Wuthering Heights [VHS] [1992]

This 1992 screen adaptation, by Peter Kosminsky, of Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, covers all the chapters of the book (unlike the previous versions). Unfortunately, the movie should use at least another 90min to be complete, without then, more then 30 years of narration are difficult to follow, especially, by someone who haven’t read the book. But Kosminsky still made (in my opinion) the best adaptation ever of this novel, since the lack of time is well compensated by a great cast, amazing scenery and melodies by Ryuichi Sakamoto, a true artist.

In this story about passion, hate and revenge, Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes are Cathy and Heathcliff, wild characters whose doomed love is stronger then death. Fiennes really makes a perfect Heathcliff, improving his rough temper and Binoche, although it may seem too much, plays both Cathy, and her daughter, Catherine. She’s a great actress worthy of the challenge and it worked perfectly well. Other actors such as, Jeremy Northam, Janet McTeer, Simon Shepard and Sophie Ward also help to bring the novel to the screen, making a must see movie, for anyone who loves a beautiful love story, well performed. And the most important thing, the movie really keeps faithful to the essential of the immortal tale.

Many reviews of Peter Kosminsky's Wuthering Heights (1992) seem to work from the premise that it "should" represent the novel in an absolutely faithful manner. However, who is to say that it was Kosminsky's aim to give as faithful a portrait as possible? Isn't it just as likely to assume that he wanted to adapt it into a compelling film which, although clearly based on Emily Brontė's novel of 1847, can nevertheless stand alone as work of art of its own? It can be productive to look at what was changed in the process of adaptation for the screen and to speculate why, yet Kosminsky is under no obligation to please the purists: in fact, given the nature of the thing, that would probably be an impossible task.

The film was critically panned upon its release - The Guardian mocked it as "an abject disaster" - and the French actress Juliette Binoche was seen as a controversial, risible choice to play a much-loved heroine of English fiction. I vividly recall my English teacher at secondary school lampooning her performance: "Oh, Nelly, je suis Heathcliff!". One only needs to take a look at Franco Zeffirelli's Jane Eyre (1995), however, to see how an international cast can triumphantly portray English figures. I find her accent passable (although without a Yorkshire tilt); I do have other reservations about her portrayal of Cathy Earnshaw, though. In the novel she is a "wild, wicked slip of a lass" - volatile, headstrong, mercurial, selfish, stubborn, and by no means the rather one-sided giggly, vivaciously capricious creature that Binoche portrays her as (how much Kosminsky himself wanted Cathy to be portrayed as such, we can only wonder). It is difficult to give sufficient weight to her declaration of love for Healthcliff and that famous statement of joint identity, when Binoche has hitherto been bent on convincing us of Cathy's thoughtless indifference and flighty superficiality. It is perhaps a failure of the Casting Director to have Binoche play the younger Catherine, too. The viewer can scarcely tell them apart. In spite of the blonde curly wig, Binoche conveys insufficient difference in their temperaments.

Ralph Fiennes is well cast as Heathcliff and is brilliant at portraying his brutal passion and evil intentions. But perhaps he does over-compensate for Binoche's sanitising performance by playing him with such an unrelentingly violent temper. This could also be a fault of the screenplay, which rushes the childhood years; the viewer has little chance to build up a sense of sympathy for him. Moreover, both protagonists seem too old when they begin their portrayals of the adolescent youths (a criticism also frequently thrown at the more recent 1998 ITV adaptation of the tale); Fiennes was almost 30 and Binoche 28 when it was released and we are expected to believe that the characters are still in their late teens, scampering through the Heights and fooling about during Joseph's tutorials.

The supporting cast play their roles faultlessly; much of the strength of this film is down to them. Simon Shepherd excels as the squeamish, emotionally repressed Edgar Linton, Jeremy Northam as the tyrannical and dissipated Hindley, Janet McTeer as the servant Nelly, and Sophie Ward as the naive Isabella, who brims with romantic illusions and is perfect fodder for Heathcliff, hell-bent on revenge. Sinead O'Connor - who goes inexplicably uncredited - frames the film, appearing at the start and finish as Emily Brontė herself (who narrates the story here instead of Nelly and Lockwood).

For many, this version of Wuthering Heights has proved to be cinematic marmite - you either love it or hate it. For me personally, it is an underrated, if not flawless, adaptation that deserves a second chance.

I have given this film five stars, mainly on the strength of Ralph Fiennes performance. He focuses on bringing out the raw side of Heathcliff, showing him as an uncultured rough man driven by a need to possess utterly the only woman who has ever touched him emotionally. For a portrayal of uncontrolled obsessive love see this man act. Juliette Binoche trys hard to match him as Cathy but she struggles to portray convincingly the wild tormenting streak that Cathy is meant to have and her elusive 'catch me if you can' nature and it is difficult to see why Heathcliiff would have been driven almost mad by a desire to have her. Still, that aside, the music is haunting and the film is visually stunning with wild sweeping expanses of moor and sky. I also thought it worked well with Emily Bronte narrating the story as it highlighted the underlying emotional longing, both that of the lovers and also of the girl that wrote the story. See the film just to lose yourself and catch a glimpse of a wildness that is better portrayed in this film than any of the other versions I have seen.