TESS

Yesterday went and watched Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979), at the Russian Centre. What a beautiful adaptation of the tragic 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy. A very young naïve looking Nastassja Kinski excelled in her performance as the protagonist, ‘Tess’. Having watched a lot of movies starring Kinski; à la Cat People (1982), Paris, Texas (1984), Unfaithfully Yours (1984), The Ring (1996), Little Boy Blue (1997) and Time Share (2000), to name a few; this is the first time she reminded me of Ingrid Bergman. Especially Bergman’s portrayal of Paula Alquist, a woman being tormented by her husband, in Gaslight (1944). Both these movies are set during the Victorian era, thus costumes are similar as well, but the way Kinski spoke, walked, her mannerisms, everything in this flick resembled those of Bergman’s in Gaslight.

Tess (1979) is definitely the best work of, both, Polanski and Kinski.
Peter Firth too was remarkable as Angel Clare, Tess’s weak willed husband, whom you end up ultimately sympathising with. Though Firth’s best performance I’ve seen happens to be that of Alan Strang’s from Equus (1977).

Roman Polanski dedicated this movie to his wife, Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered when she was 9 months pregnant by the Charles Manson gang in 1969, an year after the release of Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). It was Tate who had recommended the novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles to Polanski, just before she left for the states – which was the last time he saw her alive, and apparently told him that this would make a great movie.

Great movie by a great director with a tragic story attached to it. (Both in fiction and reality).

Nuwan Sen’s Film Sense
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Bookish Nuwan

Just completed Christopher Isherwood’s The Memorial a few days ago. Loved it.

Fell in love with Isherwood’s style of writing, once I discovered his Literary brilliance last year- i.e through Mr. Norris Changes Trains, a good insight into Berlin life prior to the Second World War, loosely based on Isherwood’s own experiences. For he supposedly firsthand witnessed Hitler’s Germany as the anti-semitic ideals were being ingrained into ignorant minds. Meanwhile the narrator seemingly divided as to which was better, the nazis or the communist, as this was before the war.

Then earlier this year I read A Single Man, a tragic account of a middleaged lonely man’s last day on earth. I watched the movie based on this book a couple of years ago, A Single Man (2009). Loved that too, but the book (as always is the case) is better, and somewhat different. End result is the same though.

The Memorial, which is divided into four segments with 4 to 5 chapters in each, the segments I enjoyed the most was the middle segments. Book 2 dealt with each character in each chapter dealing with the death of the character called Richard, who was killed in the First World War, and each recalling their own past and how Richard played a major part in their lives, then Book 2 is set in Cambridge and the next generation.

Just Love Isherwood. Before I discovered him, Agatha Christie and D.H. Lawrence were my two favourite writers. Now they have taken second and third place respectively.

Bookworm Nuwan

Been a while

Been a while since I last posted any thing. Many a factors contributed to not letting me carry on the blog, BUT — Should re-start now.