Wuthering Heights (2011)

Film review: Wuthering Heights (2011), directed by Andrea Arnold

Based on the novel by Emily Brontë is the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, by critically acclaimed director Andrea Arnold, who for this version has chosen mainly non-actors (i.e. people who haven't acted before) for the roles. Thought it worked surprisingly well, but we'll get to the actors later.

A foreign-looking boy (Solomon Glave) is brought to a house the Yorkshire moors by a Mr. Earnshaw (Paul Hilton), who found him on the streets of Liverpool and decided to do some Christian charity by taking him home and basically adopting him as his own son. The boy is named Heathcliff, and his new sister Catherine (Shannon Beer) takes an immediate interest in him - but his new older brother Hindley (Lee Shaw) takes an instant dislike.

Bullied and beaten through his teenage years, Heathcliff comes to like Cathy more and more. They're friends, and perhaps even more than that. Then, circumstances fall so that Cathy gets taken in by a wealthy family in the area, the Lintons, and goes from ladette to lady, so to speak. Surely she can no longer hang out with the likes of Heathcliff when Edgar Linton has so much to offer?

This review will contain spoilers for people unacquainted with the novel or previous adaptations.

A Wuthering Heights dilemma

Just found out there's a preview screening of Wuthering Heights '11 in Nottingham this Friday, at Broadway in town (19:30/7:30pm start, tickets are £7 + £1.50 booking fee). Not just that, it's followed by an "extended discussion", or rather, Q&A with the director Andrea Arnold afterwards.

Here's the dilemma:

1. It's a Brontë adaptation! :D
2. See the film a week before the official premiere ftw!
3. Be able to ask the director questions!

BUT:

News roundup: Who's number 3 at the UK box office?

In the news today:

The most recent adaptation of Jane Eyre was number three in the UK box office during its opening weekend. Well done! I think it was really well done considering out of the four cinemas in Nottingham (that I know of, anyway), only one is actually showing it - Showcase. Broadway will be showing it, but not until the end of the month. If that's the case here, what's it like in other parts of the country? #3 is well done! :)

Keira Knightley, Jude Law and Aaron Johnson are billed to star in next year's adaptation of Anna Karenina. Haven't we known about Keira Knightley playing Anna Karenina for months now? Jude Law is to be Karenin and Johnson Vronsky.

Speaking of adaptations, Joanna Trollope is apparently set to write a modern day re-make of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It's set to publish late 2013 and is a part of HarperFiction's attempts at giving all the Austen novels an update. I'm just slightly puzzled as to why this seems to be big news - considering how many bloody derivatives there are of Jane Eyre, there must be just about as many of Sense and Sensibility, and how many of them earn headlines?