Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Telly addicts

This week's Tess

99 replies

cornsilk · 21/09/2008 21:21

Where's her baby?

OP posts:
wintera · 06/10/2008 20:51

I loved the whole thing about little moments in your life having big consequences for your future. Or your life going one way, when it could easily go another way, just being based on a decision that was made.

When I was 18 I fell madly in love with a man I met just by chance on a bus of all places! Silly things like catching a bloody bus can become enormous events in your life. Fate is a strange and tricky thing!

Dottoressa · 06/10/2008 20:54

But what was all that about at the end, with Angel and 'Liza-Lou standing there and holding hands?

Methinks that spoilt it. Humph.

cornsilk · 06/10/2008 21:02

Isn't Liza -Lou with him at the end of the book though?

OP posts:
Dottoressa · 06/10/2008 21:21

Not so far as I remember (it's a long while since I read it, though, so could be wrong!) I thought it ended with her (and Angel) being found at Stonehenge, and her saying that she was ready...

cornsilk · 06/10/2008 21:25

I thought it ended with her and Angel walking through the streets of a town and seeing the black flag. However many, many years since I read it also!

OP posts:
NotAnOtter · 06/10/2008 21:27

yes i really liked the adaptation

despite Tess not being my idea of a Tess she grew on me and became one..

I cried too ....it is all about fate

So bloody believable - Poor them
Wish Hardy was around now and we could have him on a live web chat .....AMAZING

Moomin · 06/10/2008 21:34

Tess makes Angel swear to look after L-L and marry her and the novel finishes with them both seeing the black flag raised from the hill above the town, holding hands and walking off together:

"Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eves were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.

`Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in AEschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on."

NotAnOtter · 06/10/2008 21:38

goose bumps

Monkeytrousers · 06/10/2008 21:45

Bet they go on to have a happy life

Dottoressa · 07/10/2008 10:57

Moomin - thank you for the correction. I have obviously suppressed that bit as I didn't want it to happen!!!

fullmoonfiend · 07/10/2008 13:27
Moomin · 07/10/2008 18:06

I need to get the dvd of it now. and I shall watch it when dh is out and I can sit with one of my best friends who (like me) likes both Thomas Hardy and also having a good wallow, and we shall eat chocolate, drink wine, watch Tess and cry ourselves blind.

southeastastra · 08/10/2008 20:02

wail! i just watched the series online

omg i'm so sad

Monkeytrousers · 08/10/2008 21:14

OH SRA!

Perhaps strangely though, it actually left me feeling quite glad - that I didn't live even 100 years ago!

Monkeytrousers · 08/10/2008 21:16

I am reading it again now. I was in a band aged 23 called Old Lady Day, which I had taken from the book. The language is sumptious. I have a half hour of it before sleep. I (perhaps grandly) identify a lot with Tess.

southeastastra · 09/10/2008 08:16

i'm dipping into the book, never read it before! when she confesses to him there's a strange part about him sleepwalking.

is there quite alot in the book that wasn't in the series?

MrsBumblebee · 09/10/2008 13:54

I absolutely loved the series as well. Confirmed my belief that you're much better off watching adaptations of books you didn't enjoy that much (I read Tess at A level and didn't like it, though may have to try it again now) than ones you loved (none of the Pride and Prejudice adaptations is quite 'right' for me).

And didn't you just LOVE the song the girls were singing on and off throughout? I'm a real folk fan anyway, but hadn't come across that one. I did a bit of digging and found this version of it on You Tube - made me sad all over again to hear it.

Monkeytrousers · 09/10/2008 18:55

Oh, I've forgotten that bit - haven't got up to there yet.

It's a very poetic book and I think the series did try to convey a lot of that in visuals - very well for telly I thought.

The whole book is about the environment signifying the emotions of Tess.

I should watch the Polanski version again. It's much moe cinematic as it should be in a 'show don't tell' way that cinema differs from telly. But the series was in a very cinematic style if not exactly cinema. I think it hinted at a lot of things in images that there just wouldn't have been time to put in.

southeastastra · 09/10/2008 20:10

i love the polanski film, never on tv enough.

i read that he gave his wife sharon tate a copy of the book the last time he saw her

can't open the link mrsbumble it's violated

MrsBumblebee · 09/10/2008 20:31

Blimey, I don't even know what that means, sorry! Was it my fault??!! I don't know anything about You Tube... Anyway, the song's called 'The Snow it Melts the Soonest', and although lots of people have done versions, the one that sounds just like the one in Tess was by Anne Briggs (it's on i-Tunes as well - for the moment!!!).

southeastastra · 09/10/2008 21:07

lol just means that youtube took it down for copyright reasons probably.

i loved the songs too though

Monkeytrousers · 09/10/2008 21:16

She was going to play Tess originally.

southeastastra · 09/10/2008 21:20

that's so tragic

my sister told me far from the madding crowd had a happier ending

still have to see jude too

fullmoonfiend · 10/10/2008 09:45

mrtsbumblebee - i loved the songs too, think Eliza Carthy does a version of it.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread