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behind the camera
COUNTRY MATTERS
AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES ASPINALL
T homas Hardy’s Under The Greenwood Tree, first pub- lished in 1872, is reputedly
the great English author’s
personal favourite among his novels. It is structurally divided into Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, following, it has been said, “the natural rhythms of the earth and of society.”
That sounds like a suitably chal- lenging assignment for cinematogra- pher James Aspinall who has lit many popular and acclaimed single dramas and series for television over the past decade, including Falling, Wire In The Blood, William & Mary and the
Prix Europa-winning (also BAFTA nominated) Suffer The Little Children.
Hardy’s often doom-and-gloomy Wessex tales are, of course, no stranger to screens big and small with memorable versions to date of Far From The Madding Crowd, Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, The Mayor Of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders and Jude The Obscure.
Even Under The Greenwood Tree, currently being filmed as a two-hour drama for ITV at Christmas, has previ-
ously been before the cameras – way back in 1929, as a pioneering British musical in the earliest days of home- grown talkies.
The latest adaptation, by Ashley Pharoah, sees Aspinall collaborating again with director Nick Laughland with whom he previously worked on Wire In The Blood and William & Mary. “Yes, we looked a lot at Tess [with Oscar-winning lighting by the late Geoffrey Unsworth]. It’s a beautifully shot film... well, a lot of it is, but it’s also very much of its period photographically. He had the luxury of being able to shoot a lot early morning and early evening. Mind you, there’s also some very strange-looking day-for-night.”
He might have added that Polanski’s film principally recreated Hardy’s Wessex – a fictionalised Dorset – in Brittany. And, by an odd coincidence, Under The Greenwood Tree is being shot entirely in Jersey. Another French connection.
“It’s logistical, of course,” said Aspinall. “They found a living museum- stroke-farm in Jersey where we could do what we wanted to and change things around as nobody lives there.
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Photo: James Aspinall on the set of Under The Greenwood Tree
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