Wikipedia tells me: Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth. Charles Darwin is another important influence, like whom, he too was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focussed more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life, and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ (1874), ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ (1886), ‘Tess of the d'Urbervilles’ (1891), and ‘Jude the Obscure’ (1895). The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances. Hardy's Wessex is based on the the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom and eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, and much of Berkshire, in south west England.More on Thomas Hardy here.
Reading Hardy can be a chore if it’s part of your syllabus; I read ‘Tess of the d'Urbervilles’ for exams and hated the book. I’d come to appreciate the haunting qualities of the tale much later; Yet, I could never warm up to Hardy, like I did to Henry James after initial resistance. I have read most of his major works, and somehow, I prefer ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’; there are more drama there, and a very British ‘Les Misérables’ air. Yet, ‘Tess’ is where Hardy’s fame lies; it is his most recognisable work. And, his most popular.
You give it to Hardy; he created a heroine with a hope for the future, and then very elaborately placed before her a series of hurdles she cannot overcome. She tries, and at time, even succeeds momentarily, only to fail again, for no other reason then the author wanted it that way. Predictably, the tale must end in an execution. (And, it all started with a misplaced letter, swept under the carpet.)
The novel has been adapted for film and TV for at least four times each. There was a 1913 'lost' silent film version; another silent version was made in 1924. Most famously, Roman Polanski made ‘Tess’ with Nastassja Kinski 1979, which is considered one of Polanski’s best. Now, comes Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Trishna’, with an Indian twist.
Another India sob-saga, another poverty-porn?
But Winterbottom, who was in India before, most famously to shoot the Angelina Jolie starrer ‘A Mighty Heart’ (I still remember the media circus during the Hollywood star’s days in Pune; she was staying in a place not far away from where I lived those days), isn’t your regular Hollywood filmmaker to catch on exotica. Yes, exotica would be there, so would Bollywood, and Mumbai slums, and a song-and-dance routine, but you expect better stuff from Winterbottom, who, among his long list of filmography, made films like ‘In This World’ (2003), and ‘The Road to Guantanamo’ (2006) ·
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Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper, The Graphic. Though now considered an important work of English literature, the book received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual mores of Hardy's day. The original manuscript is on display at the British Library, showing that it was originally titled "Daughter of the d'Urbervilles."
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Trishna is a 2011 British drama film directed by Michael Winterbottom, starring Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed. The story is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It is Winterbottom's third Hardy adaptation, after Jude and The Claim. It was shot in Jaipur and Mumbai, India, in early 2011. It premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9.
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Michael Winterbottom (born 29 March 1961) is an English filmmaker who directed seventeen feature films in fifteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features. Three of his films — Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland and 24 Hour Party People — have been nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Winterbottom often works with the same actors; many faces can be seen in several of his films, including Shirley Henderson, Paul Popplewell, John Simm, Steve Coogan, Raymond Waring and Kieran O' Brien.
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Writes Marshall Fine: Gorgeously shot and acted with aching tragic truthfulness, Michael Winterbottom's Trishna is a romance of depth and feeling. Part of that, of course, is the source material; Winterbottom, who also wrote the script, has transposed Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles to modern India, where class differences still hold the kind of sway they did in Hardy's time in England. But Winterbottom, one of most adventurous and varied directors working today, takes it further. He captures the world of these characters and the contrasts they represent. The tragedy is multilayered, operating on both personal and more macro levels in this story.
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Writes Philip French in The Observer: "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, where the farm labourer Michael Henchard becomes the Irish prospector Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan), who exchanges his wife and daughter for the rights to a dubious claim that makes him rich. Dillon's wife is played by Nastassja Kinski, whom Roman Polanski had earlier cast as the exploited West Country heroine in a notably respectful version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a great work that Winterbottom has now tackled with his new film, Trishna. Working for the fourth time on the subcontinent, Winterbottom has turned Tess into Trishna (Freida Pinto), a bright teenage peasant girl in modern India. The compact, highly enjoyable movie follows the book's arc, taking this "pure woman" (Hardy's subtitle for Tess) on a journey of hope and disappointment. It begins in her village in Rajasthan and takes her to work in the smart hotels that offer exotic Indian vacations to western tourists, and to Mumbai where she briefly attempts to enter the Bollywood film industry that manufactures dreams for the masses.
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Writes Aseem Chhabra: Nearly half an hour into Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, its protagonist Jay (Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed) instructs a young and naive Trishna (Freida Pinto) in the art of the bird-whistle. Jay twists his lips, slowly blowing air through the upper part of his mouth. Trishna shapes her lips in the same fashion, but alas can produce no sound. It is an innocent yet joyful scene: a magical cinematic sequence. Winterbottom, one of the most eclectic of British filmmakers, lovingly captures the playfulness of the moment as his leads -- Jay, the UK-educated son of a hotelier, and Trishna, the poor girl from rural Rajasthan -- she inside a birdcage and he watching her from outside, somewhat overcome their class differences. There is also an underlying sexual tension in the air as two young people from different parts of the society make a connection. Situations like this make Trishna, Winterbottom's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and his third film based on the British master's works (he also directed his versions of The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude) -- a pleasure to watch. There is a lot of beauty in Trishna. The film has rich performances by the lead actors Pinto and the seductively charming Ahmed. Coupled with that, Trishna is beautifully shot -- capturing the quietude of Rajasthan and its fine hotels, as also the street energy of Jaipur and Mumbai. And then there is the film's stunning music -- terrific compositions by the young genius Amit Trivedi, layered with a haunting score by Shigeru Umebayashi, reminiscent of his classic Yumeji's Theme from Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece In The Mood For Love. In another surprise, Winterbottom skillfully uses two of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's [ Images ] qawallis in the first act of the film. For Hardy loyalists, it is important to note that in Trishna Winterbottom ably adapts the class disparities of 19th century England [ Images ] to modern day India. There are a couple of differences between the novel and the film, a major change being that Winterbottom's Jay is a combination of Hardy's two male characters Angel Clare and Alec d'Urberville. Winterbottom had worked with Ahmed in Road to Guantanamo and he sensed that the very talented actor (soon to be seen in Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist) could play the complexities of both the characters. It is a risk, but Winterbottom makes the right call.
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Writes Jay Antani: For more than twenty years, Michael Winterbottom has kept up a restless pace, directing almost a movie a year. So he can’t be faulted for being lazy or blocked. And there’s always thoughtfulness, a sense of purpose at the core of everything he’s attempted. But, perhaps as a symptom of his assembly-line approach to his filmmaking, Winterbottom’s track record is, by and large, pretty mixed. For every In this World and A Mighty Heart, he’s churned out half-baked product like Code 46, 9 Songs and his latest, Trishna Winterbottom’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles. Winterbottom transposes the story’s 19th century rural English settings to modern-day western India. On the one hand, it’s an inspired choice to superimpose Hardy’s themes of conservatism vying with modernization in an industrial society onto 21st century India, a place whose rural populace is now encountering what those in Hardy’s novels encountered more than a century ago. But Winterbottom’s lack of first-hand familiarity with Indian family and social life drains Trishna of any feeling of authenticity. Trishna tracks the downward spiral that ensues once the titular character, a pretty 19-year-old hospitality worker at an upscale Rajasthan hotel, falls in love with the hotelier’s feckless son. The more the impressionable Trishna (Freida Pinto) is swept off her feet by Jay (Riz Ahmed), the more she sinks into a kind of emotional and sexual enslavement to him. There’s no looking back once Trishna finds out she’s pregnant after an encounter with Jay and loses her good name following her abortion. Shunned by her father, Trishna leaves her working-class family and goes to live with Jay in his new digs in Mumbai. For a while, Trishna enjoys a romantic freedom, a make-believe honeymoon with Jay. She entertains dreams of becoming a Bollywood dancer, socializes with fellow Bollywood aspirants. But when she confides in Jay about her abortion, the news drives a wedge in their flimsy relationship—a relationship founded on fantasy—and sets the stage for Trishna’s servitude to her lover and the story’s unraveling. Of course, anyone familiar with Hardy’s novel knows how these things end, and while Trishna stays true to Tess’s bottoming-out into tragic despair, Winterbottom’s version doesn’t feel earned so much as a slogged-toward, foregone conclusion.
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Writes Roger Ebert: The title character is played by the touchingly beautiful Freida Pinto, who you will remember from "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008). By "touchingly," I mean that in the way she plays this particular character, beauty becomes like a handicap. No woman so completely without resources should be forced to live with it. Her Trishna is a gentle, sweet, completely good young woman of 19, who lives with her family in a poor rural district of India. After her father is disabled in a road accident, she becomes the wage earner. This could mean working in the fields or in her uncle's factory — or making a good city salary on the staff of a luxury hotel. It happens this way. Trishna catches the eye of a young man named Jay (Riz Ahmed), the son of a wealthy hotel owner. He has been educated in England and has returned home, is struck by her beauty and her plight, and offers her a job in his father's hotel. He does this out of kindness, and she accepts out of necessity. At first, all goes well. He sponsors her for a course in hotel management. She is good at her work. Then, abruptly, his behavior changes. They had seemed to be falling in love, a romance that would cross class barriers but nevertheless seems possible to both of them. Then, at a tender moment, after a kiss, he grows aggressive. Whether he rapes her is left unclear, but she is in so much dismay that she returns immediately to her father's home. Won't tell you all that happens next. Let me briefly say that Jay comes looking for her and takes her to Mumbai, where they share a flat and become lovers, and she lives with him on the fringes of Bollywood. She even begins dancing classes, and it isn't unthinkable that she could find a movie career. More here. The title character is played by the touchingly beautiful Freida Pinto, who you will remember from "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008). By "touchingly," I mean that in the way she plays this particular character, beauty becomes like a handicap. No woman so completely without resources should be forced to live with it. Her Trishna is a gentle, sweet, completely good young woman of 19, who lives with her family in a poor rural district of India. After her father is disabled in a road accident, she becomes the wage earner. This could mean working in the fields or in her uncle's factory — or making a good city salary on the staff of a luxury hotel. It happens this way. Trishna catches the eye of a young man named Jay (Riz Ahmed), the son of a wealthy hotel owner. He has been educated in England and has returned home, is struck by her beauty and her plight, and offers her a job in his father's hotel. He does this out of kindness, and she accepts out of necessity. At first, all goes well. He sponsors her for a course in hotel management. She is good at her work. Then, abruptly, his behavior changes. They had seemed to be falling in love, a romance that would cross class barriers but nevertheless seems possible to both of them. Then, at a tender moment, after a kiss, he grows aggressive. Whether he rapes her is left unclear, but she is in so much dismay that she returns immediately to her father's home. Won't tell you all that happens next. Let me briefly say that Jay comes looking for her and takes her to Mumbai, where they share a flat and become lovers, and she lives with him on the fringes of Bollywood. She even begins dancing classes, and it isn't unthinkable that she could find a movie career.
More here.
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