Wuthering Heights (2009) [DVD]

If you are like me and you like to own several 'takes' on your favourite literature, I guarantee that you will be intrigued by this DVD.

This take on the Bronte classic is enough to set your DVD on fire. The chemistry between Cathy (Charlotte Riley) and Heathcliffe (Tom Hardy) is 'bang on' - as they say in common parlance! It's no suprise that the two young actors are about to walk up the aisle in real life.

Interestingly, Linton is played by the very handsome Andrew Lincoln. This seems to add veracity to Cathy's temporary switch of affections. Sadly, Cathy realises far to late that the 'elagancies' and 'distractions' that the Lintons' enjoy are alien to her fiery spirit and true wild nature. I've never seen Cathy so well portrayed as by this amazing actress - usually she seems to come over as being pettish and annoying. I absolutely defy any male viewers not to fall in love with her and her vulnerabilties.

Yes, there are some alterations to the plot. I was left wondering for the first time - whether Heathcliffe and Cathy are actually half siblings - all rather D H Lawrence. I'd call this the Martina Cole version really. Heathcliffe in this interpretation definately comes across as something of a gangland bad boy. However, for me this just make the take seem crackling and fresh. And on a superfluous note - both leading men are utterly gorgeous.

By the way I was suprised by the reviewer who claims that you are supposed to hate Cathy and Heathcliffe and gave this DVD a miserly 1 star. Really? And should great literature be a plodding report of the original text? This 21st century interpretation alludes to damage sustained by Cathy (brought up by Bilble thumping servants in a one parent family) and Heathcliffe (whose travails need no introducion).

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did if you decide to buy!

Tom Hardy as Heathcliff is a wonder - his portrayal of obsession, possession and gradual descension into abject madness is one of the finest pieces of acting I've ever seen; his visceral, guttural wail of grief three quarters of the way through the film is a sound that will honestly haunt me for a long while. However, much of the rest of the production is a disaster. The main issue being the arrogance of ITV (and screen writer Peter Bowker) presuming to rewrite so much of this bonafide classic.

For a while, they essentially keep to the book. Things are moved around, and they (predictably enough) add a handful of fairly graphic sex scenes (it's ITV, after all... keep to the original? Pah. Who's gonna watch that?!) but it pays Bronte's book a good deal of respect... if not the audience. However, three quarters of the way through, they decide to chuck the book away and make it up as they go along, even altering how major characters die. I don't want to seem like a stuffy, fustymusty old snob, but hacking this book to pieces in such a way is a literary crime, and the punishment ought to be tv death.

The last half an hour or so makes no sense; you aren't told who anyone is; none of the new people or relationships are given any flesh or dimension... it's just dreadful. If you haven't read the book, you won't have a clue who is who, who does what, and who does what to who. If you have read the book, you'll simply mourn.

The cast is fairly hit and miss... the always wonderful Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Lancashire are both excellent as Edgar Linton and Nelly Dean respectively. They bring gravitas and authenticity to their roles, and their scenes are a bit of a relief after those with Cathy, played by Charlotte Riley. She's a beautiful girl with the best-shaped eyebrows in television. In other words, she was utterly mis-cast: she has a modern face, modern mannerisms and she wasn't believable as Cathy. She wasn't wild so much as self-involved, and the idea that men would break themselves open over her simply doesn't ring true.

There seemed to be little chemistry between her and Hardy, nor between she and Lincoln, much less a love that would destroy the lives of everyone involved.

The final major aspect of the film was the moors: bleak Yorkshire moors, washed out and wild. It was filmed to perfection. If you've seen Gladiator, you'll know the iconic scene of hand drifting over and through the tops of golden corn. Wuthering Heights uses a similar effect, except it glides through heathers and mosses and along muddy paths. Really quite barren and beautiful.

3 stars can often sound like a damning indictment. In this case, though, I really want to reiterate that some parts of the film are 5-stars. However, some of it is eye-wateringly bad, and their wilfully changing so much of it means it can only get 3. If you want to get to know Cathy and Heathcliff (or if you'll be studying them for school or uni) I should give this the very widest of berths, and read the book which is still the benchmark for obsessional, dysfunctional, two-become-one love.

Cutting, condensing and making changes are all to be expected when a classic novel makes the transition to a 2h 20 min drama. It wouldn't matter that this ITV adaptation fundamentally changes Emily Brontë's novel if those changes were more unpredictable and interesting. But why do we need to see Cathy and Heathcliff engaged in passionate sex on the moors when a major point of Brontë's narrative is to show that their bond is one that transcends sex, the body and even mortality? Their spiritual union is portrayed by Brontë as so unshakeable and all-consuming that it is immortal - seeing them grinding away on top of each other here reduces the famous tale to a much more conventional love story.

ITV have also made Heathcliff significantly less violent. Brontë repeatedly attaches descriptions of devils and Satan to her anti-hero to emphasise the extremity of his violent impulse ("diabolical", "demonic", "imp of Satan"). But here he is shown gently easing himself in and out of Isabella - in the novel he brutally rapes her - and endeavouring to genuinely love her ("I've tried to make myself love you over these last 4 months") whereas Brontë lets Isabella feel the full thrust of Heathcliff's brutal roughness. Heathcliff still manages to dispossess Hindley here, but in doing so shows generosity to others, returning winnings he has won and kindly tipping a messenger boy - he even insists on walking him home so that he arrives safely! And when Cathy dies, he half-whispers "May she wake in torment" while Brontë writes that "he cried with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion". Significantly de-gothicised, Heathcliff resembles a more traditional Byronic hero here mixed with elements of the New Man, for which Tom Hardy tries to compensate by making his tone and manner as domineering and moodily arrogant as possible (which he does well!).

As in other adaptations, the elder Cathy is not portrayed as so haughty and imperious as she is in the novel (ITV seems to want us to sympathise with and identify more with her here). And although Brontë is clear about Nelly's meddling nature, she is sanitised as usual to a generic housekeeper. In case we were in any doubt that we were in the land of soap opera, long-standing Coronation Street actress Sarah Lancashire appears as Nelly, and Heathcliff - spoiler alert! - shoots himself in the head at the end. Finally, the strikingly beautiful actress playing Cathy (Charlotte Riley) is dressed in the early scenes as if she has been trotting up and down Oxford Street in and out of the chain stores rather than scampering, wayward and free, across the Yorkshire moors...

It's oddly seductive though, maybe partly because of the humour it injects into the narrative (if Emily Brontë has been criticised for anything, it has more often than not been for a lack of humour in her writing): When Cathy junior angrily begins fighting with the sickly Linton, Heathcliff enters, sardonically remarking with a sneering smile, "Well I take it from this touching scene that you have made your offer of marriage and young Miss Linton is expressing some misgivings!"
(2.5 stars)