Wuthering Heights (2012)
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Reviews Counted: 100
Fresh: 68 | Rotten: 32
Director Andrea Arnold's gritty, naturalistic re-imagining of the Emily Bronte classic stays true to the book's spirit while utilizing an unconventional approach to explore the romantic yearning at the heart of the story.
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 18 | Rotten: 9
Director Andrea Arnold's gritty, naturalistic re-imagining of the Emily Bronte classic stays true to the book's spirit while utilizing an unconventional approach to explore the romantic yearning at the heart of the story.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 6,146
My Rating
Movie Info
Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights is an excitingly fresh and distinct take on the classic novel by Emily Brontë. An epic love story that spans childhood well into the young adult years, the film follows Heathcliff, a boy taken in by a benevolent Yorkshire farmer, Earnshaw. Living in Earnshaw's home, Heathcliff develops a passionate relationship with the farmer's teenage daughter, Catherine, inspiring the envy and mistrust of his son, Hindley. When Earnshaw passes away, the now-grown characters
Watch It Now
Cast
-
James Howson
Heathcliff, Older Heath... -
Kaya Scodelario
Catherine Earnshaw, Cat... -
Steve Evets
Joseph -
Nichola Burley
Isabella Linton -
Oliver Milburn
Mr. Linton -
Solomon Glave
Young Heathcliff -
Shannon Beer
Young Catherine, Young ... -
Paul Hilton
Mr. Earnshaw -
Simone Jackson
Nelly -
Shaw and Lee
Hindley -
James Northcote
Edgar Linton -
Amy Wren
Frances, Frances Earnsh... -
Jonathan Powell
Young Edgar -
Eve Alice Coverley Ainsco...
Young Isabella -
Adam Lock
Adam -
Emma Ropner
Mrs. Linton -
Richard Guy
Gamekeeper Robert -
Michael Hughes
Hareton -
Paul Murphy
Lawyer
ADVERTISEMENT
All Critics (100) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (68) | Rotten (32) | DVD (1)
Arnold drastically pares back dialogue and exposition, telling the classic tale of passion and revenge with probing, harshly sensual camera work and a minimum of sentimentality.
Top CriticIn reality it's a bit of a slog.
Arnold has been successful in reimagining the story's archetypal emotions in the story, bringing it closer to its passionate elements.
Arnold ... has put her stamp on Emily Brontë's 19th-century novel Wuthering Heights, but it's a smudged and imperfect stamp, to be sure.
Essentially a misunderstanding of (or an inability to convey) the breathing soul of this material.
Lyrical and minimalist - if you don't care for such qualities, you may just find it slow ...
Wuthering Heights is stunningly shot and beautifully acted. It puts you inside the minds of Cathy and Heathcliff in a way no other adaptation has done before.
Cuts beneath the romantic accretion of decades of movie and TV adaptations to penetrate the dark heathen heart of Emily Bronte's 1847 novel.
Most of what's here is interesting enough to be valuable on its own right without quite managing to be "good".
The atmosphere is vivid but the romance is not.
Your enjoyment of the film will depend on your appreciation of the troubling and brutal nature of the source material.
...almost unbearably sensual - and not only in a sexual way.
Arnold doesn't merely adapt Bronte's story but retells it in her own style, creating a film that can be frustratingly languid to start but becomes mesmerizing as it progresses.
Alive with texture--sensations and noises, fur and breezes, accentuating both slow-moving stillness and the perception of the now.
Arnold's film reinvents Brontë's 1847 tragedy as if it had never been filmed before, from the damp ground up.
The results are often obtuse and self-consciously arty. But the movie is also frequently engrossing, sucking the viewer into the emotional landscape of these star-crossed lovers.
A great sensual experience, but not a very good movie
A classic story loses its luster
Bearing about as much resemblance to the famous 1939 film as chalk does to cheese, Arnold employs the jagged, realist style that defined her excellent films Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009) to great effect.
While director Arnold captures the semi-barbaric violence, rough beauty and rustic splendor of her setting and period, her use of nonprofessional actors in many roles detracts from the story's power.
I never found a way in, and I couldn't wait for a way out.
Perfectly ridiculous adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel. Shaky-cam nausea combines with wooden amateur acting and sloppy editing to render an unpleasant experience.
Audience Reviews for Wuthering Heights
The juxtaposition of the microcosm of nature, with the insects, birds and dogs living their small lives against the grand hills and cavernous valleys throughout the seasons, is quite beautiful, and I've seen nothing like it. The haze and mist, bloom and barrenness, bright sun and heavy coat of snow. The life and death of everything in and around.
The world we're part of is equally small. One house in the middle of nowhere, and halfway through, another, a few miles away. Amidst all that beauty, nature can be harsh, much like humanity.
Heathcliff's rare moments of joy with Catherine are always bookended with misery, and the path of self-loathing he slides down isn't bested by his revenge against Hindley.
Did I mention the lack of score? Two sung ballads is all we get, and all we need. I didn't even notice it until close to the end, but the sound design is so damn good that the wind is overwhelming, as are the sounds of the home.
Super Reviewer
-
- Catherine Earnshaw: You broke my heart. You killed me.
-
- Catherine Earnshaw: How could you not think of me all this time?
Discussion Forum
There are no discussion threads for Wuthering Heights yet.
Latest News on Wuthering Heights
October 4, 2012:
Critics Consensus: Taken 2 Is Less Than CaptivatingThis week at the movies, we've got a kidnapping plot (Taken 2, starring Liam Neeson and Famke...
What's Hot On RT
Movies Directed by Tyler Perry
Blockbuster news and reviews
Ellen Page in an intriguing new thriller
A gallery of classic books on film
Featured on RT
- Total Recall: Movies Directed by Tyler Perry 46
- Parental Guidance: The Great Gatsby, Jack Reacher, and Safe Haven 6
- Video Interview: Aftershock Producer Eli Roth 3
- Ray Harryhausen: 1920-2013 33
- Digital Multiplex: Cloud Atlas, Pulp Fiction and more 4
- RT on DVD and Blu-Ray: Jack Reacher, Mama, and Upstream Color 34
- Box Office Guru Wrapup: Iron Man 3 Soars Above the Rest 64
Top Headlines
-
Baz Luhrmann Wants DiCaprio for Hamlet
1
-
Bryan Singer Shooting X-Men: Days of Future Past in 3D and Simul-Cam
0
-
Avatar Sequels Shooting in 2014
3
-
Shane Black Confirmed for Doc Savage
0
-
Warner Bros. Plans New Dungeons & Dragons Movie
5
-
Adam Scott in Talks for Hot Tub Time Machine 2
0
-
Summit Already Thinking About Divergent Sequel
2
Fresh Links
Featured
10 Best Movie Trilogies
Pretty self-explanatory here; HitFix offers up their favorite trilogies of all time.
10 Jilted Movie Grooms
Feeling a little sappy? Here are 10 movie grooms who were left at the altar.
Weirdest Movie Siblings
From Twins to The Royal Tenenbaums, Moviefone explores cinema's oddest siblings.
50 Youth-Gone-Wild Movies
TimeOut lists the best movies about youth and rebellion.
30 Greatest Rock & Roll Movie Moments
Rolling Stone boldly proclaims the rockin'-est moments in cinema.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Foreign Titles
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontës Sturmhöhe (DE)
- Les Hauts de Hurlevent (FR)
This film left me just cold where it instead should have woken up much bigger emotions than it actually did. Bronte's story is about epic love not about depressing images of humans beating each other and torturing animals sadistically. It is clear that Arnold has aimed to make an alternative take on a classic but the result is boring, pretentious and depressing experience to sit through.
Robbie Ryan's cinematography is clearly the strongest element in the whole film but beautiful images does not help to make it work overall. I enjoyed the eerie and nightmarish feel of Arnold's feature debut Red Road and i stil find her Fish Tank one of the best British film made in recent years. That said it much more disappointing to see this kind of crap coming from someone as talented as Arnold is. It would not be a bad thing if she would cheer up a little bit as an director.