[7.6/10] Before I sat down to watch this film, I read a comment about that film that said, “You will never know who to side with.” And as someone who’s read the novel, I was kind of aghast. What could they possibly mean?

Did they think it was tough to choose a side between Angel’s “You’re a different person now and I can't love you” perspective and Tess’ “You should be willing to forgive me my ‘sins’ that are the same as what you yourself did” perspective? Did they find it challenging to know whether to lean toward Alec, the obsessive man who harassed and raped and then kept harassing Tess, as her preferred romantic pairing, or toward Angel, the man who earnestly loved her, and screwed up royally by abandoning her in his rank hypocrisy, but at least saw the error of his ways and sought to make amends?

In both instances, it wasn’t hard to know who to side with. It was, frankly, mildly disturbing to read a comment from someone who sees one or both choices as an even playing field.

And yet, after watching the adaptation, I get it. This is an oddly more “balanced” portrayal of the entanglement between Tess, Angel, and Alec. Tess speaks of herself as more at fault for what happened with Alec. Alec himself is softened, particularly in the latter half of the story. Angel’s change of heart is reduced to lovesickness rather than a fuller shift in his perspective. You still have to excuse some pretty serious crimes, but it’s not unreasonable to walk away from this adaptation feeling at least more ambivalent about these situations than you will once you’re done with the source material.

I have my qualms about that. As with the 2008 adaptation, I have some issues with the notion of softening the presentation of a rapist, even if it’s in the name of offering a more complex villain to fit with modern expectations. But I cannot deny that the adaptation largely works on its own terms, molding the story to fit a different interpretation, but one that, on balance, succeeds in its project, which is more than I can say for its ten-years-later counterpart.

What’s funny about all of this is that, for the first two thirds of the film, the 1998 *Tess of the d’Urbervilles* is surprisingly faithful to the book. Sure, the instances of overly didactic voiceover narration are cheesy and unnecessary. And sure, there are cuts and elements that are necessarily excised for a feature length runtime. But director Ian Sharp gets the tone and spirit of the story right and hits the key beats with aplomb. Most importantly, the characters feel right, to where even if the production is stately, the interactions between the major players come off as compelling and real.

The peak of this is Justine Waddell’s outstanding performance as Tess. More than anything, her acting is what elevates this film over the 2008 one. The problem with any adaptation of *Tess of the d’Urbervilles* is that it’s a very internal novel, and more often than not, you’re inside Tess’ head. While obviously less explicit, Waddell overcomes that gap by giving an incredible, layered performance that conveys the complexity of what Tess is feeling in any given moment in a way that is just as potent, if not quite as detailed, as Thomas Hardy’s literary descriptions.

You sense her fear and discomfort during Alec’s advances at Trantrage. You understand viscerally the sense in which she’s snapped once Angel returns at Sandbourne. More than anything, you feel the complicated tug of war during her romance with Angel at the dairy farm, where on the one hand she is enervated by the joy of love and the bliss of companionship, and on the other, she is devastated by the realized fear that she’d be rejected if her beau knew her past and the torturous guilt over the sense that she doesn’t deserve such happiness.

Waddell communicates it all, in ways that evoke profound sympathy and at times, are so real that you almost feel uncomfortable watching, like you’re peering in on a private moment of pain that shouldn't be exposed to the world. That's the adaptation’s greatest strength.

But a close runner up is how lovingly and luxuriously it conveys the romance between Angel and Tess at the dairy farm. It is one of those core things in the story. You have to buy that profound central affection between the two of them: to understand Tess’ devastation at losing it, to understand Angel’s callousness to throw it away, and to experience the catharsis when they regain a piece of it at the end of the narrative.

The 1998 version gets that crucial part right. Their steady coming together on the farm, the ways in which they are inexorably drawn together, the way that the mix of hope and anxiety flows between them. You get why they’re attached to one another, which makes so much of the film work on the merits even when there are problems on the margins.

The same goes for Tess’ scenes with Alec in the first half of the film. Here Alec is charming in an oily sort of way, but also plainly predatory. Tess’ discomfort with his “liberties” and advances is plain. You get the clear sense of someone nigh-literally indebted to a male pursuer, whose abuse and assault at his hands feels like the inevitable result of a sense of entitlement, infatuation, and alarmingly escalating behavior.

Those three things -- Alec’s harassment, Angel’s affections, Tess’ sentiments -- are at the heart of the novel. And while not quite perfect, the 1998 *Tess of the d’Urbervilles*’ rendition of them is not only faithful in the man, but terrific on its own terms.

That is, until Tess’ confession. That marks a strange turning point, where the film not only starts diverging more from the text, but almost seems to get into a sprint to the finish. I don’t know if the production team was running out of money, or reaching the end of the shooting schedule, or just wanted to put their focus elsewhere, but it’s the point where things start to feel rushed and odd.

Angel is still hypocritical in rejecting Tess for not being “pure” when he himself is far from “unblemished” on the same account, but he seems more hurt than cold in his reaction. The film excises his worst excesses (nearly running away with one of Tess’ fellow dairymaids). And the scene even has Tess basically say that she can't deny being somewhat responsible for what happened. I get that there’s some ambiguity in the source material, but it still seems an oddly ecumenical realization of what is, to my mind at least, Angel’s great betrayal.

Likewise, when Angel returns from Brazil, there’s no broader sense of him truly changing or his worldview being shifted through seeing an abject state of humanity that makes his social hang-ups seem miniscule and even ridiculous. He just wanted to be apart from Tess, got that, and then realized he loved her so much that he couldn’t be apart from her any longer. It reduces one of the more interesting elements of the character’s arc to a standard issue “No, I just loved you too much to be away” bit of folderol.

What’s interesting is that the film kind of gives his arc to Alec. The 1998 adaptation softens Alec in the back half of the book. He is still pushy, and even physical with Tess in ways that are disturbing. But unlike the source material, Alec seems to have genuinely changed in the midst of his religious conversion. He seems earnest in his belief that Angel’s never returning and in his desire to spare Tess from the life of hardship she’s enduring in his absence.

There’s never any sense that Tess wants this, and Alec still ignores her wishes in ways that don’t speak well of him. But he seems legitimately aghast and scornful of any man who would abandon Tess, and truly desiring to help her and make amends for his past transgressions. The novel’s Alec was consumed by lust, not love, and at most wanted to possess Tess more than be partnered with her. 1998 movie Alec, by contrast, actually loves Tess, to the extent of “his nature”, something Tess herself even acknowledges in dialogue.

It’s all odd. Tess remains as strong as ever from beginning to end. But Angel is made less complicated and more flat as a love interest post-confession, while Alec is made more sincere in both his affections, actions, and amends toward Tess. You can forgive the enterprising YouTube commenter who struggles to pick between them.

Despite the race to the end, which leaves Angel’s absence feeling brief, Alec’s pressure feeling lesser, and Tess’ strife and joy a bit diminished, nevertheless manages to work, largely on the back of some great performances. Again, whatever problems the text may have, Tess and Angel have chemistry together that makes it easier to buy into their reunion. Alec and Tess’ lethal argument is raw and gallingly real. Tess’ acceptance of her impending demise as a blessing, because it means she’ll never have to endure Angel despising her again, is as heartbreaking here as in the book.

I don’t know what to say. The 1998 film still has its problems. Too much of the dialogue turns the story’s subtext into text, and whatever’s left is ham-handedly explicated by the narrator. The desire to rebalance the story changes its meaning in subtle but substantial ways, not all of which are commendable. The brisk pacing of the film in places loses the sense of the almost epochal passage of time that suffuses the novel.

And yet, this adaptation gets the tone right; it gets the spirit right; it gets the *feeling* right. You believe these characters. You believe in their abject struggles and in their fleeting triumphs. You buy their relationships with one another, and the way they shift and complicate over the course of the story. Most of all, you buy Tess, the innocent young woman, taken advantage of by a manipulative benefactor, made to suffer untold pains and indignities, given a reprieve of bliss before it’s taken away from her, and unexpectedly finding a measure of joy on the cusp of tragedy.

It’s why I’m apt to forgive this *Tess of the d’Urbervilles* its excesses and headscratchers. That alone is a superb achievement, one that makes this interpretation worth the price of admission, even if the uninitiated viewer might walk away not knowing who to side with. The answer is, and has always been, Tess.