To leave out most of Emily Brontë's beautiful prose – and the second half of her story, as usual – are bold moves which a few literary folk might find outrageous. At other times, the words which the characters use seem to have grown from improvisation sessions, giving the action a kind of Ken Loach feel at times. It is not dialogue- free, employing a few sentences and phrases from the novel, rather like the quotes a candidate might fish out for an A-level essay, with more of them in the film's second half, after Heathcliff's return, than in the first. We do not find out which language he speaks when he first arrives, because there is very little speaking in the whole film. The unknown James Howson from Leeds was cast as the adult Heathcliff, with the equally unknown Solomon Glave as his young version. All the artefacts – stoneware jars, spades for digging out peat and so on – look as if they have been borrowed from a folk museum, the costumes appear to be authentic, and Heathcliff is black. Considerable respect has been shown to the original: a fair amount of thought and research seems to have gone into finding out what was in Emily Brontë's mind and how she saw her characters, and into the late eighteenth century in Yorkshire. The depiction of Hareton is related to the 'cruelty breeds cruelty' message in Andrea Arnold's film – and in Emily Brontë's novel, if that can be seen, glibly, as a straight deliverer of messages. In the final scene, he is seen hanging up dogs by their collars.
Dour before his time, he appears now and then in the early scenes, a dirty blonde-haired urchin, to gawp at visitors, or to witness violent abuse from the sidelines. Hareton disturbed me the most in this film based on Wuthering Heights.
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