Madding a glorious, romantic throwback
FILM | Chuck Koplinski
Unabashedly romantic, sumptuously shot and wonderfully acted, Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is the perfect anecdote for the summer movie overload. (Yes, I know the season has just begun, but I’m feeling special effects weary already.) This is the sort of smart, subtle and completely immersive drama that captures you from the start. The period details are spot on; so much so that you can’t help but feel as if you’re standing in a wheat field in late 19 th -century England or amidst the bustle of a thriving rural village. The casting is perfect, with each of the performers fully inhabiting their roles with a conviction and urgency that prevents them or the production from ever feeling dated.
Carey Mulligan is an inspired choice for Bathsheba Everdene, a headstrong young woman who’s far ahead of her time regarding her feelings of independence. While most women in their early 20’s have been thinking of getting married since their early teens, she admits that “I haven’t really thought about it,” when the subject comes up, and is reticent to enter into any arrangement in which she would be considered a piece of property. This is radical thinking for 1870’s rural England, yet these feelings are as natural as breathing for Everdene, something she’s not willing to compromise even when the handsome sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) proposes. Before she can give a formal reply, fortunes turn for both of them, making the offer moot. Oak loses his entire sheep herd and farm while Everdene inherits a massive estate she must run. Responsible for many employees as well as the upkeep of a farm consisting of hundreds of acres; this is a daunting task, yet her resolve is firm, declaring to her new household that, “It is my intention to astonish you all.”
Circumstance and coincidence are the cornerstone of many Hardy novels and Vinterberg handles them with a deft touch, employing a tone that makes what could be considered improbable events seem commonplace, having organically developed from natural circumstances. That Oak ends up in Everdene’s employ after leaving the town of his birth only to end up on her doorstep many miles away after she’s left the same town where he resided is a bit of a stretch, yet Vinterberg reminds us through offhand comments and small details that the community in which the film takes place is a relatively small one, families were geographically relatively close and that only so many opportunities would arise for many of Oak’s skills. That Everdene soon garners the attention of William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a middle-age bachelor with a similarly large farm not far away is a natural turn of events, as is the appearance of the rakish Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) on her estate.
Fate conspires so that Everdene finds herself torn between three men of very different personality. Feeling hemmed in, her independence threatened by social expectations that she should marry, financial concerns ultimately dictate that she must. Mulligan is exceptional here, showing our heroine’s transition from being fiercely independent, undone by her passion and compromised by circumstances. Her Everdene is never a damsel in distress but rather a woman ahead of her time who struggles to find not only an emotional and intelligent partner but also one assured enough to let her be who she is.
Her three co-stars are equally good, Schoenaerts subtly projecting strength and honor, while Sheen manages to generate a good deal of poignancy from what could have been, in lesser hands, a thankless role. As for Sturridge, you can tell he’s taking great pleasure playing a rogue, reveling in his character’s duplicitous ways, relishing each wretched move he makes.
In the end, Vinterberg’s Far from the Madding Crowd reminds us of what a good romance should be. It should not consist of trifling incidents, hoary melodrama or comedic scenes that ring false and exist only to pad the film’s running time. The subtle approach that’s taken here is what lies at the core of any good love story, as well as characters we sympathize with, as well as long to see together. This film gives us all those things but something more. It dares to eschew any grand declarations of love between its characters, knowing full well that sometimes, greater power lies in things that are left unsaid.
Contact Chuck Koplinski at ckoplinski@usd116.org.
