Far From The Madding Crowd (2015)

Synopsis: In Victorian England independent and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a sheep farmer; Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), a dashing sergeant; and William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a prosperous landowner.

There are some large questions to be asked of Thomas Vinterberg’s Far From The Madding Crowd. Why would a Danish director, best known for his contemporary dramas such as The Hunt, take on Thomas Hardy’s quintessentially English historical novel?  Why would Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts have been cast in the role of Hardy’s Dorset rustic, Gabriel Oak? Why would anyone do another version when John Schlesinger’s classic 1967 adaptation with Julie Christie and Alan Bates stands unblemished by time. Whatever are the answers to these questions they would seem to explain many of the deficiencies of this handsomel-looking but surprisingly spiritless film.

For a start, television screenwriter David Nicholls’ script eliminates a good deal of the minor characterizations that are crucial to Hardy’s depiction of Wessex life and that were wisely carried over to Schlesinger’s film which ran nearly an hour longer than this version. Creating an authentic-seeming if somewhat sentimentalized picture of West England rural life in the late 19th century was a vital part of Hardy's novel, but here, whilst the production design is immaculate, it is but a distant background to Bathsheba’s dalliances.  Curiously, that man of the soil, Gabriel Oak, doesn’t even have a Dorset accent. Then, the approach to the narrative is, one would at best say, expeditious, whole slabs of story being glossed over, most notably with respect to Bathsheba’s relationship with Sargeant Troy, who appears, disappears, reappears and finally disappears for good in no more than a handful of scenes. Mr Boldwood isn't a whole lot better served.

The casting is problematic  Mulligan is a sweet poppet but at 30 she looks too old to play Hardy’s willful heroine who was in her early 20s.  But more problematically she lacks that keen spiritedness that caused three men to fall in love with her and that Julie Christie brought so magnificently to the role. Her fabulous wardrobe only compounds the sense of  Mulligan’s essentially decorative function.  As for Schoenaerts, who doesn’t even look English, there is no sense of  Gabriel’s steadfast love for his proud mistress.  As Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp were so right in their roles, so Schoenaerts, Sheen, and Sturridge are not in theirs, being variously inert, over-emotional and simply under-developed in Sargeant Troy’s case.

There is one area in which the film improves on both the novel and Schlesinger’s film and that is the ending, which instead of incongruously wrapping up with Bathsheba merrily taking up with Gabriel after having seen her husband shot dead by the man she drove mad, suggests a passage of time in which she has grown older and wiser as the pair walk away into the sunset and towards a happiness well deserved after so many trials.

The film is beautifully photographed by Charlotte Bruus Christensen and the art direction, wardrobe and  production design are top drawer.  As a stand-alone effort in these respects the film will probably be quite satisfactory for fans of costumes dramas but compared to Hardy’s novel and Schlesinger’s version it’s wanting in vigour.

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