Wuthering Heights: Filmed in a Shed

So, do you know the story of Wuthering Heights? Good. Now, imagine what that classic novel would like if it were actually filmed in a shed. Now, imagine it being acted by chavs who swear and have a common, English accent. Right, now imagine that some art students were filming and directing it, with lots of soft focus and irritatingly pointless shots and angles which are apparently symbolic. Imagined it? Looks awful doesn't it. It looks like the sort of film that Film4 and the British Film Industry might fund, doesn't it. Well, now you don't have to imagine that, you can go to your local cinema and pay to see it. Yes, PAY to see it.

There are lots of things wrong with this movie, but the one that has been most vocalised in the media is the fact that Heathcliff is black. Yes, Heathcliff is black. Maybe this is part of the modern view, which says that we are now 'colour-blind'. We no longer recognise skin colour. Maybe. And anyway, the skin colour of Heathcliff is never known. In defence of the movie, it does say in the first chapter of the novel that Heathcliff is 'a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman…' But, in defence of sensibility, people can be dark skinned Caucasians, AND why would women wearing petticoats, from the 19th century, lust after an Afro-Caribbean?

Inclusion of racist language in the movie, mainly from Hindley saying "He's not my brother, he's a nigger" just made me put my hands up to my face and want to cry. Emily Brontë. The story, just like all other adaptations of Wuthering Heights, was badly conveyed. Some parts were changed, other parts were added, some parts completely forgotten and even, most surprisingly, the odd part of the story was told similarly to the novel. As it is with every adaption of the novel, the character of Lockwood is written out and the role of Nelly is nothing but a supporting character, rather than taking the role of narrator that she has for a majority of the novel. The Linton's are not blonde. Wuthering Heights is nothing but an old, rotting shack in the middle of Yorkshire. The moors of the novel have been replaced with large hills which surround the landscape. No children, other than Hareton appear to have been born. We see Hareton get conceived in a wet field; an image we are saved from in the novel. The characters are all inappropriate aged. In fact, I could continue to ramble on.

The love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine has also been adapted. The rocky nature of the relationship is rather accurate, with her hating him at first, and then them being inseparable and protective. Then the appearance of Edgar comes between them. Heathcliff goes and comes back and finds Catherine married. The problem is that their relationship is depicted as being even weirder than before. The main example being that Catherine licks the bloodied wounds from Heathcliff's back. I have no idea why. The relationship between them does seem to resemble owner/faithful dog, rather than confused children who experience love. The whole time, you just spend laughing at the ridiculousness of this adaption, or wondering what the hell Arnold is trying to convey.

The directing is terrible. The camera work is dreadful. Someone is riding a horse, but instead of doing a panning shot that follows the horse, or a long-shot which allows you to follow the horse across the screen, they opted for a close up of the horses mane, or a close up of the person's hair. It is as if the camera operators discovered they could do Macro Photography, so just took advantage of it. Every few minutes, there was a close up of a moth in a window, or the intrinsic detail of a feather: all pointless to the telling of the story. I have always been told that 'less is more' and not to put stuff in 'just to fill time'. If you want to see how to fill time in an A-class style, watch this film. Five minutes of this film is watching birds fly.

I have a theory too, that the creators of this film are hell-bent of making people blind in the process of watching this film, which is a lovely way to treat people who have already paid £6 a ticket to watch this atrocity. Picture the scene: You're watching Heathcliff sitting in a dark, barely-lit room at night. You're struggling to see, so the pupils in your eyes are fully dilated to allow as much light in as possible. Then BOOM. It feels like someone has fired a shotgun into your eyes. The scene has cut to one with bright and intense white light, which illuminates the entire room. Too much light is entering your eyes and you feel as if you have turned stiff; you feel dead.

Talking of dead, there is an abundance of dead animals. You see Heathcliff slaughter a sheep with the blood pouring out; for which I had to cover my girlfriend’s eyes to protect her loveliness. Then, later on in the movie, we see Heathcliff standing over a trapped rabbit, who he then kills by breaking the neck; for which my girlfriend covered my eyes to protect me from shouting out “You bastard!” I don’t know why they kept showing these scenes, but I made sure to sit through to the end to make sure that no animals were hurt in the process. They hadn’t been thankfully.

I remember a few years ago, ITV made a two-part adaption of the novel. It wasn't great. I, my friends, my classmates and teacher all complained about how inaccurate it was. ‘Dreadful’ we said. We were all in awe at how they had ruined the classic we had spent a year studying. However, in comparison, the ITV adaption should have been heralded as a great piece of television. This is compared to the film however, which makes somewhat of a mockery out of the novel. The best thing about the ITV adaption was that it didn't cost me to see it, and the acting was far better. Arnold essentially raped the Emily Brontë novel.

This opinion doesn't come down to the fact that Heathcliff was black; that was one of the least problematic parts of the film. It is part of a wider problem which is the film, in which no character seemed to be vaguely accurate, and the story backetballed into a bin. The problem with all the adaptations so far, is that they remove the rather unique narrative to the story and forget Lockwood and Nelly. I think the most successful adaption will include them. I accept that an adaptation, unless it was going to be a ten-part TV series, will not include the entire story, but it should keep the style which every reader loves about Wuthering Heights. When someone makes that, I think that will be the day when a proper adaptation will have been made, and they will rake in the praise.

This film received no praise. I remember sitting through the last two Harry Potter films at the cinema, in which at the end of the film, the audience whooped and cheered in praise of a brilliantly made film. At the end of watching Wuthering Heights, all I heard was people saying how awful it was and how they did not enjoy it at all.

Mind you, I should have known how terrible the film was going to be when I saw the trailer on the Internet. The most pointless minute of film, in which absolutely nothing is shown. It should have been a clue that this film was being filmed by college art students…