Sunday, October 25, 2009

wuthering heights


A few initial thoughts on Peter Bowker's adaptation of Wuthering Heights which was on the ABC tonight.

  • Burn Gorman was fantastic as Hindley (but I'm a torchwood fan...)
  • Cathy's character was given a very generous interpretation. Only once did she come across as a spoilt, selfish brat. Her love for Heathcliff came across as a deep and pure affection - rather than as the twisted thing it is in the book.
  • From part one at least, Healthcliff is some kind of romantic hero. In the novel, the reader tries to position him as this and fails.
  • Nelly comes across as more intelligent and insightful than she is in the book.
  • Visually, very attractive.
  • Thought the flashbacks were done pretty well.
Looking forward to part 2. Anyone else see it?

4 comments:

  1. I taped it cos of church, but caught the last 15 min. All I really noticed is that the Edgar dude is the sign guy from Love Actually. Heathcliffe seems a bit bland, but I may have over-imagined him in my youth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We watched it and liked it. I was happy to see a recent and not too badly done version. I have a love hate relationship with all this stuff. The two main characters infuriate me, but I still kinda loke the old gothicky feel of stuff like this.

    It was better than the old BBC one we have which gets a bit tiresome. I've never seen a good movie version of it (Ralf Fiennes as Heathcliffe? Nuh.), so I thought this held up well. Good choice of actors (Cathy's mean brother was a particularly good choice), pretty well-made and put together in a new way. Good stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for this - it has been bothering me all night that I couldn't work out where I'd seen Hindley before...

    I've never been able to read the book so I was hoping this would help, but I am still left wanting to slap Heathcliffe for being such a self-indulgent so and so. It is all such a melodrama but quite intriguing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. i just caught about 73minutes of the movie which was on last nite on itv3. i found the movie cathy and heathcliff very much like emile bronte's version of them in the book. mr earnshaw espacially was as generous and decent as he was in the book but nelly seems more inteligent in the movie than she does in the book but overall it was a good adaptation of the book. the actors were spot on. their appearances reflected their characters and cathy was flawless in her act. i kinda expected joseph to be older. though there were some scenes in the movie that i had never read in the book that kinda confused me a little bit, it was an overall good adaptation.

    ReplyDelete