![]() Throughout the picture the director encourages slowness, stillness and long takes for key scenes, which brings out the best in the acting performances. Polanski shoots the interiors with briefer shots, more frequent camera moves and many close-ups, and as such the indoor spaces seem the most transient and indistinct, which really helps us get a sense of Tess's feeling of not belonging. And yet this is a picture very much of the outdoors. As usual his emphasis is upon confinement, often framing people so the tops of heads are cut off, making the image look short rather than wide. And yet it all looks so natural and unforced.ĭirector Roman Polanski makes this a rich canvas for his camera. The design follows such a tight colour scheme, beginning with a motley of off-whites, giving way to greys and browns in the latter half of the picture, and finally a deep crimson. The art direction and costume design is fabulous too, echoing the tones and textures of the countryside. The cinematography or Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet is breathtakingly beautiful, at times referencing various paintings of rural England, with some incredibly natural looking twilight scenes. Surely the most outstanding thing about this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its magnificent appearance. And these are the novels that have made the most powerful and enduring adaptations to our contemporary medium of cinema. After all, it is easier for a contemporary reader to imagine being stifled by or fighting against such strict order than to be comfortable and complicit in it. Or perhaps that is only the ones we remember, the ones that have survived as classics. Reviewed by Steffi_P 8 / 10 "Members of the suffering body"Ĭonsidering that the cultures of nineteenth century Europe were supposedly so rigidly moralist, it is perhaps surprising that many of the great novels from that era are themselves attacks upon the rigidity. But if she doesn't, Tess also has to figure out if the secret will haunt her and thus jeopardize their relationship in other ways. Tess has to decide if she will divulge to Angel her past relationship with Alec, which if she does may jeopardize their own relationship. Angel and Tess fall in love with each other. The second of these men is Angel Clare, the son of a parson and an apprentice farmer. Tess is pulled between what she was sent to accomplish for her family against her general disdain for Alec, who will give her anything she wants in return for sexual favors. Upon her arrival at the mansion, Tess quickly learns that the family of Tess' "cousin" Alec are not true d'Urbervilles, but rather an opportunistic lot who bought the family name in order to improve their own standing in life. This move is in order for the family to gain some benefit from their heritage. After learning from a local historian that they are really descendants of the aristocratic d'Urberville family which has died out due to lack of male heirs, Tess' parents send her to a nearby mansion where they know some d'Urbervilles actually reside. The first of these men is Alec d'Urberville. These mores and her interactions with two men play a large part in what happens in the young life of peasant girl, the shy, innocent, proper yet proud Tess Durbeyfield. Christian values dominate what are social mores. Wessex County, England during the Victorian era.
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