Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge. and Juno Temple
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 118 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2015
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This film is based on Thomas Hardy’s 1874 literary classic of the same name about life in rural England in the late nineteenth century.
It tells the story of a beautiful, headstrong and independent young woman, Bathsheba Everdene, who attracts three very different suitors – Gabriel Oak (a shy, self-contained sheep farmer), William Boldwood (a wealthy, lonely bachelor), and Frank Troy (a conceited, Army Sergeant). Hardy’s novel was bold and passionate, and was brought to the screen originally by John Schlesinger in 1967 with a film that starred Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, and Peter Finch in the four main roles.
The movie explores the nature of gender relationships and romantic love, and the capacity of human perseverance to overcome strain, hardship, and suffering. Its central focus is on Bathsheba and it aims to give Hardy’s novel a contemporary feel and look, a little unlike Schlesinger’s original film.
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) inherits a farm in Wessex, England, and the attentions of the three ardent admirers complicate her life. Each one proposes marriage to her.
Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) saves Bathsheba’s farm from burning one night. She spurns his deeply felt, sudden offer of marriage, by telling him “I am too independent for you” and “I have no need of a husband”. Despite her rejection of him, Gabriel stays by Bathsheba’s side to help manage her farm, and she allows him to do so.
William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) lives nearby, and tries to advance his cause by his wealth to which Bathsheba is attracted. She flirts with him wilfully, and sends him an insincere Valentine card, which William misinterprets. He becomes obsessed with Bathsheba, and is devastated when she marries another. In her rejection of William, Bathsheba knows that she cannot accept a man, who will only provide her an easy life. She is too headstrong to endure a future of that kind.
Bathesheba is infatuated with the handsome Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), and she marries him, because he promises her something excitingly different. However, Troy is a gambler and has behaved immorally. After her marriage to him, Bathsheba finds out that he has loved another woman, Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple), who left him standing at the altar, while trying to find her way to the wrong Church. Fanny died in the workhouse, giving birth to his child.
Life in Hardy’s England is preserved by the film’s plot-line which has the expected number of plot contrivances and melodramatic moments, but multiple touches of modernity give the movie a contemporary feel which is sustained by the tone of the film and Thomas Vinterberg’s distinctive direction.The costuming is elegant, and the film’s photography makes excellent use of sweeping outdoor scenes and intimate close-ups. This is Hardy’s England made to look engagingly attractive.The music is atmospheric; the film shows the vibrancy of the madding crowd; it delivers the force of nature in rustic England, Hardy-style; and its imagery is richly evocative.
The cast as a whole works very well together, but Carey Mulligan stands out. She takes the part of Bathsheba magnificently. She flirts with her admirers on the surface, but shows fierce determination to give vent to the emotions she hides underneath. She comes to realise regretfully what she has traded in life for her unfortunate union with Frank Troy. Mulligan is particularly good in communicating Bathsheba’s frustrations with a male-dominated society.
This film is an absorbing, modern adaptation of Hardy’s timeless tale. Its polished veneer may serve to distract a little from the film’s overall dramatic power, but the viewer comes to care about the characters as victims of fate caught in life’s unfolding. True to the spirit of Thomas Hardy’s novel, the film moves to its conclusion by driving Hardy’s major theme home: people struggle against the forces that inflict on them the ironies of their lives and loves. The film exposes us dramatically, effectively, and entertainingly to the choices and mistakes that a headstrong young woman makes in her fateful journey through life, and the sufferings that her choices cause.
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