This is cinematography at its best -- film used to present a view, in motion, of a reality that has been artistically ordered to reveal a greater-that-literal essence.

Watching this long, placid maddeningly subdued movie, you can't help wondering what became of Hardy's stark chronicle of crimes of passion.

One emerges from [Roman Polanski's] endless version of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles with a sense that one could have read the book in a shorter span and had more fun too.

A haunting, richly rewarding recreation of one of the towering masterpieces of English fiction.