m not sure there was a “Penistone Crag” that pre-dated the writing of the novel.
From what I gather, a rocky outcropping in the area has been identified as a possible inspiration for the place, and is now called “Penistone Crag.” I don’t think it bore that name before Emily published her book.
Lauren
August 30, 2009 at 6:13 PM
The notes in my edition of WH says there was a Peniston Quarry near Haworth – alos the spelling changes in one paragraph between Penistone and Peniston. I don’t think there was any double meaning in the use of the name though – it was just a local name as was often the case with the Brontes novels.
Andy
September 8, 2009 at 8:33 PM
Love your review!
I was just so disappointed in this adaptation – they took so many liberties with the novel. All those extra scenes (like the family going to church while Mr Earnshaw was still alive) with the comments from the vicar about Heathcliff being an unbaptised bastard and the thing about “They said you kept a harem in Liverpool while mother was ill.” It filled up loads of space that could’ve been better used, and frankly, if you were living in that bit of Yorkshire in them days, you’d keep your harem in Leeds or Bradford – not really far away in Liverpool!
I was also so upset to see the “Heaven didn’t seem to be my home” speech being uprooted and stuck in a church. Ooooh… dramatic juxtaposition? No, because it didn’t work! And Heathcliff apparently doesn’t hear Catherine saying “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.”
It just didn’t make sense!
I didn’t watch the second part – probably because by then my boyfriend was rather fed up with me complaining about it! – but changing the ages like that is crazy. And yes, I was really annoyed with the way Mr Earnshaw dies when they’re teenagers. It means Hareton has far less time to lord it over Heathcliff, so the revenge seems to be a bit thickly layered on. In fact, my boyfriend, who’s never read the novel, missed the fact that grown-up Edgar was the adult version of the child heathcliff and Catherine laughed at. So when he proposed to Catherine, my boyfriend said, “Hang on – he’s already married!” “No, that was his sister.” Unless that was intentional so there were incest taboos exploding everywhere?
There just seemed no need for them to make all these changes. They took a dramatic, uncanny, uncompromising, unconventional novel and turned it into a Catherine Cookson adaptation.
Helen
September 2, 2009 at 2:19 PM
I mean Hindley lord it over Heathcliff, obviously!!!
Helen
September 2, 2009 at 2:20 PM
I agree with most things people have said so far, but despite all the negatives I loved this version. Both the acting and the script were fresh and original. I thought Tom Hardy was outstanding as Heathcliff. He brought out the intelligence and humour of the character which is something I have never really considered before. Also he showed just enough of the character’s vulnerability and potential goodness to keep us from hating him completely for his cruel, vicious side.
The acting from Andrew Lincoln and Charlotte Riley was also superb. I loved the way Edgar was more sympathetically portrayed but his selfishness made explicit, such as when he disowned his pregnant and destitute sister. I agree that Cathy was not quite the Cathy in the book but on the other hand, as she was supposed to be in her twenties, not her teens, too many tantrums would have just looked silly!
I thought the minor characters, especially the young Cathy, were great.
Every new version of W. H. brings out different aspects of the book and this certainly helped my understanding of it.
Pat
September 4, 2009 at 9:00 AM
I’d looked forward to this adaptation, but almost from the start thought “this isn’t right” and it has led me to re-read the book and almost at every turn I see that they changed the book. What’s happened to Lockwood as the character who finds out about Cathy and Heathcliff and the role of Mrs Dean in telling the story. Were they short of money that led them to delete so many characters?
Perhaps like some books it’s not possible to do it justice on the small screen.
Andy
September 7, 2009 at 8:14 PM
There are many, many ommissions in this re-telling of the story, plus new additions which seem irrelevant and pointless. These compromises seem crazy as they take too much of the original spirit of the story away and water down whats left with the additions.
I think a faithful reproduction would be the only way to bring this novel to life on screen. Though to be honest, cannot think of a single living actress who could convey the essence of Cathy.
On a slightly separate note, did anyone else notice that in this ITV version she seemed to have got her entire wardrobe from Monsoon? (!)
NJO
September 10, 2009 at 1:06 PM
I totally agree with Lisa re: Olivier’s 1930′s portrayal of Heathcliff – I never did like it, could never understand why people did rave about it.
However, I disagree with most of the comments above. I think this was a superb adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Like any adaptation for film there is some artistic licence, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed watching this version.
Helen’s comment about keeping a harem in Leeds or Bradford is not valid as Mr.Earnshaw does find(?)Heathcliffe in Liverpool. The significance of this,
in my opinion, is the fact that Liverpool was a slave trading port, and there are enigmatic hints in the book that Heathcliffe could be of mixed race origin. One of the least enigmatic comments is in Chapter XV11: “There he has continued, praying like a Methodist: only the diety he implored in senseless dust and ashes; and God, when addressed, was curiously confounded with his own black father!” Other references to “black” when used about Heathcliffe can be taken metaphorically, rather than literally but this one is much more direct.
It must be remembered that the Brontes had connections with the Sill Family of Dent that were involved in slave trading and it was fashionable in this period for sine well to do families to have “black” boys as servants. Is possible this story is woven out of a knowledge of how they were treated?
Searching for some more information about the Sill family to see if there is any links I found a reference to an article that might prove interesting. This article is entitled “Yorkshire Slavery in Wuthering Heights” by Christopher Heywood in The Review of English Studies XXXV111 (1987)pp 184 198; Oxford University Press. I will be going to the Library to get a copy!
Does anyone out there know anymore about this possible link?
By the way I thought the acting was excellent but Tom Hardy was brilliant as Heathcliff and made Olivier look like a cardboard cut out.
Anita Batty
October 1, 2009 at 4:01 PM
Further to my comments on 1st October 2009 re: the recent adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ the article I referred to was very interesting and should be read by all interested in the novel. The Sill family did indeed have a black servant – he ran away from Dent and an advert was published offering a reward ‘from Edward Sill of Dent and a Mr David Kenyon of Liverpool’. Kenyon was Sill’s partner in their slave trading business. There is lots of other interesting facts in this article.
Anita Batty
October 11, 2009 at 7:27 AM
” was also so upset to see the “Heaven didn’t seem to be my home” speech being uprooted and stuck in a church. Ooooh… dramatic juxtaposition? No, because it didn’t work! And Heathcliff apparently doesn’t hear Catherine saying “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.”
It just didn’t make sense! ”
Studied and wrote – a gruelling yet satisfying essay – gruelling because of the complexity of this novel – satisfying as a HD was gained.
This adaptation didnt capture – the ‘soul’ of novel nor did it give the viewer an appreciation of the complexity behind the ‘dysfunctional’ relationships.
Agree with the opening review on many points – and wish I had the energy to make a few more. However like you – a full and rich adaptation of many more parts similiar to Pride and Prejudice could see more justice done to this masterful novel.
And yes we need the narrators – Nellie’s knowledge of Heathcliff being present when Cathy did say in the novel “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.”
Was such an important turning point – and where Nellie’s loyalties are seen to be questionable. Moreover the tragedy in this scene in the novel is realised, as Heathcliff has only overheard this part, and misses Cathy telling Nellie – ‘she is heathcliff” – it was such a dramatic moment in the novel. Ahhh I will stop now – great shame that anyone would watch this and then try to read the book!
emmy
October 25, 2009 at 11:35 AM
Part 2 of the ITV 2009 adapatation of Emily Bronte’s wonderful novel was screened in Australia on 1 November 2009. I found this adaption disappointing from part 1 – but stayed with this interpretation to form a conclusive view.
Unfortunately, part 2 – did nothing to convince me that this was worth the effort.
Obsession and passion are not the same as hysteria and sex. This felt like an Mills and Boon period melodrama – gratuitious sex scenes dimished the power and turblence of Emily Bronte’s novel.
The casting of the main characters in this version had a modern sensibiility about it that did invoke the mood and time of the novel.
The 1970 adapation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is still my favourite version. Both Timothiy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall converyed the complexity of Heathcliffe and Cathy’s relationship without resorting to cheap sexual scences and necrophilia.
The good looking main cast could not make Wuthering Heights what is should be and could have been.
I have just had another look at Wuthering Heights with Timothy Dallton and Anna Calder-Marshal – thank goodness this can still be obtained on DVD.
Hopefully, the 2009 version, while not deter people from the reading of Emily Bronte’s masterful novel or seeking our the 1970 version of ‘Wuthering Heights’.
Mia
Mia Jacyshyn
November 2, 2009 at 5:33 AM
I can’t believe it that they have cut so many important scenes and dialogues. Cathy seemed pretty sane and patient which actually is just opposite of her character. The scene where the pregnant Cathy walks away to the moors is also pointless. Also, Heathcliff was not portrayed the way he was supposed to! His thirst for vengeance and cruelty was not exhibited well. The narrators Nelly and Mr. Lockwood got lost somewhere in the moors, I guess. Heathcliff isn’t a coward to kill himself & he also doesn’t approve of Hareton and Cathy II intimacy. He just gets tired of his madness of seeking vengeance and maddens himself of seeking Cathy’s ghost. Well, this version has done many injustices but still it seemed very good to me. In a melodramatic sense it is worth to be watched. Though I should admit Hardy, Riley were outstanding. The movie would have been extremely brilliant if they haven’t changed so many dialogues and deleted important scenes.
nia
February 22, 2010 at 4:16 PM