Showing posts with label Thomas Hardy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Hardy. Show all posts

Saturday, 8 January 2022

"The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy

 Year of Publication:  1886

Length:  310 pages

Genre:  Fiction


"The woman is no good to me.  Who'll have her?"

Unemployed farmworker Michael Henchard gets drunk at a country fair and impulsively sells his wife, Susan, and baby daughter to the highest bidder.  Eighteen years later, Susan and her daughter, Elizabeth Jane, track Henchard down, only to find that he is the richest and most powerful man in the town of Casterbridge.  Henchard is keen to make amends, but his attempts to make things right, coupled with his unchanged impulsiveness, lead to tragic consequences.   

Like the other Thomas Hardy novels, this is set in his fictional county of Wessex in the south-west of England.  It';s a beautifully written novel, with a real feeling for the rhythms of life among the rural poor and has a real sense of time and place.  The story is packed with incident, the story was originally serialised, and Hardy himself felt that too much stuff happens in the story, due to the need to provide incidents for each instalment.  The book works with it's powerful characters, particularly with the antihero Michael Henchard, who does a lot of really horrible things, but is almost redeemed due to the fact that he destroys himself and everything around him, but there is humanity there.  Henchard is his own worse enemy.  Things look up for the other characters in the novel when they dissociate themselves form Henchard, and he torpedoes every chance for happiness that he has, due to his pride, jealousy and greed.  For a classic novel, this is a real page-turner, if ultimately deeply tragic.   




Monday, 12 July 2021

Tess

Year of Release:  1979

Director:  Roman Polanski

Screenplay:  Gerard Brach, John Brownjohn and Roman Polanski, based on the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Starring:  Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson

Running Time:  186 minutes

Genre: Drama


England, the 1880s:  In the rural county of Wessex, teenager Tess Durbeyfield (Kinski) lives in a small village with her poor farming family.  When her feckless father learns that his family are the last direct descendants of the ancient, and once aristocratic "d'Urbervilles" he sends Tess to approach a wealthy local family named d'Urberville, believing that they are related.  However, Tess ends up attracting the attention of ruthless libertine Alec d'Urberville (Lawson), who relentlessly attempts to seduce her.  Eventually he overpowers her, an incident that has catastrophic repercussions.


Given what was going on in Roman Polanski's life at the time he made Tess, it might seem that a stately, lavish period drama was a safe choice to help rebuild his career in mainstream cinema.  His previous film, the psychological thriller The Tenant (1975) had been a commercial and critical disaster, but far more seriously he had fled the US after his criminal conviction in 1977 and, to this day, he can't set foot in the United States without risk of arrest.  However, Polanski was first given a copy of the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 1969 by his wife, Sharon Tate, who believed it would make a good film and wanted to play the lead.  She gave him the book shortly before she was murdered by the Charles Manson cult.  The film opens with a dedication to her.

The film is a beautiful piece of work.  It sticks very closely to the novel, although some scenes are cut.  Set in Thomas Hardy's fictional county of Wessex, based on his native Dorset, the film was shot entirely in France due to Polanski being unable to enter Britain without risk of being extradited back to the US.  this doesn't really matter though, it's a stunning film to look at, the kind of film where almost every image looks like a painting.  Aside however from the climax set at Stonehenge, which does look like at times like a studio set.  A key element in the book is farming and rural life, and this is conveyed in the film, during the 1940s when Polanski was fleeing the Warsaw ghetto he spent a lot of time in very rural Poland and wanted to show the ancient peasant culture he found there.  it beautifully captures the countryside and the changing seasons.  Nastassja Kinski is striking and conveys a lot with very little, and is always mesmerising.    Understandably, many people will be put off due to the subject matter, and the fact that it's Roman Polanski.  However, it is a beautiful and wonderful film, and definitely recommended for fans of the novel.



Nastassja Kinski is Tess

Saturday, 10 July 2021

"Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy

  Year of Publication:  1891

Length:  420 pages

Genre:  Fiction


In the rural English county of Wessex in the 19th Century, Tess Durbeyfield is happy but poor, living with her younger siblings and loving but feckless parents.  One day her father learns that they may actually be nobility, descended from the ancient "d'Urberville" family who were once powerful and wealthy but have fallen on hard times.  Tess is pressured to approach the wealthy d'Urbervilles that live nearby and plead ties of kinship.  However Tess unwittingly draws the attention of  libertine Alec d'Urberville, who persuades her, against her better judgement, to accept employment on his estate.  Alex persistently attempts to seduce Tess, who repeatedly rebuffs him, until late one night he overpowers her.  Things go from bad to worse for Tess, as she becomes a social pariah.  She spies the possibility of happiness through the love of free-thinking parson's son, Angel Clare, only to find that, while she is done with her past, it is far from done with her.


Like all of Thomas Hardy's major novels this is set in his semi-fictional county of Wessex in south-west England, in which all of the places are real, but given fictional names.  This is a powerful, heartbreaking novel.  Tess is slowly destroyed because she is raped by Alec d'Urberville, for which she is blamed by pretty much everyone she encounters.  D'Urberville's attack is kind of ambiguous in the novel, it is hinted at after the fact, but not actually described.  Thomas Hardy is scathing about society's double standards and how women such as Tess are treated, and it really shocked readers in the 1890s, but it is important to remember that the book is a product of the 1890s, and so it may not seem as forward thinking to modern readers as it did to contemporary readers.  Tess is a wonderful main character who is sympathetic and engaging, and you feel so sorry for her, as Hardy seems to pile on every misery he can think of upon her.  Angel Clare, our romantic hero, is actually kind of a dick.  He marries Tess about halfway through the book, and confesses to her a sexual liaison he had with a woman in London, Tess tells him her story, and he basically dumps her even though he tells her that she is "more sinned against than sinning," before heading off to Brazil without her.  The book is very well written and wrings out every kind of emotion.  it is funny, heartbreaking, and will make you angry.  The events of the narrative are set against the rhythms of 19th century rural life, and the book is this beautiful pastoral of the English countryside and farming life.



Friday, 18 December 2020

Far from the Madding Crowd

 Year of Release:  2015

Director:  Thomas Vinterberg

Screenplay:  David Nicholls, based on the novel Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple

Running Time:  118 minutes

Genre:  Period drama, romance


Set in the 1870s in rural England, the film tells the story of headstrong Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan) who inherits her uncle's large farm, despite having no knowledge of farming.  As she works hard to make a success of her new life she attracts the attentions of three men:  Gabriel Oak (Schoenaerts) a shepherd who has fallen on hard times, wealthy landowner William Boldwood (Sheen), and dashing soldier Frank Troy (Sturridge).

I have never read the classic 1874 novel by Thomas Hardy, nor have I seen the 1967 adaptation starring Julie Christie and Terence Stamp, so I can't speak to how faithful or not this adaptation, scripted by novelist David Nicholls, is to it's source.  I am not normally a fan of period dramas, and I tuned into this one without holding out much hope for it, however in the end I really enjoyed it.  Director Thomas Vinterberg is possibly best known for his stripped-down, shot-on-video family drama Festen (1998) but here he embraces the period epic.  The rolling hillsides of the English countryside are beautifully shot.  The passage of time is marked by images of nature to mark each season.  At times the plot feels rushed, even with a two hour running time, and there are a few confusing plot holes, and there are very few surprises (it's pretty clear early on who Bathsheba is going to end up with), and the film is maybe too glossy (Carey Mulligan can come in from a day of working hard in the fields completely immaculate aside from a fetching smudge on the cheek).  However the performances are great.  Tom Sturridge in particular manages to make an otherwise pretty unlikeable character more than a one dimensional cad, and Michael Sheen brings real weight to his performance as the wealthy but lonely landowner, and Matthias Schoenaerts also manages to bring some depth to what could be quite a bland part.  However the film belongs to Carey Mulligan who gives a spirited performance in the lead.  She has a real captivating presence.

It is also surprisingly dark in places, and packs some real emotional heft.  


Matthias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan are Far from the Madding Crowd