Fair enough, there are some little moments of some animals being treated rather callously, as when Edith Evans pushes some geese out of her way. Yeah, I thought that little bit was funny, and the animals weren't shocking mistreated, or even particularly inconvenienced. Likewise the bit where Hugh Griffith tosses some beer in the dog's face.
Not nearly as appalling as all those horses being tripped up in all those Hollywood westerns over all those decades. And TOM JONES does at least depict some ugly realities that so many other films bent over backward to avoid -- those awful shots of the bloody spurs, intercut I seem to recall with the horse reacting painfully, and that dreadful bloody deer.
Yeah, there's meat on their plates during the dinner scene. Don't forget those poor oysters being enjoyed by Mrs. Waters. Are they all supposed to be depicted as vegetarians?
BEST: "As for the bloody deer hunt, perhaps it would have worked better if it had been offset by anything approaching a "genteel society."
Well, I'm sure the folks involved in the deer hunt would describe themselves as being members of a society that is civilized if not necessarily genteel -- they've got every pretension of being God-fearing Upright Practicing Christians, and here in the foxhunt, and in the dreadful scene of the churchyard attack on Molly Seagrim, and in the scene where Thwackum and Square casually demand the death penalt for a man who has stolen a sheep to feed his poverty stricken family -- the film relentlessly exposes their hypocrisy.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
Updated On: 3/9/14 at 08:45 AM
.jpg?format=auto&width=300)
