Wuthering Heights – 1988, Yoshishige Yoshida

by Allan Fish

completing the Yoshida mini-series…

(Japan/France 1988 142m) DVD2 (Japan only, no English subs)

Aka. Arashi ga oka

We are like shadows and light

p  Francis von Buren, Kazunobu Yamaguchi  d/w  Yoshishige Yoshida  novel  Emily Brontë  ph  Junichiro Hayashi  ed  Takao Shirae  m  Toru Takemitsu  art  Yoshiro Muraki

Yusaku Matsuda (Onimaru), Yuko Tanaka (Lady Kinu), Rentaro Mikuni (Takamaru), Tatsuo Nadaka (Mitsuhiko), Eri Ishida (Tae), Nagare Hagiwara (Hidemaru), Keiko Ito (Shino), Masato Furuoya (Yoshimaru), Tomoko Takabe (Kinu the younger), Masao Imafuku (Ichi),

Name the greatest Japanese adaptation of a classic piece of English literature?  Easy, you say, Kurosawa’s Ran…or Throne of Blood.  They’re magnificent, brooding, powerful works and yet…no.  I have got to be crazy, I hear Kurosawa’s adherents decrying, what’s the opposition, what could you possibly rate higher?  I’ll just say one thing – I don’t blame you for picking the Kurosawas for you won’t have seen their superior.  Ran would be Kurosawa’s final defining statement as a filmmaker, but Yoshida’s Wuthering Heights did him one better.  Kurosawa got to the spirit of Shakespeare as well as anyone could not using the peerless original dialogue, but Yoshida achieved something altogether more stunning, remarkable in fact, he captures the decay of Brontë, a foetid, mouldy cancer eating away at the souls (or the vacuums where they should be) of the protagonists.

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