Tess - Uma Lição de Vida

Polanski's 'Tess' is rich with images and poetry. To start with, the director really does make use of the countryside and life in the country during the late 1800s. Those themes are presented as characters themselves. And, coupled with the fitting score it gives a feel of what the time may have been like. Along with some fine cinematography, many of the shots linger on the beautiful and yet sad countryside.

The pacing is exceptionally well maintained. 'Tess' is longer than the traditional 100 minute flick but not for a moment does it feel as though it's lagging or dragging in pace.

Another strength of the film is its subtlety. For example, to the director's credit, there's an outstanding sequence of how murder is implied just with a few drops of blood. Even the finally sequence (beautifully done) implies Tess's fate (before the epilogue clarifies it). 'Tess' touches on some heavy themes such as sexism, poverty and betrayal but it doesn't preach about them. Rather it tells the story of a strong-willed, devoted and kind woman who was faulted for being beautiful.

Moreover, the characters are brilliantly layered. The screenplay has safely avoided caricatures). A very young Nastassja Kinski is incredible in one of her early roles. Her restrained performance and gestural expressions are remarkable. Peter Firth does a fine job too. They are supported by very good performers.

This is easily one of Polanski's finest: his most subtle and poetic films. A treat to watch.

Beautiful to look at, not just the scenery but the art direction as well but overlong and somewhat ponderous. Nastassja Kinski handles the complex lead role with surety and exudes a great deal of charisma and star quality, it's surprising that her career fizzled out so completely but as she matured those qualities in evidence here diminished. Director Polanski's silent tribute to his late wife Sharon Tate at the end of the opening credits with a simple "To Sharon" after his credit is quite moving. She had left the Hardy novel with a note that she thought he would make a fine film of it when she headed back to the states just before her death.

Considering 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. Or perhaps that is only the ones we remember, the ones that have survived as classics. 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. And these are the novels that have made the most powerful and enduring adaptations to our contemporary medium of cinema.

Surely the most outstanding thing about this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its magnificent appearance. 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. The art direction and costume design is fabulous too, echoing the tones and textures of the countryside. 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. And yet it all looks so natural and unforced.

Director Roman Polanski makes this a rich canvas for his camera. 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 this is a picture very much of the outdoors. 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. Throughout the picture the director encourages slowness, stillness and long takes for key scenes, which brings out the best in the acting performances.

German-born Nastassja Kinski at first seems like an odd choice to play the titular Dorset lass. Her attempt at the accent is a bit wobbly at best (although still impressive considering she is not even English), but really her performance is about more than that. She has that peculiar quiet delicacy that the character requires, and just below the surface of her performance lurk all those suppressed emotions, just visible enough that we believe her final actions. The only other standout is Peter Firth. It works very well the way he appears so mature and manly in his earliest appearances, and then when his feelings towards Tess change, he becomes like a spoiled child. Above all, both performances are calm and subdued.

And subdued calmness is what really marks this movie. Voices are barely distinct. The Philip Sarde music score, containing just a hint of Elgar and Vaughn Williams, is as rich and beautiful as the imagery. It is this non-verbal eloquence that prevents Tess from becoming dull or stilted. The adaptation barely communicates directly with its audience, with no explanatory narration and overt exposition. We are left to infer much, such as the baby which suddenly appears without us even having been aware of the pregnancy. The picture has all the subtlety of a good silent movie, giving us its thoughts and feelings through the purity of its images, and as such very much removed from the word-based format of a novel. And yet Tess retains all the power and meaning as a piece of storytelling.

This has been my favourite movie since I first saw it in the late 1980s, and I have viewed it probably once a year since that time. My videotape copy was fading and failing, so I was lucky to replace it recently with the Japanese DVD version.

When you compare it to other films made in 1979, it is amazing how little it has "aged". Of course, it is an historical drama, with a "timeless" setting. And yet the cinematography is so assuredly wonderful that the movie is almost as if set in amber.

Many have commented on the score, and it is a pity that this is no longer in issue. Still, there seem to be enough people like myself who are fans of this film, perhaps there is enough of an interest?

While the A and E version was an above-average production, I think Polanski's beats it on almost any characteristic. Polanski's film is a series of tableaux, very few of which do not work well. (One that I find a little bit stupid is the scene where Tess sleeps out in the forest and the deer comes to visit her. Gimme a break!). There are many scenes which, if left in still, look like 19th century portraiture, a la Mary Cassatt or Edgar Degas. The scene where the pedlar comes across Tess at the Crescent Hand! This guy has just stepped out of another century. This is a stunningly visual movie, and perhaps the reason it is so easy to watch time and time again. The dialogue, too, full of the cadences of West Country speech (still there, but disappearing) are an evocation of a lost age. These are hinted at in the scenes showing the modernization of England (the train bringing the milk to market, the threshing machine) which is changing their lives. Tess, and her aristocratic background, are an anachronism, particularly compared with the worldly (and successful) Stokes.

I enjoy the rhythm of the movie, which is rural and slow. Time is marked in slow and languid drips, such as we see with the milk at the dairy farm, and finally with the blood at the boarding house. This is classic story-telling, replete with foreshadowing (particularly Tess' temper and pride). What I enjoyed most is the symmetry of the story-telling, which make it more myth-like, particularly the juxtaposition of the two opening and closing scenes (the dancing of the village girls at sunset, and Stonehenge--which legend has as a circle of giants dancing and frozen by Merlin--at daybreak). Other examples are Alec Durberville's "saving" Tess from a fight with her "rival" and Angel choosing Tess over her rivals on the flooded road.

As you can see, Tess is a movie that replays itself in my mind. Polanski's effort reflects on what I think is one of the greatest 19th century English novels (in my mind, rivaled only by "Middlemarch"), and is a great springboard to further consideration of art and life.

This film was an almost exact replication of Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". It's so rare to watch a film after reading the novel and not be disappointed by it, but this film didn't disappoint in any way.

Details, such as the whiteness of the maids' dresses, the sound of milk squirting into a bucket, the sloshing mud of a wet English turnip field, and the glint of adoration in the eyes of the young lovers -- all came gloriously to life as if fresh off the pages of the book.

I highly recommend this film for anyone who enjoys a good old fashioned Victorian love story.