It's a little surprising, considering its main character's surname, that it took this long for a new film based on Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel "Far from the Madding Crowd," to be made.
Bathsheba Everdene is the acknowledged inspiration for "The Hunger Games" heroine Katniss Everdeen, and even if Bathsheba doesn't have Katniss' archery chops, she battles against an oppressive regime with at least as much chutzpah as her dystopian-future namesake.
The regime in question is 19th-century British patriarchy, and Hardy's tale neatly combines a proto-feminist fable with a romantic melodrama, offering the pleasures of both without compromising either. Bathsheba (Carrie Mulligan) is a headstrong young woman who, early on, refuses the marriage proposal of the hunky shepherd Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts). He's clearly The One For Her, but when she inherits her uncle's farm, he becomes her employee and a gulf of social class (not to mention pride) divides them.
Her vivacity and her holdings draw the attention of two other suitors: her older, wealthy neighbor William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) and a dashing but dastardly soldier, Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge). In typical nice-guys-finish-last fashion, Troy is the one first able to garner her affections in return. Anyone with a decent memory of AP English Lit will recall how things pan out, but the journey to the inevitable climactic embrace, as charted by screenwriter David Nicholls and director Thomas Vinterberg, is engaging and true.
Mulligan doesn't have the aura of unattainability that Julie Christie did in the 1967 film version of "Far from the Madding Crowd," but her earthier appeal feels truer to the character and less like the idealized vision of a masculine imagination. Of the male leads, Schoenaerts is most successful at imbuing his one-note character with shades of humanity. He's also, not coincidentally, the easiest on the eyes.
Nicholls previously adapted Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" into a 2008 British TV miniseries. Here he makes a series of smart choices in whittling the novel down to feature-film length without losing its distinctive sense of place and time. The cinematography is sublime, imparting a golden-hour beauty even to the sight of dead sheep littering a beach at the foot of a seaside cliff. Bathsheba's print dresses are Oscar-worthy costume design, but Vinterberg (a founding member, once upon a time, of the Danish Dogme 95 movement) also conjures a realistic, rural Victorian world.
Hardy's 19th century radicalism goes only so far, of course, and by the final fade-out, the social order is restored. Still, as Bathsheba confidently hurtles across the meadows on horseback in her leather riding outfit, it's easy to see how this character (herself named after one of the most notorious women in the Bible) helped give rise to one of the most iconic and empowering female protagonists of today.
-- Marc Mohan for The Oregonian/OregonLive
***
"FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD"
Grade: B+
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 119 minutes
Playing at: Opens Friday, May 15 at Regal Fox Tower
Cast and crew: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple; directed by Thomas Vinterberg
The lowdown: A young, headstrong woman in 19th century England deals with the attentions of three very different suitors in this adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1874 proto-feminist novel.