Wuthering Heights (1992)

I can't really understand the extreme negativity of the "official" reviews--it appears that the movie, as is the novel, its characters, the author, and her entire family is a little off-center and out of the mainstream. The Brontes were a bunch of weird and wild kids in a weird and wild part of the world, and "Wuthering Heights" is a weird and wild book--not a proper Victorian romance, as other reviewers have suggested. Comparing Emily Bronte to Jane Austen is like comparing William Faulkner to John Grisham because they are both from Mississippi. None of Austen's characters could survive in Bronte's Yorkshire, and the Brontes would probably be unwelcome in Austen's stately Hampshire homes.

I,too, liked this book as a teenager, and now have the opportunity to teach it to high schoolers,and I must say my students generally prefer this novel and this film treatment to most others in British Literature. The film does have its flaws--but not enough to make it unwatchable, and having spent a wild, rainy weekend in the Bronte's hometown of Haworth, Yorkshire, I do believe the film aptly captures the mood of that forbidding place.

As for the choice of Sinead O'Connor to play Emily "framing" the "frame story"-- all I can guess is that she does bear a passing resemblance to the portrait of Charlotte Bronte that hangs over my computer (great, big, intense eyes). Plus the Brontes were ethnically Irish.

Watch this film to help your English lit grade, to observe a truly artful nuanced acting performance, to enjoy some beautiful scenery, or just enjoy a weepy gothic romance. Any way you look at it, it can't possibly be a waste of time.


"It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it-"   May 1, 2003
A. Casalino (Downers Grove, IL USA)
21 out of 24 found this review helpful

Emily Bronte's poetically bleak novel WUTHERING HEIGHTS is intensely involved, encompassing a span of almost thirty-five years, and taking in the likes of three generations. Certainly it must take at least a good five hours to do this story notable justice on the screen. I therefore kept any anticipation of a truly cohesive telling of this tale well in check as I approached it; most assuredly expecting shortcomings and, if I must say so myself, quite successfully sought and found whatever might be the finer qualities of such a story portrayed on film. For though a number of movie adaptations had previously been made, it was not until this divine 1992 film that the whole poignant tale got told from the very beginning to the very end.

Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes are the ill-starred couple Cathy and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is an orphan found in Liverpool and brought home as a young child by Cathy's father, Mr. Earnshaw, a Yorkshire farmer, to be raised within the family. Cathy and Heathcliff develop a strong bond between them as they grow up. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, and his estate is left in the hands of his heir, Cathy's older brother Hindley, Heathcliff is cast down from the place of a beloved adopted son to that of a servant and farmhand. Then the ideal friendship that Cathy and Heathcliff had shared as children becomes further corrupted when Edgar Linton and his sister Isabella, son and daughter of a magistrate residing in a neighboring estate, enter the picture. What follows is a battle of wills, marked by moments of feverish passion, jealousy, a marriage proposal, a disappearance, and a quest for revenge. Fiennes and Binoche have their moments, and they lead a fairly well known cast - Janet McTeer as the maid Nelly, Simon Shepard as Edgar, Sophie Ward as Isabella, and Jeremy Northam as Hindley.

Originally, in the novel, it is the Earnshaw's servant girl, Nelly, who narrates this story. This movie, however, takes on a somewhat venturous liberty by casting Sinead O'Connor to tell the tale, in the personage of author Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights is a castle of sorts, a bit more grand than imagined in the novel. Notwithstanding though, the artistic landscape imagery in this movie is exquisite.

The role of Cathy is a difficult one, to be sure - and I've yet to see an actress wholly capture her tempestuous nature. Truly Binoche is a very fine actress, as well as a rare beauty. Her looks and mannerisms, however, are somewhat too exotically European - and her accent is markedly French. She presents a rather mature, less impulsive Cathy, which does not at all strike one as a wild Yorkshire farm girl. In the whole of this film, there were only two scenes in which the intensity of her performance even came close to the power of the novel - that when she's telling Nelly about Edgar Linton's marriage proposal, and the scene where, in a fever after Heathcliff has run off with Isabella, she sends her soliloquy through an open window into the blustering night air. Both these scenes take from the book some of Bronte's most beautiful language.

Ralph Fiennes is also a very fine actor - and he's especially adept at playing brooding characters with a lot of pent up passion brewing under the surface. He approaches Heathcliff in this same manner. But Heathcliff in his younger years is something of a raging wild animal, too emotionally immature to keep his fury under wraps. Indeed, I must say Fiennes' Heathcliff misses the mark by no small distance, especially in those scenes which take place before Cathy's death. Like Binoche, he is simply too mature - his Heathcliff is just not believable as a farm hand who's only around the age of 20. It is actually in the scenes that take place after Cathy's death that Fiennes' performance really kicks in: despairing madman, obsessive necromancer - he plays it up to the fullest extreme of ruthless wickedness. In administering revenge upon those he hates he's downright scary.

I was rather disappointed that two major characters from the novel, Nelly and Hindley, were herein given so little attention. A key scene from the book - in which Hindley, recruiting a rifle and some assistance from Isabella, tries to eliminate Heathcliff - was completely omitted in this movie. Both Northam and McTeer put forth flawless performances for what little screen time they're given - but I believe that certain plot holes and transitional errors occurred due to the fact that these two were not fully drawn out. The third generation - Hindley's son Hareton (Jason Riddington) is ruggedly good looking; Jonathan Firth (brother of Colin Firth) plays Heathcliff's decrepit son Linton with relish; however, the fact that Binoche took on dual roles - as both Cathy and, with a blond wig, her daughter Catherine Linton - rather made me cringe. The scene in which Heathcliff exacts his revenge upon Catherine, who looks essentially the same as the supposed great love of his life, just didn't sit well with me at all.

For a more accurate portrayal of Cathy and Heathcliff in the early years before their children are born, look to a 1971 version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS starring Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall. As for this version, I really must say that even with its various shortcomings, it's overall a very lovely, entertaining movie.


Fiennes buoys the film   December 26, 1999
19 out of 25 found this review helpful

Truly, I'm one of those people who believe that a movie CANNOT be absolutely faithful to the novel it is based on. It simply doesn't work that way. A novel and a movie are two totally different things that can hardly be depthly compared. It's all perspective here, and art is for you to see others' perspectives, as well as yours. Ralph Fiennes gave an extremely intense and exhilarating display of passion-as-a-man, and to me, that was the big thing (with exception to the awesome soundtrack and scenery) that buoyed the film. Binoche is fine as Cathy and Catherine, though fundamentally, I couldn't tell the difference between her two performances. I liked the way the lovers' relationship matured (and eventually crept into turmoil) over the course of the movie: at the beginning, they don't seem to care about anything. They were abrupt, impatient kids whose love was green in a way. Fiennes is dark and cold from the beginning, and he gets more and more sumptuously so as he is driven by blind passion. Overall, this is a rather bleak movie, dark but not quite sad, intriguing but not quite graceful. A fine movie for anyone to see, though. Its fearless emotionalism will probably win you over, and truth be told, it is a generally good movie.