Apart from the title, none of the houses are named in the film. Wuthering Heights is a rudimentary farming household, with no comforts. There is constant emphasis on the hardship of the inhabitants’ lives: Heathcliff (from inside) observes Cathy barefoot in the mud, emptying her chamber pot in the morning. Frances gives birth on the moor, standing, while young Cathy and
106 Moor Close Farm (in Muker, Swaledale) is Wuthering Heights, while Cotescue Park (in Coverham) is Thrushcross Grange.
Nelly help her (similar to Kinu giving birth standing in Onimaru). There is the fireplace (around which characters gather) and also the “coffin” bed from the hypotext, which the children share.
Older Heathcliff and little Hareton also sleep there. The house seems the eighteenth-century equivalent of a council state, which is the environment in which the previous films directed by Arnold were set (i.e. Fish Tank, 2009). The council state houses are symbols of the class divide in 2000s Britain. They are built and operated by local councils, to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at reasonable rents to primarily working class people. Their
development began in the late nineteenth century and peaked in the mid-twentieth century. Like the Wuthering Heights household in WH2011, council houses are stereotypically associated to poverty and dilapidated state.
In the hypotext, the Lintons are supposed to have inhabited their lands for generations, like the Earnshaws. In the hypertext, they are “the new people”, who have just moved to the place when Mr. Earnshaw dies. This is a hint to the class divide in modern Britain. The crises in the agricultural sector have made life very difficult for farmers. An increasing number of farming households are being bought by upper-middle class professionals, as symbol of status. In many cases, their farmer neighbours regard them with suspicion. A similar social divide can be found in the Wuthering Heights – inspired TV series Sparkhouse (2002), set in modern Britain. In WH2011, Thrusscross Grange is like a different world, with elegant interiors. There are close-ups
concentrating on the details, like the ornate legs of the furniture. In the first half of the
transposition, we only have glimpses from the outside through the windows, following Heathcliff’s point of view (with whom the audience is aligned). The interior only appears when Heathcliff is allowed in, during the second half (and for a brief moment in the dog-biting scene).
6.4.2.5.2. Nature
Like in the novel, nature in this film is inhospitable, but not because there is emphasis in thunder, lightning and rain (which was the case in transpositions like Abismos or WH1992). Nature is perceived as harsh because of the “realistic” approach, which involves the use of Steadicam and natural lighting. These techniques are coherent with the Dogma rules. We are shown very muddy outdoors. The moors look extremely isolated, with no shelter, not even a road in sight. In the daylight interior scenes, no artificial lightning appears to have been used (rule number four forbids this). As rule number three requires, there is no soundtrack music and the wind blowing is heard instead. The film contains plenty of naturalistic detail close-ups of the farm’s dead animals: young Heathcliff collects rabbits from the traps, which do not look like props. This is not only the influence of Dogma, but can be traced back to the novel: the dead rabbits which Lockwood
confuses with kittens (52). Such details had appeared in previous transpositions (Hélène/ Nelly skinning a rabbit in Hurlevent), but the nearest point of reference for WH2011 is the 1978 Wuthering Heights BBC TV series. This series adopted a claustrophobic perspective, with characters framed by the dead pheasants and game hanging in the Wuthering Heights kitchen. Moreover, the rock where adult Cathy and adult Heathcliff talk after his return in WH2011 resembles the one where the protagonists meet in the 1978 TV series. These aesthetic choices make nature appear powerful, which is totally loyal to the novel. Characters seem to be trapped by their destiny. Heathcliff, whose point of view the film follows, is more a witness of the tragedy unfolding around him, rather than an active participant.
6.4.2.5.3. Religion
The religious context is the same. Although the topic is not really developed, religion appears in quite a negative light. It is not that it oppresses the characters or conditions their decisions, but it is related to obscurantism. Joseph (Steve Evets) is a grumpy, Bible-quoting man.
He is not really a religious fanatic, he seems more an ignorant who sticks to his Bible because is the only referent he has. The only scene involving religion in the hypertext is young Heathcliff’s (Solomon Glave) baptism. Although the boy is around fifteen, Mr. Earhshaw is frightened that he is a heathen. He renames him with the name his dead son had. Under a postcolonial point of view, his actions are reminiscent of the white missionaries in Africa or South America, imposing their religion and renaming the natives (without taking into account that they must have had a name and a religion before). As it is depicted from Heathcliff’s point of view, the scene is unsettling: the boy cannot understand the rite and thinks that they want to drown him in the pile. He escapes to the moor, followed by young Cathy.
6.4.3. Conclusion
The study of the setting in the Wuthering Heights versions helps us analyse the notion of fidelity in the film transpositions. First, the fact that many of these films have changed spatial and/
or temporal setting must not be regarded as “unfaithfulness” to the source text. The main point is if the setting used maintains the same ideas: in all the Eastern transpositions, the sea or river (which is not part of the setting in the hypotext) symbolizes the characters’ passions. However, nature mirroring the characters is totally loyal to the Gothic and Romantic influences in the novel.
Second, the changes in setting allow us to reflect about the notion of negotiation. All the transpositions from non-English speaking industries transpose the story to their own cultural reality. Time period has been made to be a mirror of what was happening in the country at the
time: an interclass love relation seems to be as problematic in 1960s India and Turkey, or the Japanese Muromachi period, as it was in nineteenth-century England. Religion is the element most affected by changes. First, the Protestant creed from the novel becomes the main creed in the society which produced the hypertext (Catholic, Hindu, Shinto, Muslim…). Second, Brontë’s oppressive view of religion varies from one film to another. It can be neuter or positively regarded depending on censorship (i.e. WH1939, Dil Diya) or the power that religion has in the country of production (WH1992, Hihintayin, Ölmeyen, Promise were shot during periods of secularism). It also depends how filmmakers relate to their own religion: Abismos reproduces Buñuel’s love – hate relation with Catholicism, while Onimaru uses the dichotomy sacred – profane from Shinto as the backbone for the setting. Finally, there is a significant difference in the setting of Classic and Surrealist transpositions. Coherent with the aims of commercial cinema, all the motifs in the Classic setting have a meaning. Surrealist settings include puzzling elements, coherent with the aims of shocking the spectator.