Review: Far From the Madding Crowd

Dir: Thomas Vinterberg

With: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen

Runtime: 119 minutes

BATHSHEBA Everdene, the heroine of Hardy's novel and Thomas Vinterberg's drama, is offered many an inducement as three suitors attempt to lure her into marriage. One offers a lamb and a piano, another extols the virtues of his "interesting pigs", while the third dangles the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue before her.

The rest of us should need no such obvious encouragement to try Vinterberg's picture. The very thought of this lush, seductive, and insightful piece should be enough to send one hurtling into its embrace. Oh all right, we'll throw in a lamb as well.

Vinterberg is the first big screen director to attempt Hardy's 1874 novel since John Schlesinger's 1967 picture. The boots of Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch and Alan Bates have been understandably hard to fill. But the director of Festen and the Oscar-nominated The Hunt has just about managed it with a line-up of Carey Mulligan as the heiress who craves an independent life, Matthias Schoenaerts as son of toil Gabriel Oak, Tom Sturridge as the dashing Sergeant Troy, and Michael Sheen as the solid landowner William Boldwood.

Hardy's novel is a whirling dance of a tale, here played out across the fields and farmsteads of Dorset. At its heart is the question, far ahead of its time when first posed, of whether a woman requires a man and marriage to be happy. Having inherited her uncle's farm, Bathsheba wants to confound Austen's law and prove that a woman in possession of a good fortune is far from in need of a husband. Fate, and the men who share this isolated corner of the country with her, have other ideas.

The screenplay by David Nicholls (One Day) loses no time in showing its feminist sensibilities, or its desire to get a wriggle on. Nicholls is out to cram in as much plot as possible, which may not suit those after a more leisurely, mood-driven, bucolic piece. He deftly weaves in some politics, too, as when Bathsheba's maid remarks what a luxury it must be to have a choice when it comes to marriage. Hardy is in safe hands with Nicholls, ditto Scotland's Craig Armstrong, who provides a suitably epic score, and the cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, whose eye for colour and tone makes every frame look ravishing.

In driving the story along, Nicholls finds a willing partner in Vinterberg. The Danish director may have started his career as a hard core art house filmmaker, a founder of the Dogme 95 realist movement with Lars von Trier no less, but these days Vinterberg likes to keep as tight a grip on a tale as any old school Hollywood helmer.

As in the 1967 film, the cast here, with the exception of the Belgium-born Schoenaerts, is best of British. Granted, the menfolk might not at first seem to have the combined oomph of Stamp, Bates and Finch, but give them a chance. Sheen is outstanding as the older suitor, crumpled by life and awkward in his wooing of Bathsheba. Schoenaerts keeps Gabriel on a low peep, the better to make what he does say more remarkable. To save disappointment, it should also be noted by those suffering Poldark withdrawal symptoms that Gabriel keeps his shirt on while scything. Regardless, Vinterberg's Far From the Madding Crowd still makes Fifty Shades look as erotic as a seed catalogue.

While Sturridge cannot match Stamp for swagger (frankly, who could?) he brings delicacy to the part. This is where Vinterberg's film has the march over Schlesinger's. Despite the story's many thrusts and turns, Vinterberg triumphs in the quieter moments, and in these, Mulligan is the queen of all she surveys. The star of Shame and Drive is an actress who seems forever on the edge of tears, whether she is called upon to be ecstatic or downcast. Her emotions, like those of the character she plays, are kept in check but are never far from the surface. She relishes the chance to show Bathsheba's strength, which makes her vulnerability, when it is exposed, even more shattering.