It’s hard to watch Andrea Arnold’s version of Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights, about the destructive, all-consuming power of love without comparing it to Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which was released mere months earlier. This is, to an extent, superficial, since the two might not be compared if they hadn’t both been released within the same twelve month period. There have been plenty of adaptations of both works, why compare these two merely because they are the most recent?
However, scratching beneath the surface we see a clear conceptual link between them, since both set out to be radical reinventions of classic works. The difference is that whilst Fukunaga’s film, whose trailer boasts Gothic imagery largely missing from much of the film and a segment of Goblin’s score to Suspiria, suggests that it will be a totally new take on its story, but wound up being very similar to every other adaptation, Arnold’s film is the genuine article.