Thursday 1 March 2012

Wuthering Heights (wr. Olivia Hetreed & Andrea Arnold)

Last night we saw the recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights, directed by Andrea Arnold, at the BFI, and its primal approach gripped and affected me more than any film I've seen for a while.

Arnold shares the screenplay credit, but as her co-writer Olivia Hetreed also gains a 'story' credit, it seems that the latter was probably behind most of the choices for the structure and focus of the adaptation.

It's interesting that Hetreed used to be a film editor: I've yakked on before about the parallels between screenwriting and editing, and it's clear from the start that she's taken a very bold approach to recutting the raw material.