(2009 for TV) At the outset of director Coky Giedroyc's adaptation of the gothic and only novel written by Emily Brontė (who used the penname Ellis Bell and died at 30), from Peter Bowker's screenplay, ailing Linton Heathcliff (Tom Payne), only 18 years old, is removed from Thrushcross Grange to his father's residence at Wuthering Heights. Six months later, the dark and mysterious Heathcliff (Tom Hardy) - as fascinating in his abominable megalomania as Milton's Satan - finds young Catherine Linton (Rebecca Night) on the moors on the anniversary of her mother's death and lures his niece to his abode where she meets her cousins, Linton and naļf Hareton (Andrew Hawley), and discovers a room devoted to her mother.

Back home Cathy's father Edgar (Andrew Lincoln) forbids her ever seeing Heathcliff again: "I cannot abandon her to him." Cathy asks the servant Nelly Dean (Sarah Lancashire) if it's true that her mother once loved this monster. At night Heathcliff digs up Catherine's grave to lie with her bones.

Years before Mr Earnshaw (Kevin McNally), a widower, had brought Heathcliff, a foundling, to Wuthering Heights from the gutters of Liverpool to raise as his own child, along side his son Hindley and daughter Catherine. Hints of Heathcliff's being a bastard child (introducing, if true, the complicating element of incest) along with Hindley's hatred toward his undeserving sibling (show him his place) make life difficult and sometimes cruel for the gypsy meant to become a gentleman.

After Hindley departs for school, Heathcliff and Catherine grow up happily together until their father and protector dies. Upon Hindley's return (Burn Gorman) with his wife to become master of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is denied equal accord, relegated to the status of a servant. Planning his revenge as he and Catherine ("We cannot escape each other") have determined to run off together, Heathcliff then must watch Catherine (Charlotte Riley) recover from an injury at the home of Edgar and his sister Isabella (Rosalind Halstead) where their "civilizing influence" breeds the savage out of her, transforming her into a lady.

Flogged by Hindley, Heathcliff lays a terrible curse upon his enemy. When Catherine tells Heathcliff of her intention to marry Edgar, her scheme being to use her husband's wealth to rescue him from her tyrant brother, the gypsy disappears for three years.

On her wedding day Catherine receives a message, accusing her of betrayal. The following day Heathcliff appears as a rich gentleman (the result of "taking advantage of other men's weaknesses") who assures Hindley's servant: "My soul is already damned, Joseph. You can count on it."

Wagering cash against the flesh on the back of drunken, insolvent Hindley, he further humiliates his foe. To avenge himself against Catherine and Edgar (who thinks of Heathcliff as "moral poison"), he elopes with Isabella, whom after four months he abandons ("I have no pity"), though she's pregnant; her brother disowns her.

Troubled and tormented in her soul, unable to deny the bond that binds her heart to Heathcliff, weak and pregnant, Cathy wanders the moor in a storm where Heathcliff finds her. But it is too late to save any of these benighted characters from their doom.

The story ends eighteen years later, as Catherine Linton witnesses Linton's and her father's deaths, Heathcliff's taking possession of all the lands, buildings, and inheritances associated with Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange (none of which can fill the emptiness within), leaving only simpleminded Hareton for companionship, before gaining her freedom.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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