Customer Reviews

Wuthering Heights

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I was amazed when I read that this British production was not well received upon its release in 1992. The highly talented pair of Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes play the doomed Cathy and Heathcliff, supported by the equally fine Janet McTeer as Ellen Dean. The performances are exemplary--Fiennes' performance is said to have inspired Steven Spielberg to cast him as the Nazi commandant in "Schindler's List." And a diabolical Heathcliff he is, indeed--Fiennes plays this intense role faithful to Emily Bronte's original character. He is tormented, sadistic, manipulative, ruthless and brutal--and nonetheless hypnotically sexual and alluring. This is the genuine Heathcliff, with all apologies to the brilliant Laurence Olivier, who portrayed Heathcliff as a much more sympathetic character. Juliette Binoche plays both Cathy and Cathy's daughter by the ineffectual Edgar Linton, and brings great depth and appeal to both roles. The scenes of the bleak Yorkshire moors, and the haunting, shadowy quality of the Wuthering Heights house, lend this film a truly Gothic atmosphere. A jarring note is the casting of Sinead O'Connor (in a wig) as Emily Bronte, but this is a minor flaw. I found this version every bit as good as the original 1939 classic, to which this film has been unfairly compared. It is much more faithful to the brooding, doomed quality of the book. The scenes acted by Fiennes as the grief-stricken Heathcliff just after Cathy's death are alone worth the price of the film. For the many fans of these two brilliant actors, and of Bronte's novel, this film is well worth seeing. END

Every once in a while, I encounter an actor who, although playing a familiar character, seems to re-invent it and show details of it that have never before been displayed. Such is Ralph Fiennes portrayal of Heathcliff in this film. I was not at all surprised that Spielberg chose him for "Schindler's List" after watching this film--Fiennes' Heathcliff is almost wholly unsympathetic (he is a wife---and child-- abuser) but Fiennes lets us know the inner heartbreak that drives Heathcliff to such meanness. Previous Heathcliffs have been more stock romantic leads--the original Moody Guys a' la' James Dean.

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.

To me, Heathcliff is one of the most complex and compelling characters ever written and I had once thought that any actor would fall short in playing him in a film or miniseries. Having watched this beautiful and haunting adaptation of one of my favorite novels of all time, I have to say that Ralph Fiennes has more than succeeded in bringing the aforementioned anti-hero to life. Emily Bronte would have been proud. Everyone who has read Wuthering Heights knows about the tragic love story between Cathy and Heathcliff and how he becomes a dark, brooding, manipulative, diabolical man who takes his revenge on the people who he feels have wronged him and torn him away from Cathy, including her daughter and his own child and ward. Fiennes brings out Heathcliff's many conflicting emotions flawlessly and his performance floored me. Juliette Binoche as Cathy Linton/Catherine Earnshaw is great as well. The supporting cast is quite splendid too -- no cardboard cutout performances here! The backdrop of the moors is beautiful and gothic, just like Bronte described them in her book. I am very impressed with this adaptation. I haven't seen the 1939 film adaptation or the miniseries from Masterpiece Theater yet, but I wonder if they come close to this wonderful film. The BBC will produce an adaptation some time next year and I think that Richard Armitage (North and South) would make a wonderful Heathcliff because he too could bring many nuances to his acting. In the meantime, I shall treasure this one and watch it over and over again.

I remember seeing this film years ago on , I think , Masterpiece Theatre and wondering at Ralph Fienne's hypnotic, erotic, passionate portrayal of the tortured, manipulative, vindictive Heathcliff. Last night, I found myself watching bits of it on "YouTube" and fell in love all over again. Impulsive girl that I am, I immediately came here to amazon and bought the dvd. To me, there is no finer character in literature than Heathcliff and there is no more powerful study of the devastating effects of romantic love than Wuthering Heights. This film does justice to both.

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.

Probably the most romantic/tragic movie I've ever watched. Leaves the Laurence Olivier et.al. version for dead. (That movie finished half way through the book). Ralph Fienne's tortured and damged Heathcliffe is mesmerising, but WHO cast Sinaid O'Connor for Christ's sake??? And Binoche as Cathy is of course "haunting"-(sorry couldnt help it!!!) The eponymous scenery and the music score stay in your memory long after the film has ended. You'd be a hard heart not to enjoy this one

"It's a rough journey and a sad heart to travel it..."
One of my favorite films, this film has excellence in all its elements; the sensitivity of Peter Kominsky's direction, Mike Souther's gorgeous cinematography shot on location in North Yorkshire, and the loveliest of soundtracks by Ryuichi Sakamoto are the canvas onto which the elegance and fluidity of Emily Bronte's words are painted, and it's the words that I delight in most of all...there is no end to the times I can watch this film, just to hear them.
Comparing this film to the 1939 version is a hopeless pursuit, as both are vastly different, and one film should not take the shine from the other, as one cannot evaluate whether Rembrandt is better than Van Gogh.

Ralph Fiennes is brilliant as Heathcliff, in a performance that reveals more of its complexity and dark passion with every viewing, with his brooding looks and a violence that is never far from the surface. Juliette Binoche is luminous as Cathy (as well as her daughter in the latter part of the film), and though I do admit she lapses into a French accent from time to time, I don't think it minimizes her wonderful performance.
The supporting cast is superb, with Janet McTeer as Ellen, Sophie Ward as Isabella, Simon Shepherd as Edgar, and Jeremy Northam as Hindley.
Sinead O'Connor is effective as Emily Bronte, in the beginning and end of the film, and also narrating portions of the film, with her soft, misty voice.
I find this a magical adaptation...a gloriously written and visually captivating gothic romance, a battle of wills and hearts, vengeance and a love that goes beyond the grave. Total running time is 107 minutes.

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.

I have the movie on VHS and now I found the DVD version. I have never seen the 1939 version with Merle Oberon, but I read and re-read the novel several times and this is defintley not a star-crossed love story like Romeo and Juliet.

Cathy and Heathcliffe are not pleasant people, their love for each other turns to spite and inconsideration for everyone else in their world.

The novel is VERY dark but graphically real in the sense that Bronte captured the nuance of human emotions...emotions are suprising things, and each charater plays out their good and bad sides.

After viewing this movie, I was very pleased that finally someone did capture the spirit of the novel, it shows how Healthcliffe grows from being someone you sympathise with to a total complete tyrant...rather than forgiving, he holds on to the grudge of his past to torment the children of his beloved cathy and her brother Hindley.

'Thoughts are tyrants that come back again and again to torment us...'

While I think all the versions have something to recommend them, especially Larry Olivier's, this is my favorite by far.

To me, this is the most Gothic, right down to the inspired choice of the partially turreted building that serves as Wuthering Heights itself. For the record, the word Wuthering came from the local dialect, and describes the action of the wind.

Not only are the casting, production and direction first class, the movie also features some richly nuanced performances by Fiennes and Binoche. All of the above is also carried along by a beautiful and haunting film score.

Frankly, I have no idea what the critics are babbling about, nor do I care. Highly recommended.