Withering Heights

Why oh why did I start watching the new BBC/Masterpiece Theater version of Wuthering Heights? I will tell you: because it was readily available on Netflix Instant Play, and because yesterday my only goal was to find out whether or not Burn Gorman is attractive.

If this is your only aim in life as well, let me be brief: not in this, he isn't.

I read Wuthering Heights a few years ago, and hoped for my own death and those of the fictitious characters taunting me throughout the ordeal. If everyone could just stop whining all the time, that would be brilliant, thanks. And how could anyone ever see Catherine and Heathcliff as nice, romantic kiddos just trying to get by? It makes me wonder if maybe Kate Beaton is wrong (heaven forbid), maybe Emily Bronte really did know an alcoholic dickbag when she saw one, and everyone else (I'm looking at you, Stephenie Meyer) simply can't. Then again, she was a Victorian, so probably not.

Anyhow, everyone in the film does their job admirably. By which I mean, if the only people you end up liking are Hareton and Nellie, then congratulations! You have a soul. Cathy is a bit of a slag, frankly (and unfairly gorgeous, but that is another matter), and Heathcliff is evilly evil, with nothing else to recommend him. Poor old Burn is sad, sad Hindley, and I was so disappointed that the movie didn't include my favorite scene from the book (I say favorite, it may have been the only readable one), where Hindley drops his baby from a second storey balcony, and Heathcliff miraculously catches it. Health and safety gone mad, I suppose.

In the end, we are left with some terribly Victorian themes: dying in childbirth, marrying in vengeance, tight corsets, high boots, and some seriously confusing names: Catherine Earnshaw marries Edgar Linton to become Catherine Linton; their daughter is named Catherine Linton, and she sort of marries her cousin named Linton, who dies of being way too Victorian; but then it's assumed that she's going to marry her other cousin, Hareton Earnshaw, so that her name will be Catherine Earnshaw. Basically, it is impossible to pick up this book at any random page and pretend to know what is actually happening. Which is probably what old Emily had planned all along, that silly wench.