You gotta hand it to Andrea Arnold. After her last film “Fish Tank” brought the director her most acclaim to date, particularly due to the stirring turn out she got out of a young, unknown Katie Jarvis, in a film that also happened to co-star somebody you might have heard of named Michael Fassbender, she easily could’ve done something more accessible and just plain easy. But she didn’t. Instead, she decided to adapt “Wuthering Heights” with an unknown in the lead in a version that our man in Venice said in his review finds both the grace and brutality of the story and brings it “kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.” While we’ll have to wait until next year for Oscilloscope Laboratories to release the film stateside, Empire has some new looks at “Wuthering Heights” as it gears up to hit cinemas soon.
James Howson stars in the movie as the tortured Heathcliff, and he’s being joined by Kaya Scodelario (“Skins“) as Cathy and Nichola Burley as Isabella Linton in a decidedly different version of Emily Brontë‘s novel that puts far younger protagonists into the roles that most adaptations have to date. Again, as our Venice review notes, this is a far more evocative take on the material and one that may be off-putting to some viewers. This writer heard equal amounts praise and disappointment at TIFF from various people who had seen the film, with some entranced by Arnold’s almost Terrence Malick-like approach while others were less enamored with esoteric take.
Either way, the rest of us at The Playlist are eager to see what Arnold has put together. If you’re in the U.K., “Wuthering Heights” hits theaters on November 11th while the movie will come to the U.S. sometime in 2012. Pics below.
