A novel with a woman of the 19th Century as a central character becomes a film about the integrity of the men in her life in a 21st Century
Having never read any Thomas Hardy, I went into the act of viewing this 119- minute-long film with a little bit of scepticism, knowing that very possibly this particular cinematic dramatisation of the muchloved Thomas Hardy classic may not measure up, even though I am not really qualified to judge it against the original source material.
Directed by the Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg, who co-founded the somewhat infamous Dogme 95 movement (which advocates for a kind of visceral cinematic reality) along with the now very famous Lars von Trier, Far From The Madding Crowd is clearly a very shortened version of an intricate novel that tells the story of the headstrong Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) who goes from being a penniless girl to relative wealth when she inherits her uncle’s farm.
As the beautiful, spirited, but also slightly churlish Bathsheba sails through her new-found life, revelling in her ability to make decisions, and fighting the battles that any woman of the time would have to face head-on were one to become a “gentlewoman farmer” in the late 19th century (the novel was published in 1874), she catches the eyes of three very different, and extremely ardent suitors – though in the film version, even while Cary Mulligan is really quite lovely, no one can really fathom why she might attract quite so much attention.
This is partly because her two nicer admirers, Gabriel Oak (played by the Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts) and William Boldwood (the British actor Michael Sheen), are pretty much too good to be true, especially when contrasted to the poorly fleshed out Sergeant Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) whom Bathsheba rather absurdly falls for, even while she declares, ridiculously and repeatedly, that no one can tame her.
Clearly, condensing a long, complex novel into a barely two hour long film is not easy, and here it is clear that the screenplay written by David Nicholls, sacrifices a great many logical details for the sake of moving swiftly through the story.
As a result, Sergeant Troy and Bathsheba are relatively lightly sketched out, and Schoenaerts and Sheen are left to carry the relatively heavy weight of the film, a task that both of these veteran actors are imminently capable of.
While it is a bit of shame that a novel written with a woman as a central character in the 19th Century has been reduced to becoming a film about the integrity of the men in her life in a 21st Century film version, the presence of two great actors more than saves the film, making it worth watching due to its production value, and of course the suspense (for those who have not read the book) regarding who Bathsheba will ultimately end up with.
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