Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This adaptation is a fresh rendering that focuses on the complex passions of the two main characters. As a former college professor, I found it difficult to engage my students in reading the novel instead of Cliff's Notes. I think this film version of the novel would definitely inspire those not used to reading 19th century lit to attack the novel with new eyes. I say fresh rendering because the torrid love/hate relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy is the core of the film. It is also about abandonment, including Cathy's. The film is not burdened by the triple narratives of the book. The novel is a Gothic one, but the film dispenses with the supernatural elements that would seem distracting if included. Heathcliff's plea to the dying Cathy to haunt him so they can still be together, Cathy's plea that he let her die in his arms,imagining that she would be tossed out of heaven for loving him too much, the etchings on the wooden wall reading Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Linton, Catherine Heathcliff, all of these hint at the resignation of the lovers that their lives together are doomed. I am appreciative of the inclusion of carnal scenes, implicit and explicit, that are merely intimated in the novel. Heathcliff and Cathy tearing each other apart on the crag where they had earlier "lay with each other" and Heathcliff's anguished lovemaking to Isabella where he attempts to feel Cathy's body instead of his wife's. "Turn your face away," he tells her. I thought the actors wonderful. Tom Hardy's embodiment of the brooding, obsessive Heathcliff is remarkable and the newcomer playing Cathy very good despite shrinking a bit in Hardy's tour de force. Purists will probably not endorse this version, but it is far and away the best film to capture the essence of the novel, the raw, violent passion between the lovers which is the lynchpin of the story.