An epic love story that spans childhood into adulthood, the film follows Heathcliff, an outsider taken in and given a home by a benevolent Yorkshire farmer, Earnshaw. Heathcliff develops a passionate relationship with the farmer’s teenage daughter, Catherine, inspiring the envy and mistrust of his rough-hewn son, Hindley. Years later, when Earnshaw dies, the young adults must finally confront the intense feelings and destructive rivalries that have developed between them.
Based on the classic novel by Emily Bronte, but set a bit later, around 1810.
“Andrea Arnold’s film certainly boasts the bonnets, romance, shots of the English countryside and 19th-century source material that are the form’s hallmarks; but it’s also strange, profane and flecked with rime and spittle. It feels, in the best way possible, totally alien.” – Telegraph
“The landscape is desentimentalised so deliberately that it could be urban, the crags and fields could as well be concrete walkways, but they retain a stark beauty, and Arnold and Ryan are challenging what we think of as beautiful in the first place. The film gave me something I never expect to get from any classic literary adaptation: the shock of the new.” – The Guardian
Starring James Howson, Solomon Glave, Paul Hilton, Shannon Beer, Simone Jackson, Steve Evets, Lee Shaw, Adam Lock, Amy Wren, Eve Coverley, Jonny Powell, Oliver Milburn, Emma Ropner, Richard Guy, Michael Hughes, Kaya Scodelario, James Northcote, Nichola Burley, Paul Murphy, Julie Waring.
Unrated.