Far from the Madding Crowd

It’s easy to see what attracts mod­ern film­mak­ers to Thomas Hardy’s hero­ine, Bathshe­ba Ever­dene. As she says her­self, this West Coun­try girl doesn’t need a hus­band to define her life, least of all when an inher­i­tance makes her the lady of a mod­est manor. Yet if she doesn’t need a man and her eco­nom­ic wel­fare is pret­ty much sort­ed, then what’s her sto­ry? Her atti­tudes res­onate with a nascent you-go-girl fem­i­nism – but is it enough to sus­tain two hours of screen time?

It’s hard to be con­vinced that direc­tor Thomas Vin­ter­berg and screen­writer David Nicholls (One Day) know the answer to that ques­tion, though what they do have is Carey Mul­li­gan on top form as the alter­nate­ly astute and impul­sive Bathshe­ba. The likes of An Edu­ca­tion and the under­rat­ed Nev­er Let Me Go exem­pli­fy her on-screen emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and vul­ner­a­ble sen­si­tiv­i­ty, in evi­dence again here as Bathshe­ba cir­cles around the very dif­fer­ent men in her life: Matthias Schoe­naerts’ hum­ble yet loy­al shep­herd; Tom Sturridge’s dash­ing but obvi­ous­ly bad-news guards­man; and Michael Sheen, espe­cial­ly touch­ing as the neigh­bour­ing landown­er who car­ries a torch but can’t per­suade her to mar­ry him. Mul­li­gan some­how man­ages to square the cir­cle, con­vinc­ing us as a woman with enough smarts to run rings round her suit­ors, yet also per­suad­ing us that her capri­cious heart inex­orably impels her towards some ill-fat­ed decisions.

Cer­tain­ly, it’s our invest­ment in her which holds the whole film togeth­er, since the script’s attempt to com­pact Hardy’s doorstop tome comes to seri­ous grief in the lat­er stages, and Vinterberg’s direc­to­r­i­al approach is sur­pris­ing­ly bland, per­haps stymied by bud­getary restric­tions grant­i­ng only so much peri­od recre­ation. Con­trast the film’s nar­ra­tive and visu­al par­si­mo­ny with John Schlesinger’s expan­sive 1967 adap­ta­tion, where an extra 40 min­utes on the run­ning time plus deep­er pro­duc­tion resources see Nico­las Roeg’s rich cam­er­a­work deliv­er­ing a whole rolling land­scape, an entire rur­al com­mu­ni­ty at work. A recent the­atri­cal re-release and a new Blu-ray issue have brought this pre­vi­ous ver­sion back into the spot­light, and the com­par­isons real­ly aren’t in favour of Vin­ter­berg and company.

True, Julie Christie and Carey Mul­li­gan are equal­ly cap­ti­vat­ing (the lat­ter per­haps more reliant on the sub­tle­ty of her per­for­mance than her predecessor’s out­right beau­ty), but the charis­mat­ic elec­tric­i­ty that a youth­ful Ter­ence Stamp brings to the swag­ger­ing Sergeant Troy puts Sturridge’s com­par­a­tive­ly effort­ful con­tri­bu­tion firm­ly in the shade. Then again, Vin­ter­berg seems to have rather clum­si­ly loaded the sto­ry in favour of the smoul­der­ing Schoe­naerts, who makes scant effort on the accent front but lets his glow­er­ing looks do the talk­ing — a world away from Alan Bates’s ear­li­er read­ing, where the character’s sheer decen­cy has to work extra-hard to out­weigh a seri­ous­ly unap­peal­ing vin­tage beard.

Mul­li­gan apart, it’s as if none of the film-mak­ers have quite fig­ured out how this sto­ry real­ly works, leav­ing us with a movie that cov­ers the action high­lights capa­bly enough but nev­er quite gets to the heart of this most elu­sive of Eng­lish lit­er­ary classics.