The lush looking “Far From the Madding Crowd” is far from just a story about a woman growing into self-sufficiency in an era when such things were rare.
It stars Carey Mulligan as a proud and fiery Maureen O’Hara type around whom revolve the film’s three male archetypes; stoic man of the earth, stuttering aristocrat; and cad in uniform.
Which will she choose? The wrong one, of course, on her long and winding road toward the choice she should have made two hours earlier.
The time-worn story, which appears faithful to the 1874 novel by Thomas Hardy (if Cliffs Notes are to believed) is the least interesting thing about this remake of the 1967 film by John Schlesinger (which starred Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch and Alan Bates).
More interesting is the dimpled Mulligan, who playfully personifies Bathsheba Everdene (not to be confused with Katniss Everdeen) who inherits farm land and can shear sheep and bail hay as well as any man.
She turns down one marriage proposal after another – she already has her own land and a piano, thank you – but would be happy to be a bride if it didn’t mean having husband. She has never been kissed, until she is, and overnight this turns her into a different person who makes all the wrong decisions, leading to financial ruin and tragedy. Ho hum.
But keeping things interesting looking is the painterly director Thomas Vinterberg, who alternates between long shots of landscape, the harvest air at sunset thick with dust motes; and creating intimacy and emotional tension in closeups of Mulligan with whichever suitor is vexing her at the moment.
Vinterberg is a veteran of Dogma 95, the Danish school of aesthetic purity, and director of one of that group’s most successful films, “The Celebration.”
In it a family gathering at a patriarch’s birthday reveals ugly secrets. Most of it takes place in a dining room with at first natural light and then candle light. And several scenes here, as she and her workers celebrates, provide a similar dusky naturalism and gritty texture the story itself fails to provide.
*** Three stars
With Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Michael Sheen, Jessica Barden. Produced by Allon Reich, Andrew Macdonald. Written by David Nicholls. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg. Rated PG-13, sexuality, violence. Approximate running time 119 minutes
Tags: Carey Mulligan, Far From Madding Crowd, The Celebration, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Vinterberg Posted by