Wuthering Heights (1988) User Reviews

Bronte revisited

[poikkeus · 8/10 · 24 July 2009]

In tone, this version of Wuthering Heights isn't dissimilar from grim, intense Shakespeare adaptation, with the howling wind and warring spirits of superstition and tradition.

Beautiful young Kinu Yamabe (Yuko Tanaka) is drawn to low-born Onimaru, who's vital and charismatic, but viewed by his father as a demon, and by most of the remaining family as a stain to the family name. But after her first period, Kinu suffers the fate of any women born near the Sacred Mountain: she must leave the Mountain and serve as priestess But she has a plan to stay near her old home - which involves marrying into a rival branch of her family.

Few Japanese films are as as exacting in recounting the details of custom and superstition as this, where the mores of everyday life are enforced by ritual and fate. This version, then, is a striking variation on the Bronte version, and completely convincing.

A Japanese interpretation of "Wuthering Heights"

[luciensmith · 10/10 · 6 October 2005]

Just saw this incredible film at the Library of Congress. Since there are no comments, I thought I would post this interpretation by MAKI OKUMURA - I don't know who he is either -

Japanese filmmaker Yoshishige Yoshida, in his film Arashi-ga-Oka, interprets Wuthering Heights in a medieval Japanese folklore context. A fearful stranger, Onimaru (Heathcliff), tries to intrude into the central community with a tabooed and profane woman, Kinu (Catherine). Influenced by George Bataille's argument that the sacred and the profane are ultimately never in contradiction, Yoshida allows Kinu and Onimaru to consummate and sublimate their union through their marginality and profaneness. At the end of the film, they are expelled by the legitimate second generation and annihilate themselves. The social harmony, that the intruder disturbed, is restored. However, in spite of this seemingly clear ending, doubts remain over the legitimacy of the second Catherine, with the suspicion that she might be the daughter of Onimaru (Heathcliff). In addition to providing a distinctive version of an English classic, Yoshida affirms the multiplicity of meanings and the open-endedness of Emily Bront¸'s singular drama.