The Branwell Wuthering Heights 1898

Native St. Louisan Jim Finn’s The Drunkard’s Lament offers a strange, epistolary musical adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” as written by the consumptive brother Branwell Brontë. When Branwell — the ne’er-do-well, tubercular brother of the Brontë sisters — discovered that Emily was writing her first novel, he offered to be her editor. Once he realized that he was the model for the alcoholic Hindley Earnshaw character, he reimagined the story as a musical memoir of his own life with Hindley as the hero. Edited and arranged from damaged film fragments, notes, sheet music, and letters to his best friend Francis, this weird and revisionist adaptation features a soundtrack created by Colleen Burke, who brought together such musicians as Jim White (The Dirty Three), Sally Timms (The Mekons), and Michael James and Munaf Rayani (Explosions in the Sky) as contributors. (St. Louis International Film Festival)