The Red Tent (Lifetime)

[Featherhat]

So because The Bible was such a big hit, every cable channel is now scrabbling around for "Biblically Based" mini series. Lifetime secured the rights to one of my favourite books of all time The Red Tent and its coming out next week.

 

 

“The Red Tent” is a sweeping tale that takes place during the times of the Old Testament, told through the eyes of Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob. Airing over two nights, the all-star cast includes Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Minnie Driver (“Return to Zero,” “About a Boy”), Emmy nominee Morena Baccarin (“Homeland”), Golden Globe nominee Rebecca Ferguson (“The White Queen”), Iain Glen (“Game of Thrones”), Will Tudor (“Game of Thrones”) and Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Debra Winger (“Terms of Endearment”).

The miniseries begins with Dinah’s (Ferguson) happy childhood spent inside the red tent where the women of her tribe gather and share the traditions and turmoil of ancient womanhood. The film recounts the story of Dinah’s mothers Leah (Driver), Rachel (Baccarin), Zilpah and Bilhah, the four wives of Jacob (Glen). Dinah matures and experiences an intense love that subsequently leads to a devastating loss, and the fate of her family is forever changed. Winger portrays Rebecca, Jacob’s mother while Tudor stars as Joseph, Dinah’s brother.

 

I was a complete mess by the end of this book when I read it as a teen and I still think the story is vey powerful. I'm very leery of Rebecca Ferguson as Dinah, but the rest of the cast seem solid.

 

Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7slM-72ls

 

[backgroundnoise]

If they are trying to get in on the current Bible craze, I hope they don't change the book

regarding the retelling of Jacob and Joseph, who don't come off very well at all in the book.

 

I love this book and I hope they do it credit.

 

Debra Winger as the ancient Rebecca, The Grandmother?  Yikes. 

Edited December 1, 2014 by backgroundnoise

[CherryMalotte]

I'm looking forward to this as well - the cast is fabulous.  I don't know what it is, I'm not a practicing 'anything' as far as religion goes but I do love me some bible epics.    

[Featherhat]

No a lot of the Biblical men don't dome off great, to say the least, this is a female POV on times that were almost 100% male dominated outside specific areas.

That said I don't think early Jacob is a bad man by the standards of his time. They remade Shechem as in love and not deceitful. And in Dinah's later life the fact that her bio son who knows who she is but is ashamed by her is heart-breaking but makes sense when patriarchal name was everything and he hadn't seen "ma" for several years.

 

I just like the fact that it made me realise for the first time (As a teen thankfully) that there was a whole side of the Bible that struggled(es) to get acknowledged and had awesome stories to tell.  

Edited December 4, 2014 by Featherhat

[Primetimer]

Fancy trash ahoy!

Read the story

[swimmyfish]

Aw, I read this book as part of the long-ago chicklit.com book club! It's awesome, and totally scandalous and racy.

[mascan42]

@backgroundnoise It's a Lifetime movie, so if anything all of the men will come off worse than in the book.

[backgroundnoise]

I liked it for the most part, at least so far.  I'm trying not to compare it to the book all the time because of course it will suffer.  In only about 3 hours running time, it can't get into the richness of detail about what life was like back then for women that the book had.  But I like the characterizations of all the women except Ruti, who looks like a high school cheerleader.

 

Where I'm less forgiving is in the modernization of Dinah.  I guess TV writers just can't help themselves and have to make protaganists have modern-day sensibilities at times.  Dinah expressed ideas about slavery that were anacronistic, and with her "well, pitch in an help" regarding first meeting Ra-nefer struck an incongruous note.

 

I can't tell any of the brothers apart, except for Joseph, who looks completely different, and has a salon hair cut to boot.

[ennui]

I didn't know it was a book. I did think it was kind of racy for a Bible epic. However, when I recognized Rebecca Ferguson, I sort of lost interest. It does have a nice cast, but I feel like they all seem out of place and time, except for Iain Glen.

[Almost 3000]

I liked the look well enough so that was a plus but hated the modernization of Dinah, it was just to much and took me completely out of the show. I'll finish it out tonight but will probably be reading these boards or working on something because the characters sadly don't ring true in any way.

[betha]

I don't understand why the actresses playing Rachel and Dinah are the same age (or five years apart..). That is distracting. Should have used a younger actress for Dinah. I haven't seen the Rachel actress in homeland or any of her other projects, she looks just like Bridget Moynahan to me.

[Ohwell]

I didn't know there was a book but I found the show interesting enough.  The only nitpick I have is that every time I look at the actress who plays Dinah, I can't help thinking that she looks too old for the part.  She looks like she could be one of the sisters, not the niece/daughter.   

[Rick Kitchen]

The actress who plays Dinah is only four years younger than the actress playing Rachel, and 13 years younger than the actress (Minnie Driver) playing Leah.

[voiceover]

I can't get past Dina's blatant disrespect of her father.  Don't know if that was in the book, but it's an eye-roller.  Not at that time in history.

 

I do give her props for fantastic taste in men.  Meee-YEOW!

Edited December 10, 2014 by voiceover

[Jeebus Cripes]

The guy playing Joseph looks so much like a young William Fichtner. Sorry to see Dinah's uber-hot husband bite it so soon, but I knew it was coming. I saw a movie about Joseph a while back and somehow managed to forget the bit about his brothers slaughtering all those guys. Yikes. They were real pieces of work.

[pasdetrois]

I tuned in for Debra Winger and Minnie Driver. But alas, the writing, acting and direction are so horrible that I cannot watch. And I agree that the women's ages make no sense and are extremely distracting.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

The actress who plays Dinah is only four years younger than the actress playing Rachel, and 13 years younger than the actress (Minnie Driver) playing Leah.

 

And Debra Winger is just fifteen years older than Driver.

[kassa]

The book was great, and this was okay, but with extra credit for truly hot men.  

 

I can't recall the Bible story -- hopefully Dinah's brothers got theirs in the end?  I mean, Jacob suffered for being a snotty jerk - they were far, far, far worse.

[Rick Kitchen]

Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi had the right to own their own territories in the Promised Land taken away from them.  The Levites were the priests, and all they got were a few holy towns scattered here and there. The Tribe of Simeon got a little enclave inside the much larger Tribe of Judah.  Their population dropped considerably between the two censuses described in the Book of Numbers.

Edited December 9, 2014 by Rick Kitchen

[ennui]

I got confused at the end. Darwin Shaw played Peter in last year's The Bible miniseries, and then he showed up in this at the end, looking the same. Peter's great great ancestor, I suppose?

[Amelie06]

Dinah's first husband had some kind of next level hotness. I totally got why Dinah feel in love at first sight with that guy. I felt his loss for the rest of this miniseries, just like Dinah.

I'm sorry but, young Jacob kind of seemed like be was just trying to get in where he could fit in. Did he really bang one sister and then the other one the very next day? Not cool. But that actor was totally hot, so I forgive him.

I have to agree with the article, these men do seem like surprisingly attentive lovers for the time.

The casting was pretty good for Dinah's emo son. He reminds you of the hot dude who played his father.

Was baby stealing a thing back then? The Egyptian lady didn't seem to think she was acting like a crazy person. Even when she apologized, she didn't exactly say "Upon reflection, stealing someone's baby is super weird. I probably shouldn't have done that."

I don't know how I feel about the casting for Joseph. He just didn't fit with the rest of his brothers. It seemed intentional. He looked like he should be lounging on a couch somewhere, refusing to look directly at the camera as he lazily smoked an e-cig. I agree that he looks like a young William Fichtner, but has none of that man's acting talent. Joseph seemed like a whiney douche the entire movie!

[Rick Kitchen]

The guy playing Joseph is an actor from Game of Thrones.  He plays Olyvar, one of Lord Baelish's spies.

[ennui]

If you go to the source material (*cough*), Joseph was a favorite, as the youngest usually is, and his older brothers were jealous.

 

The Red Tent is hopelessly romanticized, and the time lines are messed up. There were seven years between when Jacob married Leah and then Rachel. Also, according to the source material, Dinah was raped and that's why her brothers took vengeance.

 

I'm reminded of why I don't like Lifetime adaptations.

[Jeebus Cripes]

extra credit for truly hot men.  

 

This.

 

Dinah's first husband had some kind of next level hotness. I totally got why Dinah feel in love at first sight with that guy. I felt his loss for the rest of this miniseries, just like Dinah.

I'm sorry but, young Jacob kind of seemed like be was just trying to get in where he could fit in. Did he really bang one sister and then the other one the very next day? Not cool. But that actor was totally hot, so I forgive him.

 

And this. I don't know if it was a woman casting or what, but hot dayum! Fine men abound. I ain't complaining.

 

I don't know how I feel about the casting for Joseph. He just didn't fit with the rest of his brothers. It seemed intentional. He looked like he should be lounging on a couch somewhere, refusing to look directly at the camera as he lazily smoked an e-cig. I agree that he looks like a young William Fichtner, but has none of that man's acting talent. Joseph seemed like a whiney douche the entire movie!

 

 

Aw, I had a thing going on for Joseph. Not sure if it was his looking like Fichtner or what, but I was digging him. I kept wanting to see more of him, even though I know his story. I didn't like Joseph wanting to execute his nephew. It seemed totally out of character.

[ancslove]

I thought even in the Bible, Dinah said she wasn't raped.  Anyway, I think the whole point of The Red Tent was to flesh out Dinah's story on the premise that her male family saw her marriage as rape, but she knew they were wrong.

[kassa]

I gather there's some difference of opinion on whether the original text indicates Dinah was "shamed" meaning rape, or just by having had extramarital sex.    

[ennui]

I suppose we could say it was statutory rape. 

 

I get wrapped up in these epics (I like epics, Biblical or not), and it bothers me when I've invested the time to watch and then the end arrives and I feel cheated and disappointed.

 

One thing I did like -- Dinah rejected her father, and then her son rejected her. I'm not sure she understood that, though.

[Featherhat]

The Red Tent is hopelessly romanticized, and the time lines are messed up. There were seven years between when Jacob married Leah and then Rachel. Also, according to the source material, Dinah was raped and that's why her brothers took vengeance

 

It is hopelessly romanticized, but the timeline mess ups were deliberate. The author of the book called BS on Jacob having to wait 14 years to marry Rachel, saying that with life expectances in those days Rachel would be considered old or at least middle aged by the time he married her, and not young and fertile. Obviously she has trouble conceiving in the story but not because she was considered old. IIRC she said something about 7 years signifying "a long time" kind of like the theory that "40 days and 40 nights" isn't supposed to be literally that but a way of saying "after a long time". I'm not an historian or a Biblical scholar so I can't comment on the accuracy of that.  

Edited December 10, 2014 by Featherhat

[ennui]

Well, seven years has always been a standard for apprenticeships and indentured servants. We don't know how old they were when these agreements started. If, say, Jacob wanted to marry Rachel and agreed to work toward that, and Rachel was 12, she'd be 19 ... and then 26. It's possible. And irrelevant to the movie.  Jacob sure aged a lot after he married Leah. 

 

In the movie, it looks like Rachel is 12 when she chickens out of the marriage, and sends Leah, who looks about 14.

Edited December 11, 2014 by ennui

[pasdetrois]

The other very distracting thing about the casting is that many of them looked like they just stepped out of Great Britain. Fair freckled skin, reddish hair, blue and green eyes...

 

The actress who plays Dinah - there's something about her diction that really annoyed me. Almost like a very minor impediment, or a very affected way of speaking. Like she had just come from the dentist - kind of a mush mouth at times.

 

Nevertheless, I placed the book on my wait list at my local library.

Edited December 11, 2014 by pasdetrois

[Amelie06]

I think the actress who plays Dinah is actually Swedish. That must be why there was something slightly off about her accent.

[kassa]

It is hopelessly romanticized, but the timeline mess ups were deliberate. The author of the book called BS on Jacob having to wait 14 years to marry Rachel, saying that with life expectances in those days Rachel would be considered old or at least middle aged by the time he married her, and not young and fertile.

 

 

I think in the Bible Jacob lives to 150 years old or something, so who knows how old the wives were, or how they were measuring years!

[turbogirlnyc]

I think the actress who plays Dinah is actually Swedish. That must be why there was something slightly off about her accent.

 

I think she might be Swedish, too. I like the actress after watching The White Queen series on Starz. She played Edward IV's wife Elizabeth Woodville/Wydville, mother of the Princes in the Towers. Anyway... Love her and love Iain Glenn.

 

Agree with most comments here. Especially about the payoff of watching a mini-series. I wanted to see more of her first husband, Hottie McHotterson, and Dinah's son. I've never read the book but I too thought Dinah's opinions were very advanced for the time period. Oh and it was Debra Winger playing the Grandma? Geez that woman stuck out like a sore thumb. As for Joseph, I figured he took after his father more than his mother. That said, his appearance was still OTT compared to his brothers. Dinah also stuck out but at least she had dark hair.

Edited December 14, 2014 by turbogirlnyc

[aradia22]

I finally watched the Women of the Bible special they aired with this. I think they just took clips from that The Bible movie they made for the History Channel and put some documentary style interview clips in to explain things. They did a pretty bad job of showing that women were an important part of the Bible. Aside from Mary Magdalene it was a lot about "good" and "bad" women and pretty much everyone was a side character and/or important as a mother. Most of the arguments were that these women were so great because they (idiotically) just believed and had faith which is fine from a religious standpoint but doesn't really work as an argument with all the guys running around actually doing something. Now, clearly I'm not very religious but I have a bit of familiarity with some Bible stories and they could have done a better job. What about Ruth? Or Esther?

[ennui]

Ruth was a good woman who married well.  ;)

 

Imho (and others), the Old Testament is the path that leads to Christ. Ruth was the great-grandmother of David. Esther saved the Jewish people.

 

Following that thought, I'm not sure why the Red Tent was important as a story. Women of ancient Israel?