Rebirth of the 19th century pure woman

Goodbye 19th century. A pure woman of England is reborn in current-day Rajasthan, hops over to New Delhi — and what do you know? — even takes classes in Bollywood dance moves in cool ’ole Mumbai. That’s yet another adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s timeless Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which has inspired a concatenation of American and British TV retreads, besides a take by Roman Polanski.

Indeed, Hardy sa’ab may well rock and roll in his grave on being informed that his heroine has received one more reincarnation, discourtesy Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna. The outcome is more of a travelogue — what with its eye-melting shots of rural vistas, Jaipur bazaars and Mumbai’s beaches — than an ode to a woman buffeted by circumstances and caddish males.
A dream vehicle for Freida Pinto, the rechristened Trishna, prompts you to wonder what is it about Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles that continues to fascinate filmmakers of differing styles and temperaments. One reason could be that director Winterbottom finds Hardy an ideal source for film adaptations, although his versions of the author’s Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge, too, haven’t exactly been memorable. Another reason could be that in the wake of the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, for a while India had become a popular location, not to forget the fact that Freida Pinto had gained sufficient recognition to become marketable the world over.
Ergo: Tess is back, this time tossed around like a salad by a business family’s scion whose heart goes dhak-dhak on watching her dance (jejunely albeit) at a Rajasthan tourist halt. Next, when she is injured in a road accident, he wells over with the milk of human kindness. She is offered a job, then a night of intimacy, immediately resulting in a hush-hush abortion. The two reunite, separate after an argument, and the rest is as predictable as the transition shots of Mumbai’s skyscrapers by neon-light. Of all the Tess… adaptations — including two in the silent era (1913 and 1924) — to date Polanski’s take is considered the most faithful to the original spirit of Hardy. It didn’t alter the original’s plotline arbitrarily, featured Nastassja Kinski who was eminently camera-friendly and was rooted in the story’s milieu, England of the Victorian period when social and sexual mores were tightly corseted.
Over to Bollywood’s attraction to Tess: she was evidenced in D.D. Kashyap’s Dulhan Ek Raat Ki (1967), featuring Nutan, Dharmendra and Rehman. In a rare graceful gesture, the story was credited to Hardy. Nearly three decades later, she was brought back to life in Rajiv Kumar’s only bid at direction, PremGranth (1996), toplining Madhuri Dixit and Rishi Kapoor. Like all the avatars of Tess, it didn’t make waves at the box office. Traditionally, women-focused stories are considered a commercially risky subject in Bollywood. The RK banner, which had defied the norm successfully over the years by making a woman the pivot of the screenplay (Bobby, Prem Rog, Henna), couldn’t quite make the cut in relating the relentless exploitation of a woman from an underprivileged social stratum.
Obviously, whether it is Michael Winterbottom or Rajiv Kapoor, they have been drawn to the story of Tess which has the requisite ingredients of incidental pleasure and doom-laden pain which a woman endures in a male-dominated system. Plus, there’s a sub-text of fatalism — or karma — which has its share of believers. Come to think of it, Hardy’s story is ideal for the film medium, just the way Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is. Both the authors’ prose are detailed in their description, recount stories which have distinctive openings-middles-and-ends and are replete with dramatic twists and turns. Madame Bovary was morphed by Ketan Mehta into Maya, which was quite impressive for its visual artistry, besides understanding the impulses of a woman caught in a loveless marriage.
Overall quality apart, all the adaptations of Tess of the D’Urbervilles have had their remarkably strong moments, like Freida Pinto’s lapses into silence in Trishna or the nuanced performances by both Nutan and Madhuri Dixit in Dulhan Ek Raat Ki and PremGranth respectively. Polanski’s close-ups of Nastassja Kinski remain unforgettable. Such minor virtues aside, Thomas Hardy hasn’t been given a fair deal. That includes Yash Chopra’s Daag (with shades of The Mayor of Casterbridge) and John Schelsinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd.
But, then, literary classics come with an in-built disadvantage. Comparisons — about the transition from the written page to the screen — are endemic. So when Freida Pinto leaps into the Tess act, you can’t help wishing that they would leave Thomas Hardy alone. Because the adaptation is not only unnecessary but a squirm in your seat experience.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director