Sometimes you come across a cinematic equivalent of a second trimester abortion, and this particular adaptation of Wuthering Heights is just that. I watched it on my iPhone while on a business trip in Italy. There are so many things wrong with it, I had to share them.
There are several notable figures flipping in their graves, from Emily Bronte herself to Martin Luther King. Nothing spells "social responsibility" like having a hysterical white woman slack, kick, lick and step on a black man. The ethnicity of Healthcliff never was verified, but it is implied that he is of Romani descent. Substituting a gypsy for a black man is a bit of a stretch. I don't know if the director wanted to make the story somehow more "relevant" to modern audiences. Either way, the attempt failed miserably. If anything, it trivializes racism. A black man in the English moorland sticks out like a sore thumb. The Earnshaws are reduced to a bunch of filthy, violent rednecks. I almost feel this movie should have been done as a modernized version, set in the American south, with a poor white family fostering a black kid. It would have been more convincing. I will not even comment on the casting and acting. Catherine's eyes cannot decide if they are brown or blue, and the chicken pox mark on her forehead keeps moving as she gets older. All in all, this particular adaptation is a lame piece of racially charged torture porn.
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