Film Review: Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd is a stunningly beautiful film.
Far from the Madding Crowd
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg
Release Date June 25
This latest adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is a stunningly beautiful film, with some stunningly good performances.
Set in the late 19th century, the film centres on Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) who inherits a family farm and sets out to run it herself in the face of male opposition.
She is courted by three different men through the course of the film; the heroic shepherd Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), who offers little but his love and honesty, a local landowner, William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), who promises her stability and a soldier, Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) who promises her passion and adventure.
Of course she chooses the soldier but soon regrets her choice. With the intervention of Boldwood she eventually settles with Gabriel Oak.
While the film is about the various lives of love and passion, it is also a story about female emancipation as well as the workings of the class system in 19th century Britain. Many of its themes are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago.
The film could have become melodramatic but director Thomas Vinterberg keeps the film on a steady course ensuring that the emotional dimensions of the characters are carefully drawn.
As with his recent film, The Hunt, he often leaves us unsure of the qualities we are seeing in the characters, which adds to their complexity. As with the new Poldark on television, much is made of the English landscape and the reinvention of a past age.
John Daly-Peoples
Fri, 12 Jun 2015
Fri, 12 Jun 2015
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Film Review: Far from the Madding Crowd
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