ANDREA Arnold’s latest dose of gritty realism following 2009’s Bafta-winning Fish Tank takes Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel and wrings from it every last bleak and brilliant drop.

Her decision to cast a black actor in the role of Heathcliff may have met with an initial flurry of surprise (though it pretty much fits the book’s description) but it hardly registers on the grand scale of things in this soul-stirring epic adapted for the screen by Arnold and Olivia Hetreed.

The actor is newcomer James Howson but before his adult anti-hero makes an appearance – returning after some years’ absence to Catherine (Skins actress Kaya Scodelario) – we’ve committed totally to Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer who give raw, moving performances as the characters' younger selves.

Arnold devotes much of her film to these young survivors, pitched together when Cathy’s father brings the homeless Heathcliff to live in their Yorkshire hill farm, making sense of the bond that ties them so ferociously in adulthood, even though Glave hardly says a word as the brooding youth humiliated at the hands of Cathy’s brother Hindley (Lee Shaw).

The pair run wild in scenes steeped in dirt, brutality and those sweeping moors, captured by handheld cameras and intercut with snatched shots of circling curlews, trapped moths, rain, mud and dying seasons: man and nature in all its beautiful and harsh reality.

It’s never easy to adjust to “grown-up” characters (not helped here by the fact neither Scodelario nor Howson look anything like the younger actors) but such is the power of what is essentially a dark love story, and Arnold’s fearless direction, that we’re consumed by watching how it all plays out.

Despite one of the book’s most telling conversations – as young Cathy explains what Heathcliff means to her – being snatched away as the camera leaves the room, the film serves Brontë well, capturing a love that’s needy, sometimes cruel and certainly more a torment than a comfort.

Forget all those watered-down treatments of this enduring classic. This is brutal, primal and animal-like, with young Cathy licking bloody wounds; outdoor sex and childbirth; and tormented Heathcliff digging up Cathy’s coffin.

His repressed pain comes out in scenes I found horrible, of sheep having their throats cut, hares in a trap and wriggling dogs strung up from fence posts.

Arnold tackles the problem of where to leave off from the book by casting away side characters and cutting to Heathcliff roaming the moor; Cathy almost part of the elements. This film won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s the most faithful adaptation of Bronte’s novel I’ve ever seen.

Wuthering Heights is showing at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle.

Barbara Hodgson

DRAMA

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (2hr 8 mins)

Certificate: 15

Starring: Solomon Glave, Shannon Beer, James Howson

Director: Andrea Arnold

HHHHH