Something to watch tonight: Friday 5 December

Wuthering Heights (Arnold, 2012)

Firstly, a shoutout to the read­ers and listen­ers who I caught up with at the Sportsfreak NZ end-of-year func­tion last night. It was very grat­i­fy­ing — among all the sport talk — to chat about movies, radio and this newsletter.

Happy hol­i­days to you all.

On this day in December 2012, I reviewed Andrea Arnold’s haunt­ing ver­sion of Wuthering Heights star­ring Kaya Scodelario as Cathy and James Howson as Heathcliff:

Arnold is one of the great new voices in British cinema and Red Road and Fish Tank have shown her to be a kind of Ken Loach with added visu­al poetry. Wuthering Heights is a brave attempt to get under the skin of a well-known story and – even though I found it mad­den­ing at times – there are some won­der­ful moments.

Arnold’s ver­sion of Heathcliff is a run­away slave, a stowaway child found on the streets of Liverpool and brought up in rur­al Yorkshire by the Earnshaws where he is bru­tal­ised by jeal­ous old­est son Hindley and befriended by spir­ited daugh­ter Cathy. Despite their rel­at­ive poverty, his col­our and his back­ground mean that he will nev­er be good enough to marry Cathy and his resent­ment grows into a tra­gic obses­sion. Dialogue isn’t really Arnold’s strong suit, so it’s good that there isn’t much apart from occa­sion­al clunky expos­i­tion. What Arnold does get – to a beau­ti­ful extent – is the Moors. Misty, rain-sodden, gorse-covered, moors – the interi­or made exterior.

With today’s rev­el­a­tion that Emerald Fennell wants her forth­com­ing ver­sion of the story to be “this generation’s Titanic”, it might be worth­while to watch a ver­sion that’s less inter­ested in its own blockbusteryness.

Also in that Capital Times review from December 2012: Brett Morgen’s Rolling Stones doc­u­ment­ary Crossfire Hurricane, Frank Langella in Robot & Frank, Charlotte Rampling dir­ec­ted by her son Barnaby Southcomb in I, Anna and the superb Russian drama Elena which, if it ever turns up here again, I’ll be whole­heartedly recommending.

Where to watch Wuthering Heights

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision

Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Streaming on AMC+

Ireland: Streaming on Disney+

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on AMC+ or Philo (paid sub­scrip­tion) or Kanopy (free from par­ti­cip­at­ing pub­lic libraries)

UK: Streaming on Disney+ or Curzon