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Far From the Madding Crowd: A Verdant, Ripe Adaptation
by Sandra Olmsted
Reversals of fortunes and marriage proposals abound in director Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowds. Yet, the film is not a Victorian romantic comedy.
Veteran Danish director Vinterberg explores a number of themes in the story of plucky, self-possessed Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) and the three men who love her. That the men come from different classes, the landed gentry, the hardworking farmer, and the middle class soldier, unfolds the struggle to adhere to the conventions of society and to find happiness for all four.
She suspects that farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) wants to possess her and refuses. The wealthy middle-aged bachelor Boldwood (Michael Sheen) tries to tempted her with a piano, which Gabriel also did, but Bathsheba has a piano of her own by then. What she wants is freedom. Meanwhile, while Sgt. Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) waits and then tearfully waits at the church for his fiancée Fanny Robin (Juno Temple), she walks through the streets in her wedding dress, happy and excited, and the scene is ripe with expectation that fortune may run her down. Afterward, their love lies in wait, ready to ensnare the fortunes of others.
Although she tells Gabriel that she won’t be a possession and Boldwood she can’t be bought, she swoons for the bad boy. He dares to match her lack of convention with rule breaking of his own in the foreplay to a kiss that awakens the passions of the never-been kissed Bathsheba. Upper class Boldwood could let Bathsheba act as she would because his social status exempts him from the middle class conformity of Troy, who expects the control and privilege he earns through marriage.
The famer Gabriel Oak offers love as natural and companionable as the verdant land and as powerful as the constant forces of nature. Bathsheba struggles to be herself and control her holdings underline the feminist themes.
In this fourth film adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd, Vinterberg and screenwriter David Nicholls remain faithful to Hardy’s twisting plot, emotional tone, and deep love of England’s verdant hills, dangerous cliffs, rustic villages, pastoral harvests, and opulent country homes. Vinterberg uses subtlety of film language to convey deeper meanings and express the emotions of the characters. He also includes excitement of fires, storms, and conflicting passions.
Shot on location in Hardy’s Dorset setting, Vinterberg’s cinematographer, Charlotte Bruus Christensen, captures the natural light and beauty of the rugged, pastoral landscapes in gorgeous widescreen. Craig Armstrong’s elegantly sparse score underlines the pent up emotions of the characters and the rustic simplicity of the landscape and of the inhabitants, farms, and villages, the excellent work of set designer Kave Quinn and costumer Janet Patterson.
Far From the Madding Crowd, a Fox Searchlight Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for some sexuality and violence and runs 119 minutes. The film opens May 8.
