The height of cruelty?

As mentioned previously, I have a problem with Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold's stunningly elemental interpretation of Emily Brontë's famous novel, and that's with the implied animal cruelty in it. It's set on the wild and windy moors, of course, and through Arnold's radical and beautiful vision, we almost literally have our noses rubbed in the mud of this unforgiving rural landscape. By use of shallow focus and forensically sharp digital stock, she takes us right down into the undergrowth, there to see dewdrops glistening on a single strand of a spider's web, or a thread of sheep's wool snagged on a thistle. We can almost smell a horse's breath, or feel the hairs on its head. It's thrilling filmmaking, and a piece of cinema I would recommend you see, despite its narrative deficiencies. Unless you have a problem with the implied mistreatment of animals.

Using a largely unknown, and inexperienced, young cast, Arnold imbues what is for many a familiar love story with new life. (I have never read the book, but I've seen it on TV and heard the hit single.) She and her screenwriter Olivia Hetreed make Heathcliff black, rather than a gypsy, which brings a new power to his relationship with Cathy. As I note in my much shorter Radio Times review of the film, the detailed sound design, lack of score and action-chasing handheld camera bring the story alive. And Shannon Beer and Solomon Glave are striking as the young Cathy and Heathcliff. It's such a modernist approach, almost as if this version is a guerilla documentary about a more conventional dramatisation of Wuthering Heights, captured on the hoof for the second disc of the DVD, your suspension of disbelief is occasionally shattered and, ironically, you start to think: it's some actors on a hill. Indeed, it's the reality of it that gives me my Big Problem.

The film carries a 15 certificate, which, according to the detailed BBFC report, is mainly to do with the strong language – which is only moderately fruity albeit at one point racist to modern ears – and what it refers to as "animal killings." This is what the report goes on to state: "There are four scenes involving live animals, with a sheep's throat being cut, a rabbit's neck being broken and two dogs seen hanging from their collars from a fence and a branch, implying that they are left to die. Assurances have been provided by the production company explaining in detail how these scenes were filmed, including detail of special effects employed, so as not to harm any of the animals involved."

I have to take that at face value. I don't know how they used special effects to make it look like two dogs were being hung on a gatepost and a branch, but it looks just like they are actual dogs being actually hung, for a few seconds, by their collars, and are left, for a few seconds, to wriggle around uncomfortably. It's easy enough to imagine animal trainers rushing in to unhook them after being on film for a few seconds, but that can't be the case, surely? To be honest, as I never tire of saying, even implied violence towards animals onscreen bothers me. In a week when one prize fucking idiot was caught on camera actually swinging a cat around by its tail, and another was apparently stolen after being featured in an article in the London Evening Standard, I worry about people. And if animal cruelty is shown, even in an arthouse film, it might subconsciously go in.

I'm going to trust Andrea Arnold and the BBFC and accept that, somehow or other, no dogs were even made uncomfortable for a few seconds in the making of this film. But if you're as soppy as I am, you might want to be ready to look away, or stay away.