Overall thoughts?
What were your overall thoughts after watching it?
It seemed to me that there was a lot of talent that didn't quite manage to be more than the sum of its parts; yet after the initial disappointment I found quite a number of good things about it.
The lack of character development -- or even plot development -- was a little disappointing, especialy given the fine heritage of the novel, the rich cinematography, and the actors' valiant efforts constantly to inject emotion into a lacklustre script and their rather one-dimensional characters. Film is a different medium to words, and I found the beautiful poetry of the novel, occasionally used as a voiceover, lazy directing.
The film fails to make much of a point. The stark love-story-set-in-the-mud-and-rain was done much better in Andrea Arnold's fresh adaptation of Wuthering Heights. We can foretell early on that the father will be a brute, that the daughter will get raped at some point, and that it will probably end up like a Scottish Mayor of Casterbridge but without any decent storyline.
Yet it has a certain classiness to it, in spite of its faults. What is it that still convinces us that it is 'worthy' even after it has dragged on for two and a half hours?
In retrospect, something I found interesting was the character of the brutal father. In some ways he was the ‘best’ character even though he had the most awful flaw, which of course is his downfall. The point being: he is in control: of his life, his business, his income, his house, his social arrangements. A worthy characteristic that many people aspire to. His big flaw, instead of being the beacon that lit the way for other members of his family to do the same, was to treat others as objects. (For those that say it was a Brechtian view of how-it-was in Scotland, I'd say yes, but it wasn't Brechtian *enough*: it lacks that self-awareness which the book conveys so admirably.)
While this is obvious in a way, I find it remarkable in that it characterises what we all do, the good and the bad, in varying degrees. We all seek control of our lives, yet not always (as Immanuel Kant would suggest) in a way that would wish it to be universal among all people.