'Savages'

You ever just really wanna go to the cinema, no matter what's on? More often than not, afterwards, you know you just wasted 106 minutes of your life that could have been invested in, oh, I dunno, your tax return or a root canal at he dentist.

Cue the new Oliver Stone film 'Savages'. Set mostly in California, the film follows two drug dealers, but they're good ones, you know, they're really handsome and do charity stuff in, like Africa, and last but not least, they're American. When they refuse a deal with a Mexican drug cartel, who want in on their business, coz their stuff is really crap, shit hits the fan, plot-wise and, I'm afraid cinematographically as well. Disguised as gardeners (!) those Mexicans are a murdering bunch, who, more often than not wear dirty clothes. Benicio Del Toro is particularly bad, dressed in T-Shirts that carry the greasy remnants of the last lunch-burrito. Racial stereotypes, anyone? But, no, assures us Stone, this is all in the name of depicting the war on drugs and the savagery that is inherent in the business.

As if aware of this stereotyping shenanigans, Stone desperately wants to introduce some redeeming features. Salma Hayek, as the reina of the cartel, really is a big softie once her mother-instinct kicks in. Yes, she murders people for a living, but look, she really doesn't want her daughter involved. AAWWWW, it's all good!

Then there's the love interest, or blonde plot-device as I like to call her, in the form of Blake Lively, yes, yes, the one from Gossip Girl, who really is a bit of a greedy bastard as she not only sleeps with one of the guys, but both of them. But it's all really lovey-dovey, but you know how people are: They don't understand these bohemian youngsters. Don't get me wrong, faced with the numerous shots in which the two hunks have their top off, I don't blame her one bit, if I didn't have the over-bearing voice-over shoved in my face constantly: 'Chon is cold like metal, Ben is warm like wood'. COME ON!!! and it's all like really deep, right?

Anyway, Barbie is kidnapped by the evil Mexicans and kept as a continued guarantee for Chon and Ben's cooperation. Good thing Chon is an Iraq veteran who knows shit about building bombs and the like, whereas Ben is the smart one, who, unfortunately has to give up his decency in favour of lighting people on fire. Well, you really can't have it all! Otherwise we'd all be going into the drug business willy-nilly and, then, where would we be? Someone needs to keep making Cappuccinos.

So, waiting to be rescued, Barbie is kinda tortured by Benicio Del Toro, who must have really thought at the film première: Fuck! How did I go from 'Traffic' to this? She then forms a weird relationship with Elena, the queen, and explains to her how her rich mother never really had any time for her. Elena, being the ruthless drug-bitch that she is, really sympathises. 'I could be your daughter' Ophelia brokenly whispers into the CCTV camera in her prison cell and, Bob's your uncle, she's out of prison and in the guest-house in the Tijuana mansion.

Then there's John Travolta, a corrupt cop who's playing all the angles. So, he's switching sides quicker than a naïve country girl in a gay bar in London, and it all works out. You don't mess with the Travolta. Pay attention! Coz this is the really controversial bit Stone subtly shoves in your face with a sledge hammer! In the American war on drugs, corruption often keeps the upper hand. Of course, all the Mexicans end up dead or in prison, while the Californian excuse for a ménage-à-trois heads off to a beautiful beach in Indonesia. What? I'm spoiling the ending for you? You never got the point of this review then, which is: Do not, under any circumstances, even under the threat of Benicio Del Toro coming to your house, disguised as a gardener and force-feeding you Tacos, go and see this film!

Don't even get me started on Stone's mise-en-scène! If I see another colour-tinted or black-and-white shot of clouds racing across the sky, I will personally swim to L.A. and beat Stone up. The whole film is interspersed with shots of wild animals in the sun-drenched desert, yes, exactly, like in Natural Born Killers, but its all to do with the savagery in human nature, you see. It's kind of a big deal in this film, but in the name of the whole human race, I'd like to apologise for the symbolic abuse that all those coyotes had to suffer at the hands of Oliver Stone!

Stone was never a brilliant film-maker, let's face it. But, here, his obsession with the media really goes through the roof. As such, the gangsters Skype, text and probably update their Facebook status in the lines off: just taking this guy's eye out, then off to have a ham sandwich!

At least, the title's appropriate: This film really does bring out your savage side! As such, as soon as a release date comes out for a new Oliver Stone film, call your dentist! Coz you just found the date for your next appointment.

'Holy Motors'

Leos Carax's first feature in thirteen years has been long awaited by critics and world cinema lovers all over the world and what a cinematic ride it was. From the moment the lights went out, this film managed to grip the audience in a way the likes of which I have, so far, not experienced. If you are only seeing one film this year, make it this one.

A plot is a plot is a plot is, em, not a plot. Denis Levant plays no less than eleven different roles all combined within the overall character of Monsieur Oscar, a professional, well, let's just say, a professional full stop. He is driven through an barely recognisable version of Paris, an urban Metropolis, by his suave driver Céline. Is she real? Is she a robot? An alien? An air plane? The audience is told that he has nine 'appointments' that day. Starting off as a beggar woman, Monsieur Oscar then moves on to portray a series of characters which the so-called upstanding members of civilised society would, more often than not, like to ignore, from a Quasimodo-like imp-man, to a weirdly sexualised human machine, to a murderer, to a passive aggressive father-figure. In between appointments, he drives around in a post-modern version of the river Styx ferry, with Céline an uncanny and ambiguous Charon, while the changing masks become emblematic of the eternally fragmented notion of human identity. There appears to be an all-pervading emptiness running through the film, it is the emptiness at the core of our times in which the only reality available to modern being is a mediated one. As such, it comes as no surprise that Oscar is an actor, everything is a performance, even death, the other predominant image of the film. With each performance, life seems to be draining from Oscar and brings him always a step closer to Death, which is not so much a terrifying possibility as a welcomed relief. The only thing that keeps him going is the beauty of the gesture. The notion of beauty is the only thing that cannot be negated in the film, and, indeed in post-moderntiy, in which a mediated copy of experience might be devoid of a traditional core of reality, but is infused with beauty nonetheless.

Who is this cruel spectator, this inhuman consumer, spurring Oscar on to perform ever more deviant tasks for, what we can assume, pure entertainment value? It's not a far stretch to imagine it being us, the cinema audience from the mirror shot in the beginning in which Carax himself is observed by us observing a cinema audience. Could there be a more revealing image of consuming a mediated reality?

Carax does allow for moments of dark humour, such as the sequence in which Monsieur Merde jumps over tombstones bearing the inscription: 'Visitez le site' or 'visit the website'. Nowadays media promotion does not halt before death.

It is only when the spectator gives up the desire for coherent narrative that the film unfolds its true power. This is, indeed, the beauty of the gesture, as Carax takes pure delight in the human body and the very physicality of it. There's beauty or at least fascination in repulsion. Carax plays with the spectatorial senses, quite often, through the means of visual shock and thus blurs the boundaries of pre-conceived notions of beauty and ugliness as the latter can be found in the former and vice versa. He makes us question any 'natural' reactions we might have in stripping away the mantle of socially constructed vision. He lays bare a raw concept of humanity which is as characterised by a rough animalism as it is by almost ethereal beauty.

All the while, Carax plays with textures which range from the sleek smoothness of the limousine and the machine in general to the rough in, for example, the dirty fingernails of Monsieur Merde. Carax is of the opinion that everything belongs in film, just as everything just is, in life and in this, Holy Motors becomes near all-encompassing.

Casting the queen of pop, Kylie Minogue, as the long lost love proves a stroke of genius. In a beautiful musical pastiche, Minogue resembles Jean Seberg in an almost uncanny way, naturally, emphasised by the fact that Carax names her Jean. There is something sublime in this sequence. The post-modern self-reflexivity of this sequence only enhances the beauty of the gesture and the melancholia culminates in a death which is almost poetic in its performance.

I don't even know how to begin talking about Denis Lavant. This is what Daniel Day Lewis wishes he could do! Lavant doesn't portray characters, he becomes them. The control and precision Lavant has over his physicality can only be found in dancers in their meticulous striving for perfection. Innocence, tenderness, brutality, maliciousness, love, Lavant goes through the whole spectrum of human emotional capability and manages never to succumb to banality. He uses his body like a contortionist. Expression through gestures can quite often seem contrived and unnatural. Lavant, however, infuses the roles with life. If this isn't the performance of the decade, I don't know what is.

Ironically, in light of the theme of mediated reality and post-modern pastiche conveyed by the film, critics, in their eternal desire to compare and link, likened Holy Motors to Mulholland Drive. Whenever a film opens which celebrates the narrative nonsensical, poor Lynch must again function as a critical tool. Of course, Holy Motors strives through its filmic references, from its gleeful incorporation of the musical genre, to its keeping-alive of the nouvelle Vague tradition. It even incorporates elements of music video aesthetics. These visual references are woven together to, literally, paint a picture of a mind living in the cultural confusion of an eternally simulacrum-experience. So, let's leave poor Lynch alone, he's probably still busy finding the key to that damned box anyway.

The best thing about Holy Motors is its very existence, meaning the fact that cinema on this artistic scale is still being made. This cinematic experience can be likened to a visit in a turn-of-the-century circus; an eclectic, sensual and bodily journey before the notion of ugliness became the one social taboo. Holy Motors is a feast for the eyes, an assault on the senses. It's strange, it's weird, it's wonderful...it's cinema.

'Summer Nights'

Long gone are the times when Catholics monopolized the notion of guilt. Don't get me wrong, having been raised as a Catholic myself, I still get invaded by oh, the shame, the shame in having a second piece of chocolate mud pie. However, in late modern times, there seems to be a universalizing tendency, a true democracy of guilt. As such, don't ever, ever admit to:

-reading the Sun on a Sunday,

-eating an egg that isn't free-range

-being anything other than a social smoker

-ignoring a queue

-Miso soup tasting like dishwater

-not ever having seen Three Colours Blue

The contemporary moving through a societal nexus presents numerous pitfalls and being a film critic the general rules seem to be as follows:

-Obscure is always better: someone made a film with a home camera from the back of their tractor in Uzbekistan? Hit that shit! Here's the formula: Modern alienation meets heart-warming portrayal of unusual friendship!

-lament the selling out of brilliant European director in moving to Hollywood, formula: glimpses of former edge in close-cut editing, softened by the compromised Hollywood ending.

-Hollywood goes political: the one niche where it's alright to like something coming out of Tinsel-town, formula: praise the modern aware beings; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Redford and until the 'empty-chair'-incident, Clint Eastwood. Here, be careful about George Clooney, it's advisable to stay vague, in the lines of, and I quote: 'Not quite there yet! Promising Beginning! Raising awareness while slightly flawed structure' La-Di-Da...

Here's the thing though: It's summer! The one time where it's alright to have a glass, alright, alright, half a bottle, of wine every night (hey, if the Italians can do it, we can). It's not alcoholism, it's Fellini in a bottle. While most people enjoy the balmy summer nights, barbecues, swimming pools, intermezzos with the neighbour, I hit the cinema.

A well-loved classic under the fairy-lit skies of the open-air cinema? - not interested. A slow, beautiful portrayal of a middle-aged woman going through a divorce under the Tuscan sun? - get a grip. Another French pseudo-intellectual bromance? Fuck it.

No, give me the empty, air-conditioned, intellectual tumble weed of the Cinemaxx any time! I'll say it loudly and proudly: in the summer, I'm a Blockbuster-bitch!

The Avengers? Like a buy-one-get-four-for-free voucher! The consumer in me can't resist.

The Dark Knight rises? Man, let him rise! And take me along on the ride!

The Expendables? Switch off those politically correct tendencies in favour of Chuck Norris jokes! ( Ever notice how Word Spell Checker underlines the name Fellini as faulty, while perfectly knowing Chuck Norris?)

The Bourne Legacy? Jeremy Renner – What a revelation!

Don't get me wrong; I have seen more Antonioni films than I can remember, I have developed a near-obsession with Jarmusch and cannot remember what my life was like before seeing '400 coups'. - In spring, autumn and winter, that is! But, the reason we all get into film in the first instance? : Star Wars, pure and simple.

In summer, I want simple moral fables. I want action-fuelled car chases. I want to gorge myself on chocolates while watching handsome people do awesome things. It's shameful, really, but someone needs to take a stand for all those out there who sneak into the cinema to see Arnie blow things up, only to avoid looking into the mirror by the time they get home, tucking the experience away in that mental box named guilty pleasure. Here's the thing though: you wouldn't eat a grilled, fair-trade Halloumi wrap with organic rocket at Alton Towers, now, would you? The summer blockbuster has the same effect: it's mental chips and cheese, you wouldn't admit to it being your favourite, but, oh, it makes you deliciously happy!

By the way: if you see me in autumn, I have never written this article!

'Les Fameux Gars'

Chicken in the classroom, a stolen hot-air balloon, a makeshift Stephen Hawkins, wieners in a gun belt and some VIP's, very important português: you better hold on tight, because here comes the cinematic ride of the year. 

Adolf El Assal's Les Fameux Gars follows the adventure of three friends who embark on a school-trip to Portugal. When their friend Guy Désirée is barred from the school-trip on account of never having handed in one single paper, Stephen and his friends attempt to stage a sort of protest, which includes Stephen going on Léa Linster's cooking-show to make crèpes, in order to get permission for Guy Désirée to come along. Naturally, all fails and their friend must stay at home. Guy Désirée, on the other hand, has an enormous crush on their young teacher Miss Meyer (played by the fabulous Caty Baccega) and hires a shady private investigator to keep an eye on her, all the while planning on driving to Portugal himself.

In Portugal, and it must be said that this country seems to resemble Luxembourg in an almost uncanny way, things go from weird to absolutely absurd, as Stephen seems to carry 26 million Euros in his luggage, a teacher is shot with a rubber arrow, a building explodes in the most random fashion, a cat-and-mouse game with the police ensues and the friends steal a hot-air balloon only to plunge into a dream-like voyage which contains a less than subtle nod towards Méliès.

The plot contains more holes than a Swiss cheese. Clearly devised in a pub after several pints, the sequential build-up is of the most random nature and you can just imagine the writers having fun and shouting: 'Yeah, and you know what? Then they should steal a balloon and go on a Portuguese game-show...in a chicken suit!' Here's the thing about Les Famuex Gars, though: It shouldn't work, yet, it inexplicably does! 

What firmly holds this tapestry of absurdities together is the joyful hilarity of its genuinely funny moments. The tongue-in-cheek attitude towards its plot, its characters, the notion of national identity and last, but not least the self-reflexive awareness of film-making itself, infuse the film with a rare kind of raw energy, the likes of which Luxembourg cinema has not yet seen. The voice-over has the characters comment on their own actions on screen and take the piss out of each other. The film never pretends to be anything else than what it is, an accumulation of hilarious moments which, even if they make no sense whatsoever in an overall plot-related definition, nevertheless illustrate some truthful notions of what it means to live and be 'educated' in Luxembourg, Delvaux beware!

Some of the funniest instances present the characters imitating the pigeon French of the Luxembourger, the Portuguese and the African, all bound together in this language which none can claim as their own, thus symbolising the very life and cultural differences in the multiculturalism of Luxembourg life which a lot of its natives might choose to ignore. Even if the film does not preach tolerance and in fact stays away from all political statement, one might hope that the sheer absurd hilarity of it all might bring people from different cultural backgrounds closer, if only bound together in the hilarity of the frères Speck and '2 boule Mocca'.

Apart from presenting a crazed comedy of the nonsensical, Les Gars Fameux simultaneously works on a different level. Through its ironic and reflexive nods towards cinematic conventions, the film is out to show the middle-finger to the general stiffness of the filmic canon in Luxembourg and Europe in general. Through the introduction of cameos, such as Andy Bausch trying to steal El Assal's comedians and the aforementioned cinematic nod to Méliès, it almost seems as if this young film-maker allows us to see that he knows what he is doing, as if to show that he is aware of cinematic conventions and deliberately chooses to ignore them. This ironic filmic self-reflexivity culminates in the last scene, it might not quite be Truffaud's glance of the main protagonist towards the camera and by definition the audience, but it certainly brings awareness to the artificiality of story-telling and the comments of the characters about the film itself bring refusal to integrate the audience in a diegetic film-universe in which the illusion of the story must be maintained by all means. 

After the screening, one can imagine more than one spectator being a bit at a loss as to what to make of the film. Les Fameux Gars should and, indeed, must not be judged by conventional critical tools as, in the end, it is a hilariously absurd tour de force in which humour stands above all meaning and in this regard the film succeeds without a doubt!

'Carnage'

Polanski's latest release Carnage returns to themes, one cannot help but imagine being predominant in Polanski's mind, namely the themes of social confinement and an underlying brutality to a self-congratulatory notion of civility self-imposed by a modern society which proves itself to be more Hobbesian in nature than it would care to admit.

What starts as a somewhat stiff, but nevertheless polite settlement of a dispute of a children's fight, soon turns into a veritable battle of all against all. From the beginning the artificiality of civilization as a discourse is exposed over the petty quibble of the word 'armed' and the negative connotations it might involve. Things turn from bad to worse as the self-proclaimed liberal writer Penelope and her salesman husband Michael face the somewhat ritzier well-to-doers Nancy and Allen. Deliciously slow and with obvious glee, Polanski strips away layer after layer of his characters' personalities, a bit like evil onions, exposing a raw brutality inherent in this bourgeois way of life. As such, in this post-modern societal drama, culture is displayed in the form of coffee-table books, originality takes the form of adding pears to an apple cobbler and the ethically charged Gretchen-question reverts into a hamster-question as the unfortunate rodent is left to its own devices in the neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Hypocrisy rules the day and a breaking point is reached when Nancy has a very corporeal reaction to the Martha Stewart-like culinary efforts of Penelope. Throw in a bit of booze and some very phallic cigars and the bourgeois krakken is released. Between the four characters alliances are formed only to be broken and the viewer has the pleasure of seeing things degenerate from an 'we're all decent people' to a vehement 'Fuck you all'.

Carnage does at times feel fairly staged, being based on the play 'the god of carnage' by Yasmin Reza, however, the real time action and confinement to four walls only help to emphasize the claustrophobic set-up. The camera taking the point of view of a detached observer, almost like a perverse scientist dissecting the behavior of a species within its natural habitat. As such the camera becomes equivalent to the emotional tensions either isolating the characters in harsh close-ups smoothly binding them within the same frame. Even though masterfully done, one cannot help but feel that the smooth controlled cinematography stands in direct contrast to the depiction of carnage as a theme.

Being a character-study par excellence, Carnage's real asset lies in its performances as Foster plays Penelope with an up-tightness in which the strained veins on her forehead deserve at least as much acclaim as her acting skills, Reilly turns Michael from a loving parent into a raging Republican, Winslet plays Nancy with a beautiful shallowness which admittedly is literally turned inside out and Waltz delivers the best lines of the dialogue with a dry wit and honesty which are a delight to watch.

Ironically, Carnage has been acclaimed by exactly the middle-class bourgeois audience it exposes as fake. An audience which discusses the film in a civilized manner over a nice glass of Merlot and a bit of home-made hummus with fair-trade flat bread, all the while not realizing that it watched slightly distorted caricatures of itself for the last eighty minutes. All in all, while being hugely entertaining, the film ultimately presents half-developed truths while never bringing any theme to its conclusion. As such it presents nothing original, thus being a true product of the very thing it attacks, namely post-modern emptiness pervading all modern discourse. True Carnage this is not, an entertaining bicker for a pre-dinner audience more like it.

'The Ides of March'

George Clooney, as a director, clearly intends to follow in the footsteps of Robert Redford or Clint Eastwood, in terms of his politically engaged film-making, even though he neither possesses Redford's gritty commentary nor Eastwood's lavish aesthetics, yet, anyway.

Let's not put the cart in front of the horse, or the endorsement in front of the governor, or whatever the saying is. The Ides of March follows the young media genius Stephen Meyers as he works on the Pennsylvania governor's presidential campaign, the film is mainly set in Ohio whose polls could decide the potential outcome of the presidential preliminaries. He works under the experienced Paul Zara and contrary to the latter, Meyers has an almost naïve faith in the liberal democratic values of their charismatic candidate Mike Morris.

On the other side of this political ring-fight, we find Tom Duffy, a shrewd campaign manger who seems not only to see all the strings, but pull them as well. Duffy, naturally attempts to hire Meyers whom he sees great potential in and Meyers, somewhat foolishly, agrees to meet, even though he eventually turns Duffy down. Things get messy as Meyer's journalist friend senses a scoop and learns of the meet. Throw in a gorgeous young intern and the political débâcle is on its way.

Based on a theatre play 'Farragut North' by Beau William in 2004, it comes as no surprise that the plot in itself is a skeleton plot, following a trigger, consequential action to the situational circumstances and the results of those actions. This bareness in terms of plot structure, makes the overall feel of the film result in a certain notion of staginess as it isolates the characters in symbolic concepts of idealism, corruption and the weaknesses of pride and personal gain. The 'twists' (and the quotation marks here are very much deliberate) are straightforward to blunt, emphasising the good old truth that politics is a dirty business, as if we hadn't seen it all before. The intern business feels contrived at times as it relies too much on Clinton's little indiscretion with a certain Monica Lewinski, relevant at the time of the play's opening, but almost anachronistic in present day.

The film's concentration on the characters of its unfolding leave one very important element of the political power play out, namely the people, or the votes for that matter. Granted, this could be deliberate as it illustrates how, in the end, a campaign is nothing but the sum of actions of the opposite campaign teams at play, at the same time however, the film could have benefited from the introduction of the masses and their more or less blind belief in the promises of the candidates as it would have heightened the cynicism of political observation.

As such, Clooney focuses on a cinematography of close-ups, highlighting the conspirational closeness of the protagonists and an atmosphere of dirty secrets in which the latter are nothing but a means to get headway in this personal road of success. The framing translates a feel of absolute isolation, of a closed universe in which trust is a luxury, loyalty an impossibility and idealism just a sign of naivety. The colour scheme is one of expensive subdued, plain in its dark greens, browns and beige, not unlike the lounge/bar in high class hotel, in which whispered echoes provide a background noise which prohibits any genuine voice or sound and as such become utterly unreal.

The performances are, of course, excellent, how could they not be with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti on board. Am I the only one who cannot help but feel guilty boredom in seeing those two high-class actors, which I know are never going to et a foot wrong in terms of performance? Hoffmann plays his character with the beaten desolation of a man who has been in the business for years, which seems to have drained the colour from his very figure and Giamatti who plays Duffy with the nihilistic perseverance of a pit-bull, who doesn't so much know why he has to bite as he just knows it's in his nature. The real reverence of the film, however, lies in Gosling, who, since Drive has really drawn attention to himself. He carries the film with an aggressive nonchalance which is as much put on as it is strangely enough innocent. There's nothing new to the role of the young idealist who becomes corrupted along the line, Gosling, however, manges to infuse the role with a genuine intensity of a man who is in over his head and needs to make a choice of whether to relinquish his principles and success or whether to lose with his integrity intact, but nothing much else left. Clooney cleverly puts on a sideshow performance in his portrayal of the charismatic governor, his role almost becomes a parody of the figure of Clooney the actor himself, charming, but with an underlying tone of sinister calculation. The audience witnesses Clooney the actor, acting, which conjures the uncanny comparison of the Hollywood machinery and the governmental power play, supposedly making the most important decisions of a whole nation. In the end, the film seems to suggest, the show must go on.

As such, even thought somewhat simplistic in its treatment of the preliminary presidential campaign and all the conspiracies this entails, the film does raise some elemental ethical questions, the most important of which is whether it is better to win and have a chance to instate half the principles to believe in or whether to retain your ethical integrity, but lose. Even if the film's overall cinematography feels at times too glossy for its supposedly grim and realistic conveyance, while the emphasis on soured idealism, the backstabbing of the loyal minion (Y tu, Brutus!) and the intern as back-story might feel too contrived and simplistic for its own good, it does not diminish the necessity of films which raise elemental political questions and raise an awareness in an audience which must soon again make their way to the voting booth.

'Wuthering Heights'

If you enjoy romantic period dramas with damsels falling for handsome, dashing gentlemen in well-cut suits and impeccable manners, who even though somewhat lacking in the realm of emotional expression, nevertheless make up for their shortcomings in deeds and heroines who overcome their prejudices after traditionally rejecting the first marriage proposals as to prove their personal worth and interest in the man, not the economic capital, if you enjoy, longing female protagonists in wind-swept skirts standing on a hill musing in taking in the highly romanticised landscape of more often than not the lake district, then, beware, do not go and see Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights.

The newest version of Emily Bronte’s monumental text of the English literary canon comes from none other than the maker of the critically acclaimed Fish Tank. It seems an odd choice of text for Andrea Arnold at first, but quickly proves plausible in breaking the novel down to its bare essential themes rather than taking it as a mere classic. Like Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights deals with the figure of the adolescent outsider; it deals with the dispossessed and is infiltrated with a distinct social realist tone. 

In terms of plot, the film follows the first half of the novel, in that it depicts the arrival of the later named Heathcliff to the family home of the Earnshaws’ in the middle of nowhere, also known as Victorian Yorkshire. In a bout of Christian charity, the head of the family has taken this boy in from the streets of Liverpool and given him a home in exchange for labour.  Heathcliff quickly attracts the hatred of the family’s eldest son Hindley and is thus subjected to constant humiliation and even physical abuse by the latter. He finds a companion in Catherine, the younger daughter and soon the two prove inseparable and roam the bleak moors of Yorkshire all day long. Catherine and Heathcliff’s relation is of an almost animalistic nature, strong, wild, occasionally cruel, defiant, desperately loyal, and innocent while erotic at the same time.

Of course the text lives through this all-consuming relationship and Arnold cleverly equals the nature of their relation with the powerful imagery of the landscape which becomes a character in its own right.  This is no sanitized period drama version of the moors shot through a glossy Hollywood lens; this is a highly desensitized treatment of a landscape whose bleakness is more council estate than countryside and the characters mirror and become part of it, rather than battling against it. This is almost a primeval world in its essential bareness and the difference between man and beast is narrow to non-existent, as Heathcliff is sent to sleep with the animals on the farm and Catherine licks his wounds in imitation of an animal taking care of its own.

The constant alteration between wide angle shots of the landscape and extremely confining close-ups of the characters make for a visual shock, which renders the overall feel of the film a visceral one. Arnold and her cinematographer Robert Ryan introduce images of as delicate as bleak beauty in focusing on the textural nature of the thing on screen, prioritising the tactile over the visually comprehensive. As such we are presented with images which seem almost of an alien nature as butterflies and bugs are magnified to the point of becoming unrecognisable, the rough creaks of the wide planes of Yorkshire remind of the close-up of Cathy’s hair and the focus on dead and trapped animals become almost unbearable to watch, not so much necessary components of country life as uncanny representatives of the abject. Let’s just say that any scholars of the haptic will have a field day with this film. The twin obsession with death and sex is omnipresent in the littering of animal corpses on the screen which are as much part of the filmic landscape as Cathy’s and Heathcliff’s erotic tensions. This linking of death and sex culminates in the last scene in which Heathcliff visits the corpse of Catherine. Here, however, one cannot help but feel that Arnold is pushing for extremes rather than really feeling the necessity to include this scene in the film in terms of character-understanding.

 The use or non-use of sound reinforces this notion of essentialism in terms not only of character emotions but also life in the 19^th century. The raindrops on the lens of the hand-held camera, the shaky cinematography and the sound of wind with an occasional cry of a lonely bird come to emphasise the harshness of a life lived in a cramped cottage which translates as an existence lived in poverty and a constant draft. The characters here are very much a product of their surrounding as they live a life in defiance of the elements and stifling social conventions which make of Catherine and Heathcliff not only outsiders in terms of gender and race, but also dependents on respectively marriage and charity. The sparse dialogue conveys the sense of impossibility of expression with occasional violent outbursts such as Heathcliff’s : ‘Fuck you all, you cunts’ which left the respectable middle-aged and distinctly middle-class audience gasping while at my screening one couple bowed their silver-haired heads and left in a self-righteous huff. The straining from the novel’s original dialogue, however, makes sense in that it brings the emotional core to a modern level. Heathcliff and Catherine are children left to run wild, they are dirty and uneducated, of no economic consequence and socially marginalised. This living on the fringes of society is here translated through the characters lingering in doorframes, peeping through keyholes or window frames, especially Heathcliff is always looking from the outside in.

At the same time, however, this negation of verbal expression proves the only digression from the novel which left me somewhat bewildered. In the novel, Heathcliff has a very distinct voice and refuses to be victimised in expressing defiance at all cost. Here, however, Heathcliff’s muteness makes him more of a victim as one gets the feeling that he has no means of defence. Also the film’s radical gutting of the novel’s gothic framework, leaving out not only the supernatural, a wise decision in terms of the tone of the film, but also some of the character traits, leave the protagonist as representatives of bare emotions such as anger, passion, pain and loss, rather than rich textual figures to be explored. One cannot help but feel that essential traits of what make these iconic characters have been left out, such as the cruelty Catherine and Heathcliff display as children, mostly to their immediate surroundings, but also to themselves. Also, the Hindley character seems to be portrayed as a mindless bully rather than a boy who sees himself confronted with the potential loss of his place as an heir and deprived of his father’s love and as such resumes to physical violence.

Why can’t you always be like this? Cathy’s father asks her when she snuggles up to him. This question leaves an audience unfamiliar with the book bemused as they have not seen proof of Cathy’s wickedness. Also the first scene shows Catherine spitting in Heathcliff’s face, an action which makes no sense in accordance to the next scene in which she invites him to visit the moors with her. The novel, naturally, has the time and pace to establish this sadomasochistic relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, in which the two characters seems to hate as much as love each other , as one torments the other only to be fiercefully loyal to them once the outside world turns against them.

The lovers’ reunion after Heathcliff’s return also somewhat leaves to be wished for, as the adult actors seem to close in age to the child actors which makes the supposed time-frame appear artificial and unbelievable. Also the adult Cathy character looks utterly dissimilar to the young Catherine in looks and behaviour that one almost feels like watching a different character. Some of her behavioural changes must, of course, be attributed to her marriage to the socially refined Linton, but even in her interaction with Heathcliff she seems more teasing than passionately in love. All of the performances, from the young non-professional actors, to the more established older actors are superb, their performances, however, are completely desynchronised, a fact which greatly weakens the second part of the film.  

All in all, the film’s greatest asset lies in its effect on the audience, as it has the same shocking and startling impact as the novel had on its 19^th century readership. Even thought the film proves flawed in terms of character development, which would have been acceptable in a loose reimagining of the Bronte text, but becomes a shortcoming in an adaptation, the fact that Arnold managed transform a well-worn classic into something new and raw which brings back to life the original audience response in its shocking and unsentimental approach deserves nothing short of critical admiration.

Oh yeah, before I forget: Heathcliff is black.