Wuthering Heights: The Last Best Adaptation (1992) and a Plea for the Future

For the purposes of this article, and I know I’ll catch some heat on the subject, I won’t be delving into the early film or TV adaptations. (Yes, this omits the famous 1939 Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon classic). There have been dozens of filmed adaptations over the last century, but the crux of this piece is to demonstrate how we haven’t seen a feature-length film in over 30 years or a first-rate TV movie/miniseries in at least 15 years. Case in point: 

The latest feature-length film adaptations are all indies with mostly unknown actors: 

2022 Interwoven Studios

2018 Blue Mill Studios, et al. 

2011 Film4 

The latest TV adaptations (series or movie) are: 

2020: Bookstreamz (streamer miniseries)

2009: Starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley (miniseries)

The last best feature-length, widely distributed film adaptation, in my humble and honest opinion, is: 

Wuthering Heights
1992
Rated PG
1 hour 45 minutes.
Paramount Pictures
Starting Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer
Directed by Peter Kosminsky

A man becomes obsessed with vengeance when his soul mate marries another man. [IMDB]

This moody, haunting, gritty adaptation gets way more right than it does wrong. For so many reasons, it rises to the top of a very long list for me. (For an amusing personal anecdote, scroll to the postscript.)

Let’s begin with casting. Juliette Binoche as Catherine Linton nee Earnshaw not only looks as one imagines Bronte’s Cathy, but she is a powerhouse of raw emotion and narcissistic disregard. Her pivotal scene (“I am Heathcliff”) opposite Janet McTeer’s Nelly will leave you shaken and weeping. 

Ralph Fiennes as Heathcliff Earnshaw is absolutely transcendent. He possesses both the brutality of Heathcliff and the brutalized boy who lives within. He is every bit believable as all Heathcliffs (the misunderstood and abused young man, the forsaken lover, the revengeful if successful businessman, and the haunted old man who can only know happiness in death). 

Have a full box of tissues within arm’s reach for Cathy’s sickbed scene and when Heathcliff visits her coffin (a scene not penned by Brontë but I believe wholeheartedly she would have approved). It’s been over 30 years and I still haven’t recovered from the deep scars those scenes left on my heart. 

This film was shot, rightfully so, in Brontë country: Yorkshire, England (specifically, these locations). Other adaptations have filmed on location here as well, but many of them weren’t able to capture the haunting and desolate bleakness of Emily Brontë’s landscape. This adaptation perfectly represents all the glorious Gothic overtones through its lighting choices, color palette, and shooting angles. Its derelict staging and dilapidated settings; gnarled, leafless, wind-wrecked trees; and rocky, heather-splashed outcroppings make the perfect playground for Cathy and Heathcliff’s woe-begotten tale of dysfunctional love and devotion. 

With all of this said and done, it must be emphasized that it has been 32 very long years since a faithful, artful, and capable adaptation has been produced. I, for one, would love to see a worthy, well-funded version of this classic be stewarded through the green lighting process with careful attention to every facet of production and a strict loyalty to source material.

If I had my shot at dream casting, it would look like this: 

Heathcliff: Ben Barnes

Catherine: Claire Foy 

Nelly: Helen Mirren 

Edgar: Theo James

 

Who would you like to see in the next big screen adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights? Tell us in the comments section. 

LEND YOUR VOICE: Consider lending your signature to this online petition to cast Ben Barnes in two Brontë classics. 

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P.S. I first read Wuthering Heights on a plane returning from an overseas study program in London at the start of my sophomore year of college. Coincidentally, this happened to be in 1992 (God, I'm old), the very same year the Binoche/Fiennes remake premiered. I remember navigating London streets and the underground, where on almost every occasion I encountered the stunning movie poster. I'm certain that's why I picked up a Wordsworth Classics edition of Emily Bronte's celebrated novel to read on the flight home. (Incidentally, it was the last flight I enjoyed.) I still own that copy, 32 years later, and cherish its well-worn, dog-eared pages scribbled with my study notes from a Gothic Fiction class I took way back when. It's no wonder my partiality to the 1992 film adaptation runs so deep.