I’ve had this DVD sitting on my shelf staring at me for way too long, I was just so scared that MTV would’ve warped my favourite novel beyond all recognition, even though I’ve loved every single adaptation that I’ve seen so far (even the Monty Python semaphore sketch, lol). But I think this could be the most ambitious adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel yet. I’m very impressed.

I can’t express my love for Emily’s original novel (and my love for Emily herself) so I don’t know quite how to say that, basically, I think anyone who feels the same way as I do about “Wuthering Heights,” about Heathcliff and Cathy and the passion Emily brought into this world will love this movie, because I sure did. There are moments here that brought tears to my eyes immediately, and by the end I was drowning in them like I haven’t in ages. Yeh, I think it’s that good.

The movie opens with a storm and you quickly realise that “The Heights” is now a lighthouse set amid very, very Moors-ish scenery, albeit around 3,000 miles from Emily’s home, somewhere in California, U.S.A. Overall, though, this relocation works spectacularly well, with Cate (the new Cathy) and Heath (the new Heathcliff) frequently running across the wide-open sea front, and Cate having her own private cave down by the shore, I guess the new Penistone Crag.

Heathcliff is now a musician, somewhere between Trent Reznor and Kurt Cobain (in my severely reference-starved mind, anyway) – seriously, how perfect is this? It’s so right for Heath to have a guitar in his hand. It makes sense. It even ultimately would solve the mystery of how Heathcliff got his wealth (this version doesn’t really go along that path but still … very cool). Here it makes perfect sense as to why he’s this “tortured soul” etc. I mean that’s the modern musician. Heathcliff would be a rock star today.

Like I just mentioned, the screenplay here doesn’t tell the full story of the novel. Like a couple of other adaptations, it stops pretty much half way as Cathy dies. I think I can’t praise this version more when I say how disappointed I was when I realised it was going to end at that point. I truly was left wanting more, I really didn’t want the movie to end.

I remember when I took the Ralph Fiennes/Juliette Binoche version into school one day and my teacher put it on for the class and at the end I was like practically in tears (though of course not really because you can’t cry at school of course rolls eyes) and everyone else was like blank-faced and just happy to have had an hour or two of not having to think and my teacher had this smirk on his face like just basically patronising the whole thing because it wasn’t a 100% perfect adaptation. Of course this MTV version will have similar critics because academically it’s probably not particularly useful as an insight into Emily’s novel. But I really want to say to anyone like I was back then, f*ck your literature teacher/tutor: if you’re studying Emily’s book and you feel like watching this and you wind up loving it with a passion and you really get something out of it and it makes you love the book more, even if you still can’t pass the set tests on it, then take all you can get and love it all you can.

The only thing missing for me here is the great structure the novel has. Well, that and the second half of the story, I guess :-p While I’m critiquing, the set design could be a little less IKEA-ish too. But of course you need to lose the structure on the way to film. The passion is what’s important to me and it’s definitely here – Cate saying “I hate you,” like, “I love you,” the following dialogue:

Cate: “If you leave me I’ll kill you,”
Heath: “Then I’ll have to come back and kill you so we can be together,”
Cate: “If you kill me I’ll haunt you,”
Heath: “You promise?”

You just can’t f*ck this thing up when there’s lines like that to work with, it’s impossible. Emily laid her groundwork flawlessly (THANK YOU, EMILY). Here’s another one as it appears in this incarnation,

Cate: “We’re the same, we’re the same, we’re the same person – I – I am Heath.”

And I’ll leave it there. Most people will probably either hate this movie or just shrug, “eh,” at it. I loved it though, and I’ll watch it many times again.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 12th, 2005 at 12:39 am in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.