by Chris Marshall:
What a strange movie. For a brief moment, I thought about
letting those four words be the entirety of the post, but I’m too stubborn
about the 500 word minimum. That being said, I want the record to show that
that was the essence of my reaction after watching Tom Jones.
Much to my disappointment, it was not a movie about the
Welsh-singer-turned-Las-Vegas-sensation Tom Jones, but rather an adaptation of
Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, The History
of Tom Jones, a Foundling. I checked out the novel’s Wikipedia page to see
if I could find anything interesting about it, but it turns out the Wiki page
is as long as the novel itself, so I’m just going to assume it’s a fairly
faithful adaptation.
Then again, I’m not sure what the novelistic equivalent of a
freeze frame is. I’m not sure they worked to achieve any greater purpose, but I
will give credit to the director, Tony Richardson, for being stylistically
innovative. Tom Jones is a like a
different species from any of the previous Best Picture winners.
