"Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle" opens with lecturer Laura Stone asking her literature class to freeze in positions as she describes the frozen souls in hell in Dante's ninth circle of "Inferno." But the tenth circle where the weather is even colder is reserved for the Stone family, including Laura, her husband Daniel, and the daughter Trixie.
Trixie was named by the Stones after Dante's beloved Beatrice, the inspiration for "The Divine Comedy" and his personal tour guide into paradise. But for the Stones, the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker as the drama progresses. Instead of Dante's Inferno, another literary reference for the Stones is Charles Dickens's Bleak House.
The film never makes entirely clear the circumstances of the alleged assault on Trixie based on her allegations against Jason Underhill. The filmmakers chose to portray Jason very sympathetically. It was especially the use of the drug that completely impaired Trixie's memory that led to the confusion. This was a drug that she purchased and used of her own volition, and it keeps the situation cloudy both in her mind and the minds of the audience.
In contrast to Jason, the Stone family members become less and less sympathetic as the film proceeds. Daniel has a hair-trigger temper and nearly beats Jason to a pulp. Laura hid from her family the affair she was having with the dashing artist Seth. And her absence from being at home for her daughter at a critical moment will haunt her forever.
One of the most interesting characters in the film is the savvy detective Mike Bartholomy, who had lost his own daughter to a drug overdose. The detective retains his objectivity even the in the face of a family telling lie after lie that culminates in the fateful moment on the Prospect Street Bridge with a senseless death that will haunt a family forever in their Bleak House.
Trixie was named by the Stones after Dante's beloved Beatrice, the inspiration for "The Divine Comedy" and his personal tour guide into paradise. But for the Stones, the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker as the drama progresses. Instead of Dante's Inferno, another literary reference for the Stones is Charles Dickens's Bleak House.
The film never makes entirely clear the circumstances of the alleged assault on Trixie based on her allegations against Jason Underhill. The filmmakers chose to portray Jason very sympathetically. It was especially the use of the drug that completely impaired Trixie's memory that led to the confusion. This was a drug that she purchased and used of her own volition, and it keeps the situation cloudy both in her mind and the minds of the audience.
In contrast to Jason, the Stone family members become less and less sympathetic as the film proceeds. Daniel has a hair-trigger temper and nearly beats Jason to a pulp. Laura hid from her family the affair she was having with the dashing artist Seth. And her absence from being at home for her daughter at a critical moment will haunt her forever.
One of the most interesting characters in the film is the savvy detective Mike Bartholomy, who had lost his own daughter to a drug overdose. The detective retains his objectivity even the in the face of a family telling lie after lie that culminates in the fateful moment on the Prospect Street Bridge with a senseless death that will haunt a family forever in their Bleak House.