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Nice vistas and a scenery-chewing Famke Janssen aren’t enough to save this absurd scriptural rehash from movie hell

The latest from evangelical Christian producers Pinnacle Peak – formerly Pure Flix, the money behind the surprisingly enduring God’s Not Dead series – is an adaptation of a Francine Rivers novel that remaps the biblical tale of Hosea on to a western goldrush setting. That synopsis suggests a level of creative imagination and ambition, possibly something like Michael Winterbottom hauling The Mayor of Casterbridge further west for 2000’s The Claim. Yet this movie thinly scatters a parable’s worth of plot across 134 minutes and resembles HBO’s Deadwood recut for Sunday-school purposes: pious, puzzling and punitive, with a sternly wagging finger never far from entering the frame.

Let us give Pinnacle Peak this: they’re getting mildly more sophisticated about delivering The Message. DJ Caruso, a studio director of the mid-00s thrillers Taking Lives and Disturbia,...

Far From the Madding Crowd

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Writer: David Nicholls

Producer(s): Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich

U.S. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Juno Temple, Michael Sheen, Matthias Schoenaerts

The literature of Thomas Hardy seems to be receiving a sort of cinematic revival, mostly thanks to Michael Winterbottom, who recently re-tooled Tess of the D’ubervilles with 2011’s Trishna (he also directed a version of Jude, 1995, and his 2000 film The Claim was based on The Mayor of Casterbridge). Now we’ll have Danish auteur Thomas Vinterberg revisiting Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, which was famously adapted in 1967 by John Schlesinger, featuring Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch, and Terence Stamp. So, there are some huge shoes to fill. We’re curious to see what Vinterberg does with the material, especially with Mulligan (who seems to be attracted to literary adaptations) filling in for Christie.

Trishna

Written and directed by Michael Winterbottom

UK, 2011

Among contemporary cinema’s more versatile and prolific directors, one of the few sources of inspiration Michael Winterbottom has repeatedly returned to is the work of Thomas Hardy. Jude, his 1996 adaptation of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, was effectively his breakthrough film; 2000’s The Claim, meanwhile, was loosely based on The Mayor of Casterbridge, applying content from that novel’s Victorian England setting to an American western. Winterbottom’s latest Hardy adaptation, Trishna, has more in common with that latter film in that it transfers the source material of Tess of the d’Urbervilles to a different setting and culture. Set in India, Trishna differs from both of the director’s previous Hardy adaptations in that it tries to apply the source’s themes and narrative to the contemporary version of its setting. The result is not very successful.

While it would...

This is the truth.

The truth love has taught me.

My love, you showed me how the world really is.

(from one of Amit Trivedi’s very fine original songs from Trishna)

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, Trishna, is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Winterbottom, of course, is no stranger to Hardy’s stories, having previously adapted both Jude the Obscure (Jude) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (The Claim). Whereas Jude was a fairly faithful retelling of the book, at least as far as the setting was concerned, The Claim played with the setting, moving it to California during the 19th century gold rush. And such is the case with Trishna, too. Winterbottom retains the essential theme, that of a young woman whose life is controlled by social constraints and the vagaries of fate, but he takes the brilliant step of moving it...

Here's the good thing about economic inequality -- it sure adds relevance to modern-day adaptations of 19th-century novels. Take the class cruelty of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." Not only is it alive and well in the new millennium, when you throw India's relatively rigid caste system into the mix, it makes perfect sense for director Michael Winterbottom to set this new version of "Tess" in South Asia. But even though Winterbottom is a seasoned adapter of Hardy ("The Claim" and "Jude" were based on "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Jude...

Over his career, Michael Winterbottom has hopped frequently from genre to genre, from subject matter to subject matter, rarely covering the same territory twice. But one of the few things he has returned to is the work of Thomas Hardy. The late 19th century British author has so far inspired two of the director's films: 1995's "Jude," an adaptation of "Jude the Obscure" with Kate Winslet, and "The Claim," a version of "The Mayor of Casterbridge" moved to a Californian mountain Western setting. Both are very strong, firmly in tune with Hardy's bleak originals, so when it was announced that Winterbottom was going back to the well for "Trishna," a loose adaptation of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (a Hardy novel previously done by Roman Polanski in "Tess" and more recently, a BBC miniseries starring Gemma Arterton and Eddie Redmayne) for a version set in contemporary India, hope was high that it'd.

Acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom is no stranger to a good Thomas Hardy novel. Trishna, his adaptation of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, is the third time the director has scripted films from the famed British novelist's works. Winterbottom first received widespread attention for Jude, his adaptation of Jude the Obscure, which starred Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet as the tragic cousins. He next tackled Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge in The Claim, featured Wes Bentley, Milla Jovovich and Sarah Polley. In Trishna, Winterbottom transplants Hardy's famous story from the sweeping moors of England to modern day Mumbai. Winterbottom's Tess is Trishna (Frieda Pinto), a maid working in a luxury hotel where she meets Jay (Riz Ahmed), an amalgam of two Hardy characters, the pious Angel and the licentious Alec. Brillantly playing off the difference between rural India and the teeming Mumbai, Wintterbottom brings a modern dynamic to Hardy's bleak romantic classic.

★★☆☆☆ For the third time, British director Michael Winterbottom once again attempts to breathe cinematic life into the works of 19th century author Thomas Hardy, one of the countries most beloved writers. Having previously adapted Jude The Obscure (given the cut-down title, Jude, in 1996) and transported The Mayor of Casterbridge to 19th century America in 2000 with The Claim, he now turns to Tess of the D'Urbervilles, transplanted to modern day Indian in the form of Trishna (2011).

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He is a strong adapter, whether he takes a film project from a paper-thin and easily deconstructed source, or from one more profound and multi-layered. He is a master of transposition, revising—shall we say renewing?—for example, foreign, century-old material more compatible with the mores of a later era and its audiences. He would be prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, one of the few directors inspired by texts and visual arts created by others who can reshape them to fit into credible film universes that feel as if all had originated with him. The themes and ideological positions to which he is regularly drawn form a superstructure upon which he builds the final product.

Among this director’s almost shockingly diverse works are adaptation of two novels by Thomas Hardy: Jude (from Jude the Obscure); and, a looser rendering, The Claim (from The Mayor of Casterbridge). He recently revisited Hardyland,...

Thomas Hardy is no stranger to Michael Winterbottom, this is his third stab (pun intended) at this author's novels, the other two being The Claim, an loose adaptation of "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and Jude, an adaptation of "Jude the Obscure." Trishna is a modern retelling of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", and while I didn't love it (when I caught it at Tiff last year) there is no denying that it is beautifully shot, and features some impressive location shooting in both urban and rural parts of modern India. In a nutshell, this film is drop-dead gorgeous (pun also intended).  As the resident Winterbottom geek, I would say that it continues his tradition of exploring storytelling through landscapes (mainly through cities, but here he makes...

Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto captivates in Michael Winterbottom's bold reading of Hardy's tragedy

"In this life," Sir Thomas Beecham is said to have advised us, "try everything once, except incest and morris dancing" – an admonition that Michael Winterbottom, Britain's most prolific and versatile director, has followed. Indeed after 9 Songs, his venture into unsimulated sex between consenting actors, he may well be contemplating an excursion into cinematic incest. Winterbottom's movies have ranged from the music scene in Manchester to incarceration in Guantánamo, and at regular intervals he has made versions of Thomas Hardy novels on three continents.

In 1996, quite early in his career, he adapted Jude the Obscure with some fidelity to its plot and its Victorian times with Christopher Eccleston as the doomed Wessex stonemason and Kate Winslet as his deranged second wife. In 2000 he transposed The Mayor of Casterbridge to the Californian gold rush of the 1860s as The Claim,...

Michael Winterbottom transplants Hardy perennial Tess of the d'Urbervilles to Jaipur, but she fails to bloom

Michael Winterbottom is such a restlessly, brilliantly prolific and unparochial film-maker, declining to be limited either conceptually or geographically: always keeping us on our toes. This latest movie starts with a bold and intriguing concept, but is bafflingly muted and underpowered, its initial promise fading as it drifts away to a self-conscious conclusion. Trishna is a Thomas Hardy adaptation – Winterbottom's third, in fact, having made Jude in 1996 and The Claim (based on The Mayor of Casterbridge) in 2000. It is a loose reworking of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the story is transplanted to modern India where Jay (Riz Ahmed), the son of a rich Jaipur hotelier, is travelling with friends. One evening Jay is captivated by the delicate beauty of a young woman he sees at a party: this is Trishna, played by Freida Pinto.

A new generation of western directors are bringing their outsider perspective to India. But can films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel avoid the cliches of poverty and spiritualism, chaos and capitalism?

Making films in India is hard not because of the heat, or the bureaucracy, or the traffic. Not even, says Liz Mermin, the director of Bollywood underworld exposé Shot in Bombay, because its superstar subject Sanjay Dutt grew nervous about the project. "The hardest thing for a film-maker is that you fly there, look around, take out your camera – and everything is a cliche. Poverty, chaos, cows, flowers: I was going around desperately looking for a shot I hadn't seen before."

That difficulty – to say nothing of the challenge of depicting India in more than just western terms – led Louis Malle to name the first section of his six-hour Phantom India (1969) "The Impossible Camera". Yet, even though...

Norwegian film Kompani Orheim (The Orheim Company) was awarded the Dragon Award for the best Nordic film at the 35th Göteborg International Film Festival held from January 27 to February 6,2012. Directed by Arild Andersen as part of a trilogy about a personage named Jarle Kepp,the film is a dark, but warm, humorous, and moving tale of Jarle’s childhood at the hands of an alcoholic and brutal father. Strongly in contention for the award were 10 Timer Til Paradis (Teddy Bear), a Danish feature directed by Mads Mattheisen, about a mature adult trying to escape the imposing presence of his mother, and Pojktanten (She Male Snails), a documentary feature directed by Ester Martin Bergsmark, which won a special mention from the jury as well as the audience award for best Nordic feature.

The Göteborg international film festival held in Sweden’s second largest city is a mecca for films from Norway,...

Over his career, Michael Winterbottom has hopped frequently from genre to genre, from subject matter to subject matter, rarely covering the same territory twice. But one of the few things he has returned to is the work of Thomas Hardy. The late 19th century British author has so far inspired two of the director's films: 1995's "Jude," an adaptation of "Jude the Obscure" with Kate Winslet, and "The Claim," a version of "The Mayor of Casterbridge" moved to a Californian mountain Western setting. Both are very strong, firmly in tune with Hardy's bleak originals, so when it was announced that…...

Michael Winterbottom avoids Slumdog-style kitsch to create an Indian Tess of the d'Urbervilles as compelling as Hardy's

Toronto film festival's co-director Cameron Bailey hit the nail on the head introducing Michael Winterbottom's new film, a two-hander shot in Rajasthan and Mumbai over seven weeks earlier this year. He described Winterbottom as "protean", and, if nothing else, Winterbottom will go down in British film history as one of the country's most versatile directors.

Last year he was at the Toronto international film festival with the film version of his BBC comedy The Trip, and 18 months ago he was in Sundance with his ultraviolent neo-noir The Killer Inside Me. And here he is now, returning to his roots with another riff on the work of Thomas Hardy, who inspired his 1996 film Jude, a take on Jude the Obscure, and also The Claim, an adaptation of The Mayor Of Casterbridge, relocated to a Californian mining town.

The personable 19-year-old British actor Freddie Highmore (star of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) plays George, a sensitive, Holden Caulfield-style, New York prep school senior oppressed by mortality and the pointlessness of life. As a result he becomes a semi-dropout, failing to deliver essays, frequently playing hookey and being threatened by the school's principal with expulsion and the refusal of a diploma, thus denying him entry into a top university and lucrative employment. Of course he's a brilliant lad who can dazzle his literature teacher with an off-the-cuff interpretation of The Mayor of Casterbridge and leave his art teacher speechless with a slick portrait. It's a glib, smug movie, its smart, upper-middle-class Manhattan attractively photographed, and George's problems are painlessly solved.

DramaComedyRomancePhilip French

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The heroes and heroines of Thomas Hardy novels are some of the most tragic and unlucky in all of literature. Scholars of the classic English novel adore Hardy for the same reason that they are scholars of the English novel—they are gluttons for punishment. Hardy’s books are beautifully and poetically written, which makes the stark awfulness of the events that unfold within them all the more painful to read—and yet, these books are also impossible to put down. At least they are for me.

I am one of those aforementioned gluttons for punishment. I love the gorgeous tragedy of Hardy’s stories. They remind you that modern life is a lot easier than life was back then, especially if one was a woman. They also remind you that no matter how bad things seem, they can always get worse, so keep your head up. Tess Durbeyfield, perhaps...

Continuing his mission to do strange and interesting things with Thomas Hardy novels, here's a trailer for Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, which transposes Tess of the d'Urbervilles to modern-day India.Following his reasonably straight adaptation of Jude the Obscure, and The Claim, which turned The Mayor of Casterbridge into a Western, Trishna stars Freida Pinto as the titular primitive creature of the heath (or its Rajasthan equivalent), who gets into relationship difficulties with Riz Ahmed's Jay Singh. Trishna goes to work for him after an accident destroys her father's jeep (it's a horse in the book) but the pair's love is complicated by the clash between Trishna's rural roots and the urbanity and education that Jay represents.That's the official plot summary at least, which doesn't cover Tess' rape and the lengthy aftermath which forms the core of Hardy's novel. There's no trace of that in the trailer either,...

The teaser for Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, reveals a translation of Thomas Hardy's romantic English novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles to a modern-day setting in India. This is Winterbottom's third Hardy adaptation, following 1996's Jude (Jude the Oscure) and 2000's The Claim (The Mayor of Casterbridge). For Trishna, Winterbottom replaces the fervent English wilds with rural and urban Indian backdrops in Jaipur and Mumbai for a love affair between moneyed businessman Jay (Riz Ahmed, Four Lions) and working class Trishna (Freida Pinto, Slumdog Millionaire). Other than the smoldering good looks of the lovers, the most stunning aspect of this trailer is the melodic, elegiac soundtrack scored by Shigeru Umebayashi with original songs by Amit Trivedi. Trishna will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, where it will be seeking distribution.

DVD Playhouse—August 2011

By Allen Gardner

High And Low (Criterion) Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom is a multi-layered masterpiece of suspense and one of the best portraits ever of class warfare in post-ww II Japan. Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy businessman who finds himself in a moral quandary when his chauffer’s son is kidnapped by ruthless thugs who think the boy is Mifune’s. Beautifully realized on every level. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; Documentary on film’s production; Interview with Mifune from 1984; Trailers and teaser. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 4.0 surround.

Leon Morin, Priest (Criterion) One of French maestro Jean-Pierre Melville’s rare non-crime-oriented films, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a devoted cleric who is lusted after by the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France. When Fr. Morin finds himself drawn to a...

Bankside Films signed actress Frieda Pinto (“Slumdog Millionaire”) for the main role in “Trishna.” The film is based on the classic Thomas Hardy tragic novel called, “Tess Of The d’Urbevilles.” The plot is about the tragic relationship between Jay, a son of a wealthy property developer and Trishna, the daughter of a rickshaw owner. The film will also star Riz Ahmed (“Four Lions”) as Jay. It will be directed by Michael Winterbottom. This will be the third film he directed based on Hardy’s source materials. His previous Hardy films included 1996’s “Jude” with Kate Winslet and Chistopher Eccleston, and 2000’s “The Claim” based on Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” “Michael is one of the UK’s most prolific directors whose following in international territories is significant,” said Hilary Davis, co-managing director of Bankside. “We look forward to bringing his exciting new take on this classic story to the international marketplace.

The Slumdog Millionaire actress starts shooting an Indian version of the classic Thomas Hardy tragic novel on location in Rajasthan and Mumbai on February 28th. Riz Ahmed (Four Lions) will co-star as the son of a wealthy property developer who falls for the daughter of an auto rickshaw driver. Trishna will be directed by Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart). Sales agent Bankside has begun selling the film in Berlin. This is the 3rd time that Michael Winterbottom has turned to author Thomas Hardy for his source material. First he made Jude (1996), starring Kate Winslet and Christopher Eccleston, then he made The Claim (2000), a Klondike version of The Mayor of Casterbridge. Winterbottom’s producer partner Andrew Eaton tells me that Winterbottom has always been a big Hardy fan. He made a short at university based on the pig-sticking scene in Jude The Obscure and then got to film it for real 10 years later.

LONDON -- A Paul McCartney special from Moscow, a raft of local stars and Hollywood film favorites dominate the Christmas schedule announced Tuesday by ITV. Paul McCartney in Red Square, an hourlong program featuring the singer's first performance in the Russian capital, will air Dec. 27 on ITV1. An adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, starring Ciaran Hinds and Polly Walker, will run Dec. 28-29 on ITV1, and Julie Walters stars in the psychological thriller The Return on Dec. 30. England's recent World Cup Rugby championship will be saluted in We Are the Champions: The Nation Celebrates on Dec. 20, and soccer star David Beckham and his former Spice Girl wife, Victoria, are featured in a Christmas Eve special titled The Real Beckhams, about the soccer player's move to Spain's Real Madrid Team.