Far from the Madding Crowd *** (2015, Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge) – Movie Review

Bathsheba Everdene is in love with three blokes – well, sort of, and can’t make up her mid about which one, if any she fancies settling down with, Far from the Madding Crowd in Dorset.

It’s the stuff of Mills & Boon-style cheap romantic fiction, though actually it’s based on a much-admired classic novel by Thomas Hardy, with a screenplay by David Nicholls that moves fast and cuts to the chase. Danish director Thomas Vinterberg is hardly the most obvious choice as director, but he comes up with a brisk, short, pretty, glossy and very romantic movie with attractive performances. And it helps enormously that this a gloom-merchant Thomas Hardy story with a happy ending, so you do go home in a happy mood with a smile on your face.

Carey Mulligan plays Bathsheba as the modern woman Hardy intended, but she’s way too modern – he didn’t have 2015 in mind! She plays down the infuriating side of Bathsheba’s nature, making her character and herself much more sympathetic but weakening the drama. Mulligan is attractive, but she’s not the great beauty Julie Christie was in 1967 when she made the John Schlesinger version of the story. And that makes it far less credible that these three otherwise reasonably sensible men would act all soppy at her feet.

[Spoiler alert] In this version, we just know at the start that Bathsheba is going to end up with the man she (well, sort of) rejects at the start – nice, reliable sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) – and she could have saved us two hours by just saying yes to his marriage proposal in the first place. Schoenaerts is far, far too handsome and sweet for Gabriel Oak, making Bathsheba’s rejection of him and subsequent behaviour towards him just seem idiotic. Ah well, they end up together, and all’s well that ends well.

Studio Canal recently re-released the Schlesinger movie, so we can see that this version is a pale copy of the Schlesinger original with many scenes very similar yet much less well done – the sheep falling off the cliff, Bathsheba taking over the farm and rehiring the team, the storm at the farm, Sergeant Troy’s sexualised swordplay with Bathsheba.

The actors are all individually excellent but they don’t fit the roles nearly as well as the iconic players in the 60s film – Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp.

Michael Sheen has the short straw as prosperous and mature bachelor William Boldwood in an underdeveloped role that Finch made so memorable. But it is Tom Sturridge who is the weakest link as reckless Sergeant Francis Troy. Handsome though Sturridge is, Troy needs to be played much sexier than this. Juno Temple does well with the unforgiving role of pathetic, rejected Fanny Robbin.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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