Far from the Madding Crowd
Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg
Written by: David Nicholls - Based on the Novel by Thomas Hardy
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Jessica Barden
Drama - 119 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Apr 2015
Written by: David Nicholls - Based on the Novel by Thomas Hardy
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Jessica Barden
Drama - 119 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 30 Apr 2015
You can always tell a Thomas Hardy story from a Jane Austen. Even though their respective characters are separated by 100 years or so, the technology is the same, but the social mores between the 1770s and the 1870s have evolved a bit allowing British females a bit more room to breathe. Hardy adds danger and suffering in this added room. While her charming leading ladies may struggle through awkward times every now and again, Jane Austen would never inflict the kind of pain Hardy throws at his dames. Austen characters always succeed in the end, usually by winning a husband. Hardy characters are lucky if they are either alive or not in prison. However, Hardy takes a break from torturing young lasses in Far from the Madding Crowd. He wrote such an independent and willful Bathsheba Everdene that it was a scandal when it was published. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Hardy’s arguably second most famous novel is gorgeous to look at but it also includes what must be just about every scene from the book. Not wanting to leave anything out, we are stuffed to the gills with plot at the expense of pacing and emotional investment.
You know Bathsheba Everdene remains influential when Suzanne Collins stole her last name for this generation’s most famous female lead, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy. What a difference 100 years makes. In Pride and Prejudice, if Elizabeth Bennett was the next of kin to her uncle, she could not inherit his property; by law, it would go to the closest surviving male relative. Things have changed for Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan, 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis). After inheriting her uncle’s farm, she immediately pole vaults up the class ladder and starts effectively leading her vast Dorset farmstead with all the power of her nouveau riche social standing.
You know Bathsheba Everdene remains influential when Suzanne Collins stole her last name for this generation’s most famous female lead, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy. What a difference 100 years makes. In Pride and Prejudice, if Elizabeth Bennett was the next of kin to her uncle, she could not inherit his property; by law, it would go to the closest surviving male relative. Things have changed for Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan, 2013’s Inside Llewyn Davis). After inheriting her uncle’s farm, she immediately pole vaults up the class ladder and starts effectively leading her vast Dorset farmstead with all the power of her nouveau riche social standing.
The most remarkable transformation is not that Bathsheba is a female landowner with a couple dozen male farmhands under her supervision. The jaw dropping and tradition-shattering twist Thomas Hardy employed was to make her a female Mr. Darcy. No sooner does Bathsheba move onto her new estate and begin the arduous task of straightening it out and warming over the worker bees to accept new leadership, does she find herself with three suitors for marriage. Tradition-shattering indeed. Victorian England is known for many things, but an empowered female able to pick and choose her husband as a man would choose a woman is not one of them.
Bathsheba never considered herself the marrying kind. To prove it, Vinterberg shows her riding as a man would on a horse rather than side saddle. She wears a tight-fitting leather jacket on her rides showing off tendencies toward rebellious behavior and a nonchalant attitude to society’s norms. Bathsheba marches into the local Corn Exchange, the all-male bastion of commerce in rural areas, and sells her wares as would any other male farmer with the intended consequence of opening the close-minded merchants to feminist and equal right ideas. To prove she can be one of the guys, she declines to act like a 19th century lady of the house would and gets sweaty in the fields working side-by-side with the rest of the crew.
Yet, Far from the Madding Crowd is not centrally about running an estate as a woman. It’s about feelings, love, and marriage, themes quite familiar to 19th century British literature. Does one marry for love or for safety? Even Hardy is unable to escape the most pressing questions of the day. Bathsheba’s three suitors are as different in demeanor, means, and even age as any three gentlemen could be. There is good farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts, 2013’s Blood Ties) who suffers a reversal of fortune compared to Bathsheba yet does more to ensure the farm’s success than anyone and becomes a sounding board for Bathsheba’s professional and increasingly personal issues. There is the middle-aged and very wealthy owner of the estate next door, William Boldwood (Michael Sheen, 2014’s Kill the Messenger), who will ensure her financial and personal security for the rest of her life; but what girl in the history of girls falls so easily for that?
Finally, there is Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge). His silver tongue tells an impressionable Bathsheba every poetic sentiment a single girl would ever want to hear and shows off his fencing skills with acrobatic thrusts a bit too metaphorically similar to his other thrusting member. Troy is also linked to poor ol’ Fanny Robin (Juno Temple, 2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For), a character Hardy brutally victimizes as the butt of one the dumbest misunderstandings in the history of English literature. On her wedding day, Fanny mixes up the churches and arrives at All Souls instead of All Saints, kicking off a series of choices and unfortunate events. Shame on you Thomas Hardy for employing one of the laziest ideas from the entire 19th century just to get your characters where they need to be.
Aside from that hideous misstep, it is more refreshing to watch Bathsheba toil toward agricultural success than observe Jane Austen debutants work at the art and science of fighting boredom. Aiding that enjoyment is Craig Armstrong’s (2013’s The Great Gatsby) score, a mix of enjoyable strings and traditional folk songs. Director Thomas Vinterberg shot the film in the exact same countryside Hardy describes in Dorset and the choice pays off. The material could hardly be more different than his previous film, Academy Award nominated The Hunt (2013) about a wrongfully accused child molester, but Vinterberg proves it is not the material, but the man behind the camera. Unfortunately, it is also the story and the man behind the script. David Nicholls, who also adapted Tess of the D’Urbervilles for the BBC, failed to find any plot points to not squeeze in. He clutters up the open fields and burdens the intriguing characters with episode after episode of side plot. The consequence is a run of the mill 19th century romance at the expense of what could have been an epic tale.
Comment Box is loading comments...
