Wuthering Heights may be my favorite Andrea Arnold film purely because she took a book I absolutely couldn't stand and created an astounding movie. She does three ingenious things to make the plot more bearable: she tells it from Heathcliff's point of view; removes the second half of the book involving the second generation of Wuthering Heights tenants; downplays how Heathcliff emotionally and psychologically tortured his wife Isabelle. Heathcliff is much more sympathetic when he isn't destroying innocent lives around him. But additionally, she also makes the film more about mood and atmosphere than the actual plot. Perhaps the film's one flaw is that people who aren't familiar with the novel might have some difficulty following what goes on. There's very little dialogue. Instead she focuses on what Heathcliff sees, smells, touches, and feels. I haven't seen a more tactile film since Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964).
8/10
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