Movie adaptations of classic European and American novels always have a tone like an oil painting. Different directors always have some similarities when they describe such stories. Polanski's "Oliver Twist" and "Tess" are like this. Such is the case with "The Age of Innocence" by Armstrong, "Little Women" by Armstrong, "David Copperfield" by Curtis, and "Sense and Sensibility" by Chinese director Ang Lee. Whether Shakespeare, Dickens, or Austin, they all have their own concrete expressions. Just like "Apricot Blossom Raining in the South of the Yangtze River" can represent Chinese classical culture to a certain extent, the country music, wilderness scenery, farm estates, the lady in whalebone skirt with an umbrella, steam locomotives lingering in European classical masterpieces Etc. also constitutes a typical image.
The main tone of "Tess" is actually very simple, but the lighting of many key segments adopts a rather delicate and elegant composition: in the country dance, Tess and Angel meet for the first time, the mottled light and shadow of the evening are very delicate; Tess When Eric was seduced by flowers and strawberries, the color contrast was strong and very bright; when Eric was plotting against Tess in the woods, the thick fog seemed to signal that the road ahead was dark; when Angel hugged the girls across the river , the sun casts a halo through the shady and lush trees, making the hero and heroine even more beautiful; Tess was confused in the morning the next morning after she sewed the letter to Angel's door, and saw Angel's unrestrained appearance... That dizzying highlight is Tess's joy, and the audience can see Tess intoxicated with happiness, and then realize that it's just a happy fantasy-because Angel didn't see the letter. And when Tess tore the letter, the light and shadow dimmed.
I can see the director's intentional layout. Some parts are somewhat similar to the BBC's British costume drama, and some parts remind me of Hitchcock and Chen Kaige.
When I checked the background information, I saw this passage: "To understand Polanski, you should know his four identities: survivor of Jewish concentration camps, graduate of the Socialist Polish Film Academy, European film director, wanted by the US government. It’s not so much richness, but disorder. His life is full of turbulence and bizarre, twisted and repressed emotions, and the broken and scarred childhood memories always emerge in each of his works.” Associated with the famous The Polanski family tragedy, suddenly wondered what Polanski thought about paganism or paganism.
In "Tess", Tess's little baby could not be accepted by the priest, nor could it be buried in the church without baptism, but Tess still insisted on tying two branches as a cross. Tess gave up her old boots and knelt down to a signpost stone, but passers-by told her that it was a place where you could not pray, and that there was a wicked person buried in the ground; and at the end of the film, the Stonehenge where Tess and Angel rested, were pagans altar of the sun god.
After thinking about it, either God abandoned this poor girl, or this stubborn girl abandoned God.
The music of this film also works well. The soothing country music brings the audience into the story in the tranquil joy of the title, but soon, the connection and difference between "Derbyfield" and "Derberville" are pointed out.
Tess has irresponsible parents. If it weren't for her parents, she would not have met Eric. If it was because of Eric's loss of virginity and her own youth and ignorance, then returning to Eric's hands can be said to be entirely for her parents and for family responsibilities. Tess' mother is probably the most annoying character in the whole film.
The most impressive scene was in the wedding car, where Tess emphasized to Angel that I belonged to the Derbyfields, not the Derbervilles. It's hard to tell whether Tess said this because she wanted to get rid of the noble class that Angel hated, or because of her parents' false fantasies, or because she wanted to escape the harm caused by Eric of the d'Urbervilles.
Tess must have had her own vanity in her first approach to the d'Urbervilles, and it wasn't until she became Eric's mistress, sitting on a boat in a gorgeous dress with an unhappy face, that she began to wake up. Derbyfield and Derberville are two different roads, representing poverty and wealth, lowness and nobility, purity and hypocrisy.
The biggest irony of the story is that the wealthy Derberville family just bought a noble surname to hide the upstarts. The descendants of the real Derberville family have evolved into the poor Derbyfield family. When the ignorant mother was on the street, she still kept chattering about "this is the land of our ancestors", but she didn't know that the connection between the two families was her own delusion.
Hardy's original book "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is called "Tess" in the movie. I think this is a failure. The gulf between Derbyfield and Derberville is the primary cause of Tess's tragedy. I believe there is some irony in Hardy's name, but it was wiped out by the movie.
World famous books often have such characteristics, which can reflect the style of a class, a period of history and a style of the times from the fate of a few people. In the textbook of the history of foreign literature, it is said that "through the experience of the Tess family, it vividly describes the painful process of the disintegration of the small peasant economy and the impoverishment and bankruptcy of individual farmers after capitalism invaded the British countryside at the end of the 19th century". (In China, the same is true for Ba Jin's "Home, Spring and Autumn" and Lin Yutang's "Smoke and Clouds in Jinghua". Unfortunately, more works are still obsessed with the so-called "grand narrative" and are in a state of emptiness.)
However, in the process of watching the film, there is no such thing as a The big background and the big theme are really rarely thought about. And I have always been suspicious of rhetoric about class. And Hardy also wrote on the cover: "A pure woman." The controversy caused by this point has never stopped since then.
Eric said that beauty has a price. At first, I just thought that Eric paid money for Tess's beauty. Later, I thought that Tess paid her chastity for her beauty, and then I thought of Eric's death... All these can be said to be the price of beauty. There are two ancient Chinese sayings, "A gentleman loves money, and he takes it in a proper way" and "people die because of money, and birds die because of food." The replacement of "wealth" with "beauty" seems to be a more complete explanation of Eric's words.
For the current audience, Tess is tragic, but also a little "sorrowful and angry." The classmates are all women in the 21st century. For us, it is almost a shirk of responsibility to be unkind. , which can explain why many plot segments in this film make everyone dislike this woman for being unpromising.
Yes, we have watched a lot of classical inspirational films, and we know that tenacious and persistent women can win independent and successful independent lives like "Being Jane Austen" even if they don't get equal love and happy marriage like "Jane Eyre".
But "Tess", let us see, is an ordinary and slightly weak woman. Perhaps this is the truth of the millions of women at that time - kind, industrious, somewhat ignorant, somewhat weak, and longing for a responsible man as their lifelong destination. Afterwards, her "being unkind to others" was really an impermanent fate.
For the audience now, Angel is almost more annoying than Eric. There should be psychological expectations for this. Eric's character is a lover, so willing to take care of Tess's family has done a good deed. And Angel's character is a husband, so the female audience must not accept that he abandons his wife. It's hard to say which one is more annoying, the hypocrite or the real villain. Tess's sentence "I forgive you, why can't you forgive me?" is really the finishing touch, after all, Angel and Tess have both had infidelity.
Tess also asked: Is a woman's chastity really lost once and lost forever? This question also makes feminism and patriarchy at odds. However, considering the background of the times, it has to be admitted that Tess's mind is more tenacious than her appearance and character. She has cried, been sad and despaired, but she doesn't think she is incurable. She faced herself with great honesty and frankness, faced two selfish men, and faced a cruel fate.
Between Derbyfield and Derberville, she made a choice that was true to herself. You could say she lost, but she's still a hero, a weak tragic hero.
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